Emil Martens

Emil Friedrich Martens (born May 17, 1886 in Nusse ; † January 15, 1969 in Hamburg ) was a German businessman and sports official . From 1928 to 1934 he was chairman of the Hamburg sports club , then honorary chairman. During the National Socialism he was persecuted because of his homosexuality .

Life

Marten's father owned a general store, but he sold it in 1893 for health reasons. Martens himself completed a commercial apprenticeship after completing secondary school in 1903 . From 1907 to 1910 he worked for the oil import company A. André in Hamburg. In 1910 he entered the business of his brother Paul, who was an insurance broker at the time. Emil Martens went into business for himself in May 1914. After the outbreak of the First World War , he volunteered and was assigned to the Hamburg Infantry Regiment 76 . On April 24, 1917, he was captured by English troops during the Battle of Arras on the Vimy Heights . After his release from captivity , he received the Iron Cross II. Class and the Hanseatic Cross in 1919, and later the Cross of Honor for Frontline Fighters . Back in Hamburg, Martens founded a company with Vitus Maurer to import and sell mother- of- pearl buttons . After being taken over by an English investor in 1928, Martens remained managing director of the company until his arrest in 1936.

Martens had already joined Hamburger FC from 1888 in 1907 , for which he played for several years as captain of the 7th team before the war. In 1919 he was one of the founding members of Hamburger SV , for which he worked as a functionary in various functions and committees. On February 4, 1928, he was elected to an association's executive committee of three, later consistently two people, with Martens being accepted as the actual determining personality. Its activity is considered to be the "engine of an unprecedented modernization" of the association, but at that time a number of democratic procedures were suspended and the triumvirate or duumvirate was entrusted with "unlimited authority". Under Martens' leadership, the Ochsenzoll sports field association was founded and an area at Ochsenzoll was acquired, which was redesigned between 1929 and 1931 into a facility with grass pitches (9 football and 3 hockey fields).

Martens apparently supported the National Socialists since 1928 , but did not join the NSDAP until it came to power in 1933 . In 1934 he - as the sole "club leader" - was accused of violating the amateur statute and that there were "black coffers" at HSV. The DFB demanded that Martens be removed from office. On instructions, an extraordinary general assembly was held on January 25, 1934, which elected a new "club leader", but declared Martens honorary chairman, much to the annoyance of the DFB representatives present. On December 14, 1936, the homosexual Martens was sentenced to ten months in prison for violating Section 175 of the RStGB . At the same time he was expelled from the NSDAP.

After his release from prison on July 30, 1937, Martens withdrew from the public. His brother Paul employed him as an authorized signatory in his company Superradio in Hamburg-Eppendorf . On April 14, 1939, Martens was sentenced again for intercourse with a prostitute, this time to 20 months in prison. This sentence was served on November 8, 1940. In September 1941 Martens received a summons for police interrogation and then attempted suicide. According to another prostitute, Martens was arrested. He confessed, was indicted by public prosecutor Nicolaus Siemssen in March 1942 and sentenced on May 15 to 18 months in prison with subsequent preventive detention. The court tied a possible dismissal to a previous emasculation of Martens. His lawyer had already announced in March that his client wanted to be emasculated "voluntarily".

Martens was admitted to the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison in June 1942 and emasculated on December 15, 1942 in Hamburg. In January 1943, the court and public prosecutor's office approved the lifting of preventive detention. The release was only ordered after the Reich Ministry of Justice had given its approval in October 1943 after consulting the SS . After a second follow-up examination, Martens was released on January 6, 1944.

After the end of National Socialism, Martens was not rehabilitated. A third follow-up examination was carried out on May 22, 1946. However, Martens returned in 1949 to the circle of the old men of the HSV and was also active in the council of elders. He died of a stroke .

literature

• Gottfried Lorenz: The Martens case - a prominent victim of the National Socialist persecution of homosexuals in Hamburg
• Justus Meyer: The HSV Museum's special exhibition "The diamond under the swastika". In: Arnd Krüger and Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe (eds.). Forgotten, suppressed, rejected - on the history of exclusion in sport. Conference report of the 10th Hoayer Conference on Sports History from October 10 to 12, 2008. Lit, Berlin 2009, ISBN 9783643103383 ( series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History Hoya eV 21), pp. 17–31.
• Bernhard Rosenkranz, Ulf Bollmann and Gottfried Lorenz: Persecution of Homosexuals in Hamburg, 1919–1969. 1st edition. Lambda, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 9783925495328 .

Web links

• Emil Martens at hsv1887.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Broder-Jürgen Trede: Gay HSV President - adored, persecuted, emasculated. The fate of the former HSV President Emil Friedrich Martens In: RUND. The football magazine .
2. ↑ “Ochsenzoll as the measure of things”, in: Werner Skrentny / JRPrüß , Always first class , Göttingen 2011, page 56 f.
3. ^ "A business office scandal", in: Werner Skrentny / JRPrüß , Always first class , Göttingen 2011, page 72 f.