Erich Meier (young worker)

Erich Meier (born December 16, 1910 in Spandau , † between March 11 and March 16, 1933 in Berlin ) was a young German worker and an early victim of the Nazi regime.

Life and activity

Early life

Meier was the son of an excavator fitter at Orenstein & Koppel and a laundress. The mother died in 1919, the father in 1932. The family included a sister and two brothers, with whom Meier delivered newspapers in order to supplement the family income.

After attending an elementary school and a free school, Meier learned the trade of toolmaker in the German industrial plants and joined the German Metalworkers Association .

Political activism (1928–1933)

In 1928, at the suggestion of his former class teacher Karl Schall, Meier became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). He developed into the chairman of the Spandau SAJ and a leading functionary of the organization. He got involved in socialist youth work and became the leader of the Red Rebels playgroup .

Dissatisfaction with social democratic politics led Meier to leave the SAJ in July 1931 and join the Communist Youth Association (KJVD). Due to his popularity in the Spandau SAJ, he was able to persuade more than twenty sympathetic friends to follow him. In this he became chairman of the KJVD group of the Berlin-Spandau sub-district and member of the Berlin-Brandenburg district management of the association. He organized demonstrations against the NSDAP and SA and appeared as a speaker at political events. His investigation files contain references to “hate speech”, demonstrative singing of songs and possession of propaganda material. In July 1932 he was arrested at the Spandau employment office for trespassing and sentenced to two weeks in prison.

Probably his biggest coup against the NSDAP he landed at a major event in the horse heaven (Pichelsdorfer Straße) by filling the hall halfway with smuggled KPD supporters and repeatedly interrupting the Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels speaking there .

Arrest and Assassination

After the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, Meier went underground. The prepared escape to Czechoslovakia failed due to his hesitant attitude.

During an arrest operation on the night of March 10th to 11th, 1933, Meier was discovered and arrested by SA men in the “Huhn” arbor in the “Gute Hope” arbor colony on Falkenhagener Chaussee in Spandau. He was beaten up on the spot and then taken to the SA restaurant “Drechsel” at Spandauer Wilhelmstrasse 20. There he was severely mistreated until the early hours of the morning by members of Storm 107 of Sturmbanns 14 in the restaurant's laundry room. He was then taken by three SA members in a car to a sewage field near the Karolinenhöhe estate on the outskirts of Berlin (Seeburg) and shot there in a field about 500 meters from the road. The body was shot seven times in the back and three in the head.

Meier's body was only found on March 16 by Otto Borchert, the field guard of the Karolinenhöhe estate. In addition to the gunshot wounds mentioned, the autopsy doctor found beaten teeth, torn tufts of hair, numerous bruises and smashed testicles. A homicide commission headed by Chief Inspector Quoss investigated the case pro forma and quickly closed the investigation.

Stumbling block for Erich Meier

Meier's funeral on March 18 turned out to be one of the last public demonstrations by the forces opposed to National Socialism in Spandau, before political demonstrations were forcibly stopped in the course of the Gleichschaltung. His grave - now an honorary grave - is in the In den Kisseln cemetery in Spandau.

Legal processing of the murder of Meier and aftermath

In 1951 a trial against former members of the Spandau SA for crimes against humanity took place in West Berlin before the 10th criminal chamber of the Moabit Regional Court (1 P KLs 21/51), which also dealt with Meier's murder. The accused were the former Obersturmführer Gerhard Steltner and the former Hauptsturmführer Hans Horn. By judgment of September 14, 1951, Steltner received a sentence of six and a half years in prison, Horn one year. In a renegotiation in 1953 Horn was acquitted and Steltner's sentence reduced.

From around 1960, a street in West-Staaken, which was then in the Nauen district in the GDR, was named Erich-Meier-Straße in memory of Meier. On October 1, 1990, this street was merged with Feldstrasse and renamed Staakener Feldstrasse .

Since October 26, 2010, a stumbling stone in front of the house at Kurz Strasse 1 has been a reminder of Meier's life and murder.

Archival tradition

Files on the Meier case are in the Brandenburg Main Archives (File I Pol.1090) and in the Berlin State Archives (A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, No. 2411). Kurt Schilde describes a historically detailed account of the case as "certainly worthwhile" due to this rather detailed judicial tradition.

literature

• Willi Döbbelin: Erich Meier and his time - 1927 to 1933. Attempt to honor an anti-fascist , [Berlin] 2004.
• Willi Döbbelin: "Boy - one of our best comrades!" Attempt to pay tribute to the young communist and anti-fascist resistance fighter Erich Meier " . New 1979.
• Oliver Gliech: The Spandauer SA 1926 to 1933. A study on National Socialist violence in a district . In: Wolfgang Ribbe (Ed.): Berlin Research , III. Berlin 1988, pp. 107-205, especially pp. 179-193 (Der Mord an Erich Meier).
• Joachim Jarusch: Spandau , 1996, p. 123.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : The “other” capital of the Reich: Resistance from the workers' movement in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 , 2006, p. 380.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss: Resistance in Spandau (= series of publications on the resistance in Berlin from 1933 to 1945, issue 3). Berlin 1988, p. 46 ff., ISSN  0175-3592
• Kurt Schilde : Victims of the Nazi terror in Berlin in 1933 . In: Christoph Kopke, Werner Treß (Hrsg.): The day of Potsdam. March 21, 1933 and the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship . Berlin 2013, pp. 184–186.

Web links

• Erich Meier would have turned 100 on December 16 . (PDF) In: Spandauer Umschau , November 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erich-Meier-Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein