Erich Leyens

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Erich Leyens (born January 13, 1898 in Wesel ; † October 1, 2001 in Konstanz ) was a German-American merchant and survivor of the Holocaust . From 1930 he was the manager of a textile department store in downtown Wesel and gained notoriety through his active resistance to the boycott of Jews in April 1933. He later lived in the USA for many years and also worked as a writer .

Life

Erich Leyens was the son of Hermann Leyens and Klara nee Levenbach. His father had settled in Wesel and founded the Leyens & Levenbach department store on the east side of the Great Market and thus in close proximity to Willibrordi Cathedral .

Erich Leyens first attended the Jewish elementary school. From Easter 1907 he was a student at the Royal High School in Wesel (later Konrad-Duden-Gymnasium) and left it in 1913 after the tenth grade to become a textile merchant.

Erich Leyens had two brothers, Heinrich and Walter, and two sisters, Margarete and Helene. At the beginning of the First World War in 1914, he volunteered as did his two brothers. He himself was only 16 years old at the time. As an artillery observer he was shot down in a balloon and survived this by jumping off with a parachute. After the end of the war he was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. After returning from the front, Leyens worked as a textile merchant in the family's business. He was also a member of the youth movement and dealt with academic writings. In 1923 he asked Sigmund Freud in a letter why he had a connection to the anti-Semite Hans Blüher , and elicited Freud a clear distinction from Blüher's work. After his father's death in 1930, he took over the family's department store and proved to be a successful businessman before the Nazis came to power in 1933.

When Erich Leyens found out on the evening of March 31, 1933 that the “Jewish boycott” planned for the following day, that is, the boycott of Jewish businesses instigated by the National Socialists, he decided to resist. He designed a leaflet with an appeal to the decency of the population, which he reproduced overnight. On April 1, 1933, he distributed the leaflet, wearing his World War II uniform along with the awards he had received. His leaflet referred to a quote from Adolf Hitler : "Anyone who insults a soldier at the front in the 3rd Reich will be punished with prison!" His action met with great interest and received many expressions of sympathy. The local newspapers, which had not yet been harmonized at the time, also reported benevolently about the action the next day.

Although it was very popular and the attempted boycott had the opposite effect in the short term, the situation for the Wesel Jews became more and more threatening in the long term. Leyens tried to keep his business going for a few months from April 1933 and achieved great success with promotions. However, when his business was attacked and devastated by the SA and the Wesel police chief informed him that he could not protect him, Leyens decided to give up the business.

He sold his department store in 1934 and moved to Milan , Italy, where he worked in a company. In the following years he was in his hometown and in Berlin a few more times , but after the November pogroms in 1938 he and all family members fled Germany permanently. He himself came from Italy via Switzerland to Cuba and was able to travel to the United States in 1942 with the help of his brother Walter, who was already living there. Despite their escape, his mother and one of his two sisters died in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . The sister was Helene "Leni" Leyens (married Kohnke), who was murdered there in 1943 as was her husband. Through their previous escape to Amsterdam, the couple was acquainted with the family of Anne Frank . Otto Frank contacted Erich Leyens after the war and informed him that Helene's daughter Anneke (* 1940) had survived. The child came to the United States in 1946 and was taken in by Erich Leyens. His brother Heinrich had fled to Chile and his sister Margarete to England, from where she emigrated to the USA.

In addition to the murder of two direct relatives and his expulsion, Leyens was also deprived of all of his family's assets by the National Socialists. He had to start a new job, but was able to gain wealth again in New York and acquired US citizenship. Together with Lotte Palfi-Andor , he wrote two books. Among them was a text he wrote at a very old age in 1990 on his experiences in National Socialist Germany. Among other things, he describes how a friend of his joined the NSDAP in 1933 and tried to justify this decision to him. Solidarity behavior of non-Jewish friends is also discussed. In particular, he notices how the attitudes of his fellow citizens had changed within a short time and he was largely isolated as a previously respected citizen in his home country only two years after he came to power.

