Fritz Gumpert

Fritz Gumpert (born November 6, 1892 in Triptis (Thuringia); died April 23, 1933 Königstein - Halbestadt ) was a German worker and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Fritz Gumpert grew up as the only child of his parents in difficult social conditions. The family owned a small farm and the father also worked as a shoemaker. In 1913 Gumpert moved to Heidenau to work in a cellulose factory. The following year he was drafted and took part in the First World War until the end. He was released there in 1923 after participating in a strike for higher wages. In November 1924 he found work again, now at Seidel & Naumann , where he worked as a worker until 1931.

During the years of the Weimar Republic , Gumpert organized himself into the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Red Front Fighter League (RFB). Until the RFB was banned in 1929, he was chairman of the local division in Heidenau and then illegally involved in anti-fascist action . It is also said that he headed the Antifa committee in Heidenau. After the handover of power to the NSDAP and its allies, he fell victim to the first waves of arrests in March 1933. He was first taken to the detention center of the regional court on Münchner Platz in Dresden, held in the "provisional" Hohnstein concentration camp , a confiscated youth castle, and later deported to the Königstein-Halbestadt concentration camp, a confiscated house of nature lovers on the banks of the Elbe. Here he was "literally trampled to death" on April 23, 1933 by SA troop leader Walter Biener, a member of the camp management.

The transfer of the deceased to his place of residence in Heidenau, for which Heidenau workers collected money, took place with the condition that the coffin was not allowed to be opened. In the cemetery hall in Heidenau, the father opened it nonetheless, stated the obvious torture, Rudolf Nesajda , chairman of the workers' photography group in Heidenau, took 16 photographs of evidence. He handed them over to the resistance fighter and mountaineer Kurt Hartmann , who brought them to the CSR together with testimonies . The recordings were later published in the now illegal Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) and in the Brown Book about the Reichstag fire and Hitler terror . According to a testimony, Gumpert's abdomen was completely bruised and trampled over, so that the entrails were partially visible. Imprints of boot heels were also found. He and his wife left five children. At Gumpert's funeral in the cemetery in Heidenau-Süd, it is said that "around three thousand workers" had appeared. The actual funeral took place in the smallest family circle, as the police and SA had blocked off the access to the grave with a large number and drove the crowd in front of the cemetery entrance. In the Pirnaer Zeitung there was talk of "spreading false rumors about the death of communist G.". The Prussian Ministry of the Interior was so concerned that it prescribed the local authorities to ban burials "of a demonstrative nature" in future.

An author "Peter Conrad", the pseudonym of Anna Seghers , addressed the crime of Gumpert as early as 1933 in a collective publication of "Reports from the Third Reich" ( Murder in Hohenstein Camp ), which was published in Moscow by the publishing cooperative of foreign workers in the USSR . Seghers intended to contribute to an unrealized collection of around 40 to 50 life pictures of Nazi murder victims. In literary studies, the report is seen as a preparatory work for the novel The Seventh Cross .

In March 1949, the Dresden Regional Court sentenced Walter Biener to death for crimes against humanity . According to the verdict, Biener was the main culprit in the murder of Gumpert and involved in the torture and abuse of other Nazi opponents. The civil engineer Biener, born in 1912, joined the NSDAP and the SA in 1931. As an SA troop leader from March to May 1933, he was a member of the guards and the camp management of the Königstein-Halbestadt concentration camp. The death sentence was not carried out; Biener was released from prison in late 1955 as part of a broad-based amnesty.

Commemoration

In the GDR, the Heidenau long-distance gas works of the VEB Energiekombinat Dresden, the joint company holiday home and children's holiday camp of the United Paper Mills Heidenau and the VEB Zellstoffwerk Philipp Müller in Coswig were given the name "Fritz Gumpert". With the end of the GDR, the porter companies and their vacation home went under, so that the name disappeared. The city of Heidenau named a place after him at an unknown time. In 2004, on January 27, she dedicated the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism to him . At the Naturfreundehaus in Königstein-Halbestadt , a memorial stone of the Fédération Internationale des Résistants (FIR), the international umbrella organization of associations of anti-fascist resistance fighters, commemorates him.

