Erich Sander (photographer)

Erich Friedrich August Sander (born December 22, 1903 in Linz , † March 23, 1944 in Siegburg ) was a German photographer. In 1935 he was sentenced to long term imprisonment for his resistance activities for the SAPD and, as a prison photographer in Siegburg, documented the life of prisoners during the Nazi regime in a unique way .

Childhood and youth

Erich Sander was a son of the photographer August Sander and his wife Anna geb. Page maker. In 1909 he fell ill with polio and suffered permanent paralysis on his left foot. In 1910 the Sander family went to Cologne , where August Sander set up his own studio in 1911. Erich first attended elementary school in Cologne-Lindenthal and in 1914 switched to Lindenthal Realgymnasium. At Easter 1923 Erich Sander passed his Abitur with consistently good grades. He began studying economics first , then history. First he attended the University of Cologne, then he moved to the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and the University of Frankfurt for a total of three semesters . He attended lectures and other events, among others by Leopold von Wiese , Carl Grünberg , Max Horkheimer , Friedrich Meinecke , Max Scheler , Helmut Plessner and Martin Spahn . Due to his intensive political activities he lost sight of his studies a little. In 1931 he made one last attempt to complete it with a doctorate , but the dissertation remained unfinished.

Political commitment

At the Realgymnasium Erich Sander was trained by his social democratic teacher Dr. Paul Bourfeind had a significant political impact. First, he went on hikes through the Cologne area with free thinkers. In 1922 he joined the KJVD . In 1925, after reaching the age of majority, he switched from the KJVD to the KPD . His main field of activity, however, was the communist student faction ( Kostufra ), of which he was a member of the board in Berlin and Cologne. We don't know much about Erich Sander's perception of KPD politics between 1925 and 1928, but in 1928 he was close to the “right wing” in the party, who were ousted from the end of the year and founded the KPO . In December 1928 he was therefore relieved of his position. Since he was on 29./30. On December 3rd, 1929 he was expelled from the KPD by the Central Rhine district leadership. Erich Sander was one of the leading functionaries of the KPO in Cologne, but kept in touch with other left-wing groups in Cologne, as he pursued the goal of reuniting the political workers' movement. In April 1932, in order to strengthen the unity movement, he moved with a group of supporters from the KPO to the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAPD). In October 1932 he became its director in Cologne. He sought contact with the Black Front , the circle around Otto Strasser that had split off from the NSDAP in 1930 , in order to discuss a common approach.

Resistance and persecution

After some time of persecution, the SAPD group in Cologne consolidated again. Writings from neighboring countries were smuggled into the Rhineland, some of which Erich Sander brought back from his travels to the Saar region or Paris. The connection to the Black Front was re-established in order to jointly oppose the National Socialists. At the end of 1933 Erich Sander became head of the SAPD in Cologne. In his parents' apartment, about 500 sheets of leaflets were hectographed eight times, some of which he had written himself. Between January and April 1934, training courses were held for members in a room in Haus Sülz near Lohmar. Since July 1934 the SAPD was observed by the Gestapo . In September the Rhenish and Westphalian Stapo offices struck. Erich Sander himself was arrested on September 11, 1934. Between May 28 and 31, 1935, he was charged with preparing for high treason with 17 comrades before the Hamm Higher Regional Court . As head of the group, Erich Sander was sentenced to a particularly harsh sentence of 10 years in prison. The comparatively high sentences in these proceedings were also a result of the Sander-inspired revocation of the confessions in court and the presentation of the torture scars.

Prison photographer in Siegburg

Tomb of Erich and August Sander in the Melaten cemetery

Stumbling block for Erich Sander (Dürener Straße 201)

Erich Sander initially served his sentence in Rheinbach . On September 27, 1935, he was transferred to the Siegburg prison. Since he had to work as a convict in prison, he was used as a house servant in the hospital from October. From April 1936 he was repeatedly used as a prisoner photographer. He took photos for the " criminal biological research " that was carried out in the prison. Since the prison had been applying for armaments contracts since the beginning of the war, Erich Sander produced recordings of the buildings, their workshops and other facilities.

He succeeded in smuggling out negatives or prints from numerous photos after, from 1940 onwards, he himself, but also inmates close to him such as Wilhelm Pertz, were used to work outside the prison building and transported the materials. In this way he was also able to send uncensored letters, some of which were still in secret, to his parents. The two together result in a unique documentation of the living conditions of political prisoners during National Socialism.

On March 23, 1944, Erich Sander died in the Siegburg hospital, to which he was admitted on March 22, after his severe abdominal pain had probably been ignored for days. He only had six months to go before he was released.

On March 13, 2009, the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block for Erich Sander in front of his former home at Dürener Straße 201. The NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne is dedicating Sander to “August Sander's inflexible son. Erich Sander as a prisoner and prison photographer in the Siegburg prison 1935-1944 ”a special exhibition (23 October 2015 to 31 January 2016).

Erich Sander's grave is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne (hallway 87), at the side of his father August Sander.

literature

• Günter Bers: "Short biography Erich Sander" In: The Middle Rhine / Saar district of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1922. Wentorf 1975, p. 132.
• Brigitte Bilz, Fritz Bilz: This person was beaten to death for me. Letters from Gestapo detention and concentration camps. Emons-Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-89705-160-5 .
• NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne (ed.): August Sander's inflexible son. Erich Sander as a prisoner and prison photographer in the Siegburg prison from 1935 to 1944. Accompanying volume for the exhibition in the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-262-6
• NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne and SK Foundation for Culture / Photography Collection (ed.): Erich Sander. Prison letters 1935-1944 , Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-286-2
• Wilfried Viebahn, Walter Kuchta: Resistance against the Nazi dictatorship in Cologne. In: Reinhold Billstein (Ed.): The other Cologne. Democratic traditions since the French Revolution. Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-7609-0467-X , p. 317ff.

swell

• Landesarchiv NRW, Westphalia department, Münster, inventory Q211a, volume 4908 (Gestapo investigations against the Cologne SAPD).
• Landesarchiv NRW, Westphalia department, Münster, inventory Q211a, volume 5636 (the judgment of the OLG Hamm and correspondence between August Sander and the public prosecutor's office in Hamm from the post-war period).
• Landesarchiv NRW Rhineland department, Düsseldorf, holdings Ger. Rep. 173, Volume 433 (prisoner file Erich Sanders from Siegburg).
• University Archive Cologne, 29I1365 Access 600 (Erich Sander student file).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Claudia Gabriele Philipp:  Sander, August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 417 ( digitized version ).
2. ↑ ksta.de (from March 10, 2015): Second World War in Siegburg Resistance and active help in the Siegburg prison , accessed on March 5, 2016
3. ↑ http://www.koeln-magazin.info/stolpersteine.html
4. ↑ Archive of the special exhibitions . NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne. Retrieved March 29, 2019.