Gustav Kettel

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Gustav Kettel (born March 12, 1903 in Essen , † February 21, 1983 in Cologne ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism . He belonged to the so-called Leuschner network .

Life

Gustav Kettel learned the profession of lathe operator and worked in the lead and silver mine in Bad Ems , where he was also the chairman of the works council. He was a member of the SPD and on the board of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB) as well as in the German Metalworkers Association . In Bad Ems he took care of the “Volksbücherei” and founded a local group of the Socialist Workers' Youth . He was also active as the head of the local group of the German Peace Society in Bad Ems.

After the seizure of power, due to his political activism in his hometown of Bad Ems, he was considered a “persona non grata” and lost his job and any prospects of finding work again in the town. So in 1934 he moved back to the Ruhr area and founded a small insurance business in Essen. Later, as a sales representative, he also sold detergents and gas appliances for industrial kitchens. He began to get involved in the resistance and made contacts with anti-fascists in the German Reich and in the Netherlands. He was arrested in Saxony and sent to a concentration camp where he was mistreated. However, he managed to escape and, after an unsuccessful attempt to escape to the Netherlands, he returned to the Ruhr area, where he joined a pacifist-socialist resistance group in Dortmund.

Through the Dortmund resistance group, he joined the resistance group around Wilhelm Leuschner in 1942. In this he was involved as a courier under the code name "Camphausen" and traveled to Frankfurt am Main, Neu-Isenburg and Darmstadt, among others. From spring 1944 he prepared for the time after the planned Hitler assassination attempt. After a successful assassination attempt, he was scheduled as head of the Rhineland government district. Then Kettel went into hiding in Darmstadt to avoid being drafted into the war. Together with a partner, he founded a trading office for large kitchens there. For the allied occupying power he participated in the reconstruction of the civil administration in Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt. He then returned to Essen and continued to manage his trading account. Even after the war, his apartment in Essen remained a place where he met politically like-minded people. Until the 1960s he was the managing director of the DFG. He ran his company until 1971. Since then it has been operated as Kettel Großküche.

In the 1960s, he established a foundation to promote talented and worthy people from the pacifist environment. The foundation still exists today and continues to award scholarships.

Gustav Kettel died on February 21, 1983.

literature

  • Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin Gustav Kettel. Pacifist - socialist - resistance fighter (= Bad Emser Hefte). Association for history / monument and landscape conservation Bad Ems 1988
  • Ludger Fittkau, Marie-Christine Werner: The conspirators. The civil resistance behind July 20, 1944 . Darmstadt: wbg Theiss 2019. ISBN 978-3-8062-3893-8

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ludger Fittkau, Marie-Christine Werner: Die Konspirateure. The civil resistance behind July 20, 1944 . Darmstadt: wbg Theiss 2019. ISBN 978-3-8062-3893-8 . Pp. 48-56
  2. ↑ Axel Ulrich: July 20, 1944 attempt of a military coup and a political-social revolution. Connections to the political resistance in the Rhine-Main area . Ed .: Hessian State Center for Political Education (=  Polis . No. 23 ). Wiesbaden 1997, p. 13 ( hessen.de [PDF]).
  3. ↑ a b Ludger Fittkau, Marie-Christine Werner: The conspirators. The civil resistance behind July 20, 1944 . Pp. 62-66
  4. ^ Ludger Fittkau, Marie-Christine Werner: Die Konspirateure. The civil resistance behind July 20, 1944 . Pp. 85-89
  5. ↑ Martin Rüther, Uwe Schütz, Otto Dann, Werner Röder, Christoph Weisz: Germany in the first post-war year: reports from members of the International Socialist Combat League (ISK) from occupied Germany 1945/46 . Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-094770-0 , p. 539 ( google.de [accessed on January 8, 2020]).
  6. ↑ Official website. In: Kettel large kitchens. Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Gustav Kettel Foundation | IN THE. Retrieved January 8, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Kettel, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH eat
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1983
Place of death Cologne