Ernst Hampel (resistance fighter)

Ernst Hampel (born June 16, 1919 in Hamburg ; † April 20, 1945 in Brandenburg prison ) was a German painter and resistance fighter against National Socialism and a victim of Nazi war justice. He was one of the protagonists of the Etter-Rose-Hampel group, which was also named after him .

Life and activity

Hampel was the youngest of three sons of the lathe operator and skilled worker Carl Hampel and his wife Franziska. After attending school he was trained as a painter. He then went to the State School of Applied Arts in Hamburg am Lerchenfeld. During this time he worked on Johann Michael Bossard's project "Gesamtkunstwerk" in the Lüneburg Heath.

During the Weimar Republic , Hampel joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). After the National Socialists came to power , he became involved in left-wing free youth groups that continued to exist in a non-public form parallel to the Hitler Youth .

From November 1938 to February 1939, Hampel did the compulsory Reich Labor Service . In August 1939, he was forcibly recruited (see district military replacement office ) for military service. In September of the same year he got engaged to Amanda Löwe (* 1921), although she was considered half-Jewish by National Socialist standards . The marriage was forbidden because of the racial laws. The connection resulted in a daughter born in 1943.

After training as an artilleryman, Hampel took part in the attacks by the Wehrmacht on the western neighbors of the German Reich in 1940, was promoted to NCO in December 1940 and was deployed in the war of aggression against the Soviet Union from 1941. Due to frostbite that he suffered in Russia, he was sent back to his homeland in January 1942 and used there as an instructor.

Politically, Hampel had been in contact with Max Kristeller , a former KPD functionary , since 1940 , with whom he regularly discussed politics, especially about the Nazi system and the war. The two agreed that the war should end with the defeat of the Nazi German Reich and the victory of the Soviet Union. Kristeller also encouraged Hampel to listen to foreign radio stations, which had been strictly forbidden since 1939. After his return from Russia in the spring of 1942, Hampel intensified his contacts with Kristeller and his old crypto-communist circle of friends: on the basis of the conviction that in order to achieve the goal of winding up the war as quickly as possible, it would be expedient for the Allied powers to overthrow To supplement the Nazi military machine with measures that would drive the collapse of the Nazi state from within, Hampel and his circle of friends decided to take active resistance work against the regime: it fell to Hampel in particular, among members of the military, with whom he was in contact to advertise in a discreet way to turn away from the Nazi regime.

After a denunciation - at a New Year's Eve celebration at the end of 1942, Hampel, Kristeller and some friends had openly spoken out against the Nazi regime in the presence of an informant and described an early defeat in the war as desirable - the group was gradually broken up in the spring of 1943: Kristeller came in May in custody. Hampel was arrested on June 2, 1943 at the Rendsburg military training area. After a long pre-trial detention in the Hamburg police prison in Fuhlsbüttel and in the pre-trial detention center Hamburg-Stadt am Holstenglacis (since March 29, 1944), he was transferred to the regional court prison in Stendal on May 19, 1944. At that time, charges against him were brought before the People's Court of preparation for high treason , favoring the enemy and degrading military strength . The trial took place on January 4th and 5th, 1945. In the judgment of January 5, 1945, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. In the grounds of the judgment it was said, among other things, that he had "discussed the political and war situation in the defeatist and communist sense, wished for the defeat of Germany and called for people to stick together in view of the expected communist overthrow".

Hampel's execution was carried out on April 20, 1945 - the last day on which executions were carried out in this prison - with the guillotine in the Brandenburg prison .

Today a stumbling block in front of Quickbornstrasse 31 in Hamburg reminds of Hampel.

literature

• Dieter Thiele / Reinhard Saloch: In the footsteps of the Bertinis: a literary walk through Hamburg-Barmbek , 2003, pp. 94–96.

Web links

• Entry to Hampel bei Stolpersteine ​​in Hamburg