Friedrich Stoffels

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Friedrich Stoffels , also Fritz Stoffels (born August 7, 1898 in Hamborn , † August 14, 1944 in the Brandenburg-Görden penal institution ) was a German Jehovah's Witness and a victim of the National Socialist martial law.

Life

Friedrich Stoffels, who comes from the Ruhr area , was active as a full-time preacher (colporteur) in the community of Bible Students ( Jehovah's Witnesses since 1931 ) since the late 1920s . Before the National Socialists came to power , the Cologne community of Jehovah's Witnesses comprised around 130 members. Together with his wife Klara , née Wichers, he took over a. the dissemination of religious scriptures and the Watchtower literature. After the final ban on the Bible Students' faith movement in June 1933, they obtained paper underground for the printing of the now banned magazine Watchtower and organized the distribution of religious writings. The Stoffels lived in an apartment on Simrockstrasse in Cologne-Ehrenfeld until 1935 .

Belvedere station: House of the Stoffels family in Müngersdorf at the end of the 1930s

After Friedrich Stoffels was no longer allowed to work as a sales representative from 1935 due to his faith, the couple moved into the old Belvedere station building on the western outskirts of Cologne, to Müngersdorf . Together with two separately operating Cologne groups of members of the religious community, they continued to be active in underground missionary work and, after the outbreak of World War II, anti-militarist. Because of their faith who refused Jehovah's Witnesses to military service .

Friedrich Stoffels was arrested in 1939 in Cologne for illegal distribution of the "Watchtower" and to three years in prison convicted. After his release, the couple went to Oberhausen . Fritz Stoffels worked here as a miner . Klara and Fritz Stoffels joined the underground group of Jehovah's Witnesses around Auguste Hetkamp and Julius Engelhard in Oberhausen . After the Gestapo discovered the group in April 1943 , Klara and Friedrich Stoffels were arrested, along with Auguste Hetkamp, ​​Julius Engelmann, Johann Hörstgen, Paul Weseler and Wilhelm Bischoff. They were imprisoned in Berlin and tried before the 6th Senate of the People's Court in 1944 .

“In terms of faith, I am and will remain a 'Jehovah's Witness'. I am completely neutral towards today's National Socialist state. H. I can only obey the laws of the state insofar as they are not in conflict with the law of God. If I z. If, for example, I was called up for military service today, I could not obey this call because the Bible says, "You shall not kill". "

- Fritz Stoffels (before the 6th Senate of the People's Court, 1944) : NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne: Cologne under National Socialism, p. 151

On June 2, 1944, Friedrich Stoffels, his wife and the co-defendants of the Jehovah's Witnesses group were sentenced to death by the People's Court for " undermining military strength " and " favoring the enemy ". The death sentence against Klara Stoffels and Auguste Hetkamp was carried out on August 11, 1944 in the Plötzensee execution site. Friedrich Stoffels and the condemned men of the group of Jehovah's Witnesses from the Ruhr and the Rhineland were on 14 August 1944 in the place of execution Brandenburg-Gorden by the guillotine executed.

Commemoration

Stumbling block for Fritz Stoffels in front of the Belvedere train station, Belvederestrasse 147 in Cologne-Müngersdorf .

As part of the art and remembrance project of the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig , two stumbling blocks were laid in memory of Fritz Stoffels and his wife Klara on January 20, 2007 in Cologne-Müngersdorf in front of the old station building of the Belvedere station.

In 2007, the life and suffering of Fritz Stoffels and his wife Klara was shown in the exhibition Steadfast Despite Persecution - Jehovah's Witnesses under the Nazi regime in the former Cologne Gestapo headquarters in the EL-DE building , today's Nazi documentation center of the city of Cologne , documented.

literature

  • Detlef Garbe : Between Resistance and Martyrdom. Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. Madison 2008.
  • Detlef Garbe: Between resistance and martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. de Gruyter, 1999.
  • Helmut Bieger: Memories of Aunt Klärchen. In: Focus on Müngersdorf. 17, winter 2010/11.
  • Historical research of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne; NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne: The Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne (1933-1945) . Cologne 2006, 40 pp.

Individual evidence

  1. Mike Lorsbach: The Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne (1933-1945). A representation of the history of persecution of the Cologne Jehovah's Witnesses on the basis of previously unpublished archive material . Ed .: Working group on the historical research of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne in cooperation with the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne. Cologne 2006, p. 24 .
  2. ^ A b c d Historical research Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne & NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne (ed.): The Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne (1933-1945). A representation of the history of persecution of the Cologne Jehovah's Witnesses on the basis of previously unpublished archive material . Cologne 2006, p. 40 .
  3. Susanne Esch: Book: From Müngersdorf to the extermination camp . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . ( ksta.de [accessed on May 20, 2018]).
  4. ^ Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne (ed.): Cologne in National Socialism . emons, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-89705-209-3 , p. 151 .
  5. stadt-koeln.de: Stumbling blocks for Jehovah's Witnesses , accessed on May 20, 2018.
  6. NS Documentation Center Cologne: Stumbling blocks for Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne. Retrieved May 20, 2018 .