In retirement, Leyens had a winter residence in the state of Florida and, in old age, decided to live in the German city of Konstanz, where he spent most of the year. In Konstanz he lived in a retirement home, had contacts to Wesel again and was still in good health at the age of 100. Leyens died in Constance in 2001 at the age of 103.

reception

Bank building at the location of the former Leyens & Levenbach department store (2015)

In addition to the works he published himself, various books deal with Erich Leyens' acts of resistance in response to the "Jewish boycott" of the National Socialists in 1933. Among other things, his actions are taken up in several works by the historian Wolfgang Benz . English-language publications also deal with Leyens, including the British historian Michael Burleigh . The Dutch documentary film De Baby from 2012 deals with the family of his murdered sister Helene and the fate of his niece Anneke . Erich Leyens also appears in it.

After Erich Leyens and his family, a small square in Wesel city center was named Leyensplatz . It is located in the western part of the pedestrian zone near the Great Market and the former location of his department store. Stumbling blocks were laid for the family members, including Erich Leyens, at his family's former home on Nordglacis in the north of Wesel city center .

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz : German Jews in the 20th Century: A History in Portraits . Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62292-2 , therein: Protest against the boycott of 1933: Erich Leyens , pp. 36–43
  • with Lotte Palfi-Andor : The Strange Years. Memories of Germany (= Fischer Taschenbuch 10779: Geschichte, Lebensbilder , Volume 1), Frankfurt am Main 1991, 1994 ISBN 3-596-10779-2
    • Transl. Brigitte Goldstein: Years of Estrangement, preface Wolfgang Benz, Northwestern University Press , Evanston , IL 1996 ISBN 0-8101-1181-0 (Contains two autobiographies: Erich Leyens: Under the Nazi regime, experiences and observations 1933–1938 . Lotte Palfi-Andor: Memoirs of an unknown actress or, I never was a genuine St Bernard (English)).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hubert Rütten: Traces of life - search for traces, Jewish life in the former district of Erkelenz, writings of the Heimatverein der Erkelenzer Lande Volume 22, Erkelenz 2008, page 290ff.
  2. ↑ a b c Rudolf Haffner: Erich Leyens is dead . Konrad-Duden-Gymnasium Wesel, accessed on January 20, 2020
  3. ↑ a b c d Horst Schroeder: Erich Leyens , Konrad-Duden-Gymnasium Wesel, 2000, accessed on January 20, 2020
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h The Wesel merchant Erich Leyens was born 115 years ago . Website of the city of Wesel, accessed on August 22, 2016
  5. ↑ Claudia Bruns: Politics of Eros: the men's union in science, politics and youth culture (1880-1934) . Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna, 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-14806-5 , p. 266 (dissertation Universität Hamburg 2004, 546 pages).
  6. ^ A b Wolfgang Benz : German Jews in the 20th Century: A History in Portraits . Beck, Munich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-62292-2 , pp. 36-43.
  7. ↑ Friedhelm Ebbecke-bending village: Elise Hommel: From the idyllic village in the destruction . Jews in Eschweiler, 2012, accessed on August 22, 2016.
  8. ↑ Rudi Haffner: Leni Leyens , Konrad-Duden-Gymnasium Wesel, accessed on January 20, 2020
  9. ↑ a b Wolfgang Benz: Jewish resistance against National Socialism: Erich Leyens' protest against the boycott 1933 . ( Memento from July 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) David , Heft 87, 12/2010, accessed on January 20, 2020
  10. ^ “De Baby”: Documentaire Deborah van Dam . Text of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam on Joodsmonument.nl , 6 May 2013, accessed on 22 August 2016.
  11. ↑ Petra Herzog: 100 years ago in Wesel: The mobilization . Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , July 31, 2014, accessed on August 22, 2016.
  12. ^ Rudolf Haffner: Leyens - one of 22 fates . ( Memento from June 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Review by Wolfgang Benz: German Jews in the 20th Century . Newspaper article on the website of the Konrad-Duden-Gymnasium Wesel, December 18, 2011, accessed on August 22, 2016, (pdf; 160 kB).
  13. ↑ Active participation in the sixth Stolperstein laying in Wesel . Website of the city of Wesel, accessed on August 22, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Leyens, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American businessman, author and survivor of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Wesel , Germany
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 2001
Place of death Constance , Germany