Franz Bode

This article deals with the resistance fighter Franz Bode. For the bishop see Franz-Josef Bode .

Franz Bode (born June 28, 1903 in Berlin-Mariendorf ; † January 8, 1940 in Berlin ) was a German communist, worker and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Franz Bode was born as the second son of the painter Franz Bode and his wife Frieda Bode (née Lowinski, 1879–1967) in Mariendorf. Three siblings followed after him. The family lived first at Kaiserstraße 110 and later in the 1920s at Kurfürstenstraße 73. The father died in World War I in 1916 and his mother had to raise the five children alone. Due to the economic hardship and inflation after the end of the war, he was unable to learn a trade. In 1927 he married his wife Paula in Berlin-Tempelhof .

As an unskilled worker, he became active in the organized labor movement and became a member of the KPD , which is why he lost his job several times. At the beginning of the 1930s he moved to Schützenstrasse 26 and temporarily lived at Richterstrasse 48. In 1933 he worked as a blueprint and in that year his daughter Sonja was born.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he was arrested for the first time in September 1933 for illegal activity for the KPD and he was held in the Columbiahaus concentration camp . There he was so badly mistreated that his right ear became deaf. He was released after 15 weeks and continued to be active in the anti-fascist resistance.

In September 1934 a liaison man was arrested by treason in Berlin-Lichtenrade who, after being tortured, betrayed a planned meeting with Bode. Since it was no longer possible to warn him, he was arrested for the second time. In order to force him to testify, he was again ill-treated in detention.

In January 1935, his wife managed to visit him two days before his trial. According to you, Franz Bode was not able to speak a coherent sentence.

On January 31, 1935, he and three co-defendants were sentenced to prison and in October 1936 released from Luckau prison as a seriously ill man .

After he was released, he had to report to the Gestapo regularly and was unable to find a job. The employment office rejected his placement and through intervention by the Gestapo he quickly lost a job he had found at Fritz Werner Werkzeugmaschinen AG in Berlin-Marienfelde .

After that he was unemployed for a long time until he got a job at the Wohlmut company in 1939 through the mediation of Herbert Richter-Luckian (sentenced to death in 1944). He died in Berlin in 1940 as a result of injuries sustained from torture while in custody.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Remember, and don't forget: Documentation on the memorial book for the victims of National Socialism from the Tempelhof district, Edition Hentrich, 1988 (pages 20–21)