Ernst Ludwig Heuss

Ernst Ludwig Heuss (born August 5, 1910 in Schöneberg ; † February 14, 1967 in Lörrach ) was a German member of a resistance movement during the National Socialist era and an entrepreneur after the war. He was the son of the future German President Theodor Heuss and his wife Elly Heuss-Knapp .

Life

Ernst Ludwig Heuss was the only child of the parents who had been married on April 11, 1908. Due to complications in his birth, the mother nearly died. Ernst Ludwig Heuss was baptized in Berlin-Schöneberg. His nickname in his youth was "Lulu" - after the poet and writer Lulu von Strauss and Torney , a friend of Theodor Heuss - later his friends called him "Lutz". He spent his childhood in Heilbronn. From 1919 the family lived again in Berlin, where Ernst Ludwig attended the Helmholtz Realgymnasium and the Reformrealgymnasium in Berlin-Friedenau. He spent the last four school years in the Landschulheim am Solling near Holzminden an der Weser , a free school community, where he passed the school leaving examination in 1930.

1930-1945

From 1930 to 1936 he studied law and political science at the universities of Berlin , Heidelberg and Bonn . On April 29, 1937, he submitted his dissertation . Since a career in the legal civil service was hopeless because he, like his parents, openly rejected National Socialism, he then switched to commercial activity. From December 1938 to August 28, 1939 he worked as a department head at the German Chamber of Commerce in London. After the beginning of the Second World War he first became a consultant, then head of the “shoe distribution” department of the “Reichsstelle für Lederwirtschaft” (Reich Office for Leather Industry) located in Berlin . In this function he was responsible for the distribution of all civilian footwear produced and imported.

Ernst Ludwig Heuss supported many of those persecuted by the Nazi regime during the Third Reich, including Annemarie Wolff-Richter . He helped the director of a Berlin curative education center for the mentally handicapped (“Psychopaths Home”) to flee Germany. He was also actively involved in securing the assets of a number of Jewish friends and provided courier services for groups of German emigration and the Confessing Church .

While working in Berlin, he and Willy Hintze, Horst von Einsiedel , Carl-Dietrich von Trotha and Gerd von Eynern belonged to a network of anti-fascist-minded employees in other management offices. Since 1943 he was in constant contact with the Goerdeler circle through Fritz Elsas , Julius Leber , Klaus Bonhoeffer and Ernst von Harnack . In autumn 1943 he convinced his father to leave Berlin, which was constantly being bombed by the Allies, and to move to Heidelberg. Ernst Ludwig himself initially stayed in Berlin, also to protect his parents' house from arson and looting.

In Berlin, Heuss had contacts with the Solf Circle , which in turn was in contact with other resistance groups and primarily helped persecuted Jews. While Elisabeth von Thadden , a pedagogue who founded the Evangelical Landerziehungsheim in Heidelberg, was executed by the National Socialists on September 8, 1944, Hanna Solf (1887–1954) and her daughter Lagi Countess Ballestrem, nee. Solf (1909–1955) could only be freed from the detention center in Moabit through the efforts of Ernst Ludwig Heuss shortly before her trial, which was scheduled in the last days of the war in April 1945 .

By Emmi Bonhoeffer , the wife of shortly before the war ended on the night of 22 executed on April 23, 1945 resistance fighter Klaus Bonhoeffer - a brother Dietrich Bonhoeffer  - is revealed in the following statement about the last days of her husband: "Two days before his death was the last time I saw my husband. One day before his death, his sister Ursula Schleicher drove to prison again. I did not go because Lutz Heuss had been with me and announced: I'll get your husband tomorrow. "

1945-1967

After the end of the war, Ernst Ludwig Heuss married Hanne Elsas on August 4, 1945, one of the daughters of the resistance member and Theodor Heuss friend Fritz Elsas, who was murdered on January 4, 1945 . They had a daughter together, Barbara (* 1947). After the death of his first wife in 1958, he married Ursula Heuss-Wolff (1929–2009), the daughter of Annemarie Wolff-Richter , on May 9, 1959 ; they were married by Helmut Gollwitzer . In 1961 the son Ludwig Theodor Heuss was born. Ernst Ludwig Heuss became director of "Wybert GmbH" in Lörrach in 1946 , later also of the resulting "GABA AG" in Basel , a manufacturer of oral and dental care products, today united to form the GABA group under the umbrella of Colgate-Palmolive . His mother - mediated by his cousin Hermann Geiger, owner of the Wybert company - had already worked as an advertising copywriter for this company before the war. He now lived with his family in the Loerrach district of Tumringen , where his father Theodor often visited him. During his time as head of the company, he developed the well-known elmex toothpaste.

