Hannelore Willbrandt

Hannelore Willbrandt around 1945

Hannelore Willbrandt (married Sieber, then Ploog) (born September 21, 1923 in Hamburg ; † February 10, 2003 in Schöneiche near Berlin ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and was involved in the actions of the White Rose Hamburg .

Life

Origin and education

Hannelore Willbrandt grew up with two older siblings in a social democratic home. Her parents were Wilhelm Willbrandt and Johanna geb. Bertholet. The father was an office clerk at the Hamburg-American Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) and worked as an accountant. Willbrandt was baptized Protestant in the St. Pauli Church . She began school in 1930 at Anna Kraut's secondary school for girls in Annenstrasse and finished it in 1940 at the superstructure of the Marienthaler Strasse girls' school with a secondary school leaving certificate.

After school, Willbrandt began an apprenticeship as a bookstore assistant in the Hamburg bookstore Conrad Kloss in Dammtorstrasse 1. Because of good performance, her Kloss gave her the last six months, so she finished her apprenticeship on September 30, 1942. Then she worked in the scientific department of Bookstore.

From April 1, 1943 to the end of September, Willbrandt had to do the Reich Labor Service in the Kropp camp in the Schleswig district as a maid in the farmer's aid. In order not to have to work in the armaments industry, Willbrandt stated that he wanted to study medicine after completing the Reich Labor Service, and that is probably why he was doing military service in the Hamburg alternative hospital Rickling near Neumünster as a helper in the kitchen. She lived with her parents in Barmbek-Süd , the apartment was destroyed in the British air raids from July 24th to August 3rd, 1943.

Illegal resistance

In a large circle of friends, Hannelore Willbrandt resisted National Socialism, the group was later referred to as the " White Rose Hamburg " (see people from the White Rose Hamburg ).

The social democratic parents and critical teachers had brought Hannelore Willbrandt into opposition to the ruling regime. She took part in the weekly discussion group held by her drawing teacher Albert Feser on art and literature, which also dealt with prohibited and undesirable works. Her class teacher, Henry Kroeger, had also kept his humanistic outlook and looked after the students far beyond his actual duties. Every year he organized a 14-day class hike to different areas of Germany and familiarized the students with monuments of German culture.

During her work at the beginning of the 1940s, first as an apprentice, then as a bookstore assistant in the Kloss bookstore, Willbrandt established numerous contacts between various people and groups opposing the Nazi regime.

In the summer of 1942 Willbrandt met the students Margaretha Rothe and Heinz Kucharski as customers in the bookstore, as did the student Howard Beinhoff . Willbrandt got to know the medical student Albert Suhr through his classmate at the college for bookseller apprentices, Gisela Schneider, who worked as an apprentice in the Commeter art shop . Willbrandt became friends with him - as well as with Rothe and Kucharski, after they were sure of their political aversions to National Socialism. Willbrandt introduced Rothe, Kucharski and Suhr to each other in their parents' apartment. Rothe and Kucharski had temporarily attended the Lichtwark School together and belonged to the reading group around their teacher Erna Stahl , which also included Traute Lafrenz and Lotte Canepa . Karl Ludwig Schneider and Howard Beinhoff were also Lichtwark students, but went to a different class and had different teachers.

Suhr had attended Wilhelm-Gymnasium together with Reinhold Meyer and was very close friends with him. During his studies he got to know anti-fascist students and doctors at the University Hospital Eppendorf (UKE). This included the assistant doctor Ursula de Boor , who worked for Rudolf Degkwitz senior . at the children's clinic in the UKE, the medical student Rudolf Degkwitz jun. , the assistant doctor Eva von Dumreicher-Heiligtag , the assistant doctors in surgery at the UKE John Gluck and Heinz Lord and the medical student Friedrich Geussenhainer .

The prisoner-of-war Serbian doctor Dr. Singer, who was allowed to buy books under military supervision, slipped Willbrandt a small volume with Serbian poems. During another visit Singer secretly handed her a letter in which he described his life and assured that the Yugoslavs love all nations. Willbrandt discussed this letter with Kucharski and Rothe and replied to it in a letter “... I agree with Sophocles ' Antigone , 'Not to be hated, I am there to love…'”, which she slipped Singer when he went shopping.

From then on, Willbrandt, Rothe, Kucharski, Suhr and Beinhoff met more often and exchanged thoughts on political issues of the day and the military situation. Philosophical, artistic and literary topics were discussed. They asked themselves: what can we do? or: What should the future look like? The meetings took place in Willbrandt's apartment; After the bombings in the summer of 1943 , the friends met in the basement of the Agentur des Rauhen Haus bookstore on Jungfernstieg, whose junior boss was Meyer. Lafrenz brought the fall of 1942, when she at Hamburg Women's Hospital Finkenau famulierte , the third leaflet of the White Rose from Munich to Hamburg. Willbrandt and Suhr wrote the leaflet and the poem Marschliedchen ("You and stupidity pulls in rows of four") from Erich Kästner and distributed the copies.

Persecution and Liberation

On December 18, 1943 Hannelore Willbrandt was when plucking the Christmas goose from the auxiliary military service in the Hamburg alternative hospital Rickling in Neumünster from the Gestapo arrested, initially it was in the police prison Neumünster and on December 25, 1943 in the prison Gestapo Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel spent. After ten months of solitary confinement, she and 18 other members of the White Rose Hamburg were taken to the Hamburg-Stadt remand prison on Holstenglacis. On November 6, 1944, she was transferred to the People's Court as a prisoner on remand and at the beginning of November, initially with eight women, to the Cottbus women's penitentiary , and later to the St. Georgen penitentiary in Bayreuth via the Leipzig-Kleinmeusdorf prison. Through the imprisonment and the transports Willbrandt also got to know resistance women from other groups and areas, e. B. Ilse Schaeffer , Elfriede Paul and Cilly Bode .