literature

• Peter Conrad [= Anna Seghers], murder in the Hohenstein camp, in: Johannes R. Becher / GP Ulrich / Peter Conrad / S. Gles / Hans Scheer, murder in the Hohenstein camp. Reports from the Third Reich, Moscow 1933, pp. 25–29
• Green way 31 a. Journal of the study archive for workers' culture and ecology, Baunatal, vol. 16, 2003
• Yearbook for research on the history of the labor movement, Berlin 2007
• Michael Klein, "Dense Description". An ethnography of modalities, figurations and interrelationships of violence, in: ders. (Ed.), Violence - interdisciplinary, Münster 2002, pp. 133–172
• Ulrike Puvogel / Martin Stankowski, memorials for the victims of National Socialism: Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia. A documentation (published by the Federal Agency for Civic Education), Bonn 1999
• SED Kreisleitung Pirna, Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement (ed.), Chronicle 1933–1945, Pirna / Sebnitz 1983
• SED district leadership Pirna, Commission for research into the history of the local labor movement (ed.), Cenotaphs, memorials, memorials and memorials of the labor movement and the anti-fascist resistance struggle in the Pirna district, Pirna 1984, 2nd ed.
• Alexander Stephan, Anna Seghers: The seventh cross. World and Effects of a Novel, Berlin 1997
• World Committee for the Victims of German Fascism (Ed.), Brown Book on Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror, Basel 1933 [p. 320-321]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} cenotaphs, memorials, memorials and memorials of the labor movement and the anti-fascist resistance struggle in the Pirna district. 2nd revised edition, 1984. (PDF) SED, Kreisleitung Pirna, Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement, 1984, p. 43 , accessed on August 18, 2016 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} With the courage of despair. Today the victims of National Socialism are commemorated in Heidenau. In: Saxon newspaper. Action civil courage, January 27, 2004, accessed on August 18, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Grüner Weg 31 a. Journal of the study archive for workers' culture and ecology, Baunatal, vol. 16, 2003, p. 31.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Norbert Flörken: Heidenau - his story. December 6, 2011, accessed on February 28, 2018 (first abbreviated in General-Anzeiger Bonn, Siegburg edition, 1990). 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Memorial places in Europe: Heidenau: Fritz-Gumpert-Platz with memorial stone. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 18, 2016 ; accessed on August 18, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ On Rudolf Nesajda and Kurt Hartmann mentioned below: Wolfgang Hesse, Körper undzeichen. Worker photographs from Dohna, Heidenau and Johanngeorgenstadt 1932/33 (elements from the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore, Vol. 24), Dresden 2013.
7. ↑ SED-Kreisleitung Pirna, Commission for Research into the History of the Local Workers' Movement (ed.), Chronik 1933–1945, Pirna / Sebnitz 1983, unpag., See: [1] .
8. ↑ Testimony contained in: Judgment of the Dresden Regional Court of March 19, 1949, Az .: StKs16 / 48 1.gr.23 / 48; Printed in: Christiaan F. Rüter (edit.): GDR justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of East German convictions for Nazi homicide crimes. Volume 9: The proceedings no. 1456–1522 from 1948 and 1949. Amsterdam University Press / Saur, Amsterdam / Munich 2007, ISBN 978-90-5356-719-7 , pp. 173-182, here p. 175.
9. ^ SED-Kreisleitung Pirna, Commission for Research into the History of the Local Workers' Movement (ed.), Chronik 1933–1945, Pirna / Sebnitz 1983, unpag., See: [2] .
10. ↑ Pirnaer Zeitung, March 11, 1933, based on: Günter Benser , How the Nazis in the Saxon industrial city came to power, in: Links der Elbe, No. 78, September 2011, pp. I-IV, here: pp. IIf .
11. ↑ Paul Moore, "Not even in Bismarck's time". German popular opinion and the terror against the left, in: Nikolaus Wachsmann and Sybille Steinbacher (eds.), Die Linke im Visier. On the establishment of the concentration camps in 1933 (Dachauer Symposien zur Zeitgeschichte, vol. 14), pp. 168–190, here: p. 172.
12. ↑ Deciphered the pseudonym: Brigitte Melzwig, German socialist literature 1918–1945. Bibliography of book publications (= publications of the Academy of Arts of the German Democratic Republic) Berlin (GDR) / Weimar 1975, p. 440, 443.
13. ↑ Michael Klein, "Density Description". An ethnography of modalities, figurations and interrelationships of violence, in: ders. (Ed.), Violence - interdisciplinary, Münster 2002, pp. 133–172, here: p. 153.
14. ↑ ZB: Sonja Hilzinger, Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross (Series "Explanations and Documents"), Ditzingen 2004, p. 38.
15. ^ Rüter, GDR Justice and Nazi Crimes , pp. 173 f, footnote 51.
16. ↑ Memorial sites in Europe: Königstein: Former protective custody camp Königstein-Halbestadt. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 19, 2016 ; accessed on August 18, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.