After the death of his father, Ernst Ludwig Heuss was one of the co-founders of the Theodor Heuss Foundation in 1964 . Initially, he planned a Heuss library with the participation of the state of Baden-Württemberg . In order to ensure that the Koblenz Federal Archives had access to the political part of the Theodor Heuss estate, the Theodor Heuss Archive Foundation was set up in Stuttgart in 1964 at the suggestion of the Baden-Württemberg Minister of Justice, Wolfgang Haußmann . Ernst Ludwig Heuss was one of the board members of the board of trustees of this archive foundation, which was dissolved again in 1971. From 1965 to 1967 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom .

Ernst Ludwig Heuss died of a stroke on February 14, 1967 in Loerrach and was buried in the Loerrach main cemetery.

literature

• Ernst Ludwig Heuss: Admissible and inadmissible actions for breach of official duty . Legal dissertation, Heidelberg University. Brönner Verlag, Nowawes 1937.
• Ernst Ludwig Heuss, Friedrich Koehler, Hans Vogt: The shoe management: Distribution and pricing . Verlag Schuh und Leder, Berlin 1942.
• Ernst Ludwig Heuss (Ed.), Theodor Heuss: The great speeches , 1965.
• Walter Bauer: In memory of Ernst Ludwig Heuss: August 5, 1910 to February 14, 1967 . Lörrach, 1967. Funeral speech by Dr. Walter Bauer, Fulda, on February 17, 1967 in Loerrach on the occasion of the funeral of Ernst Ludwig Heuss. Bauer was a founding member of the "Hilfswerk July 20, 1944" (later one of the three managing directors of the resulting July 20, 1944 foundation ) and since 1960 chairman of the advisory board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

References and comments

1. ↑ Foundation President Theodor Heuss House Archive Link ( Memento of 28 September 2007 at the Internet Archive )
2. ^ Eva Rademacher: Lulu von Strauss and Torney and Theodor Heuss. On the 30th year of the poet's death ; ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) 1986
3. ↑ Michael Kölch: Theory and Practice of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Berlin 1920–1935 . Dissertation, Department of Human Medicine, Free University of Berlin , Chapter 5, p. 398 (pdf; 337 kB)
4. ↑ Internationale Frauenbegegnungsstätte Ravensbrück, Förderverein eV (Hrsg.): Christian women resisting National Socialism: Prisoners in the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück from 1939 to 1945; Brochure accompanying the exhibition at the Ravensbrück Memorial in 1998/99 . More-Verlag, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-87554-336-X . Review by Margit Eckholt ( memento from January 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) with the note: “Only at the request of Dr. Ernst Ludwig Heuss they [Hanna Solf and Lagi Countess Ballestrem] were released in April 1945 shortly before their trial in Berlin. "
5. ↑ Sigrid Grabner , Hendrik Röder (ed.): Emmi Bonhoeffer: Moving testimony of a courageous life . Series rororo Sachbuch, vol. 62164, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg, 2006, ISBN 3-499-62164-9 . (Quote on the website of "Berlin Story") ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Theodor Heuss, Konrad Adenauer: Our fatherland benefit. The correspondence ; Siedler Verlag, Berlin, 1989, ISBN 3-88680-319-8 . Note p. 372
7. ↑ Ludwig Theodor Heuss: Living with a Monument , Die Zeit , April 18, 2013
8. ↑ Federal Archives, Findmittelinfo Theodor Heuss ( Memento from May 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
9. ^ Died: Ernst Ludwig Heuss , Der Spiegel 9/1967, February 20, 1967

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Ludwig Heuss in the catalog of the German National Library
• German Photo Library : Portrait of Ernst Ludwig Heuss