The indictment was made of preparation for high treason , favoring the enemy , degrading military strength and radio crime in the proceedings against Albert Suhr, Hannelore Willbrandt, Ursula de Boor , Wilhelm Stoldt and Felix Jud . The trial was to be carried out in Bayreuth, as the People's Court building in Berlin had been destroyed by Allied bombing on February 3, 1945. Willbrandt and the other women of the White Rose Hamburg were liberated by the US Army in Bayreuth on April 14, 1945 , while the People's Court in Hamburg was still negotiating against members of the White Rose on April 20, 1945.

Life in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR

After the liberation, Hannelore Willbrandt met Ernst Sieber , who, as a member of the Red Orchestra in Bayreuth, was also waiting for the People's Court trial. Sieber founded the KPD with Willbrandt and other prisoners on May 1, 1945 in Bayreuth, although it was banned by the American allies. Willbrandt joined the KPD in July 1945 (from 1946 SED). She went with Sieber to her parents' home in Hamburg on June 17, 1945. At the end of June both of them passed the " green border " near Lauenburg on their way to Berlin . They married in August 1945; In 1946 a child was born. On March 29, 1946, they moved into their first own apartment in the American sector , in Zehlendorf . Because of the progressive division of Berlin, the Sieber family moved to the Soviet sector in Weissensee in August 1947 . The marriage was divorced in 1951, Hannelore Sieber-Willbrandt later married Arthur Ploog ; Another child was born in 1952.

Willbrandt continued to live in the GDR . She worked for the Volk und Wissen publishing house for many years . Until the end of 1949 she was the editor and chief editor of the magazines ABC-Zeitung and Die Schulpost . From 1 January 1950, she served as Head of Biology for the publication of textbooks and teaching materials for the subject Biology, from May 1952 she was editor of the magazine teachers biology in school . On the publisher's side, she supervised and edited both Erwin Stresemann's excursion fauna (1955) and Werner Rothmaler's excursion flora (1959).

In 1975 Ploog-Willbrandt received his doctorate with the subject “On ideological and philosophical problems in Aldous Huxley's utopia 'Brave New World'” at the Humboldt University in Berlin; the scientific advisor was Hermann Ley . The dissertation was the basis of her book Im Netz der Manipulierung - Aldous Huxley and his 'Brave New World' , which appeared in both German states at the same time.

From 1977 until her retirement, Ploog-Willbrandt was a research assistant at the Central Institute for Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . Volunteering, she led the Commission to explore the history of the local anti-fascist resistance struggle by the Regional Committee Weissensee of the Committee of the antifascist resistance fighters tables of the German Democratic Republic .

Awards

• 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• 1960 Dr. Theodor Neubauer Medal in bronze
• 1966 Silver Pestalozzi Medal for faithful service
• 1976 Gold Pestalozzi Medal for faithful service
• 1978 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze

Fonts

• ... and Heiner is there too. The children's book publisher, Berlin 1951, Ursula Baer (pseudonym for Hannelore Sieber and Ulla Hengst).
• In the network of manipulation - Aldous Huxley and his "Brave New World". Academy, Berlin 1979 / Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-88012-510-4 .
• The illegal struggle of the KPD 1933-1945 in Berlin-Weißensee. Berlin 1980.

literature

• Angela Bottin: Tight time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg . Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3 .
• Hendrik van den Bussche : The Hamburg University Medicine under National Socialism , here: Angela Bottin and Hendrik van den Bussche: 7.3 Opposition to the regime and persecution in medical and student “circles” of Eppendorf. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, Hamburg, 2014, p. 367 ff.
• Herbert Diercks : Freedom lives. Resistance and persecution in Hamburg 1933–1945. Texts, photos and documents. Published by the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name in the Hamburg City Hall from January 22 to February 14, 2010.
• Ursel Hochmuth : Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday ; Editor: Association of Antifascists and Persecuted Persons of the Nazi Regime Hamburg e. V., Hamburg 1971.
• Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1980, reprint of the 1969 edition, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 .
• Helmut Scaruppe: My island dream . Childhood and youth in the Hitler Reich. Self-published, 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0732-X , pp. 47, 90.
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 .

Web links

• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center
• Flyer of the White Rose III. Transcription at the Federal Agency for Civic Education

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center .
2. ↑ Helmut Scaruppe: My island dream . Childhood and youth in the Hitler Reich. Self-published, 2003, ISBN 3-8330-0732-X , p. 47.
3. ^ Cornelia Göksu: Short biography Hannelore Willbrandt; for Hamburg.de / Authority for Schools and Vocational Training , accessed on August 4, 2017
4. ^ Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt 1969, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , p. 80 f.
5. ↑ He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer , conversation with Anneliese Tuchel, Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg, Hamburg, 1994, p. 17.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Ursel Hochmuth : Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday. Editor: Association of Antifascists and Persecuted Persons of the Nazi Regime Hamburg e. V., Hamburg 1971. p. 12 ff.
7. ^ Angela Bottin, Hendrik van den Bussche: Opposition to the regime and persecution in medical and student "circles" of Eppendorf. In: Hendrik van den Bussche: The Hamburg University Medicine in National Socialism. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, Hamburg 2014, p. 367 ff.
8. ^ Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt 1969, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , p. 393.
9. ^ Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt 1969, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , p. 395 ff. See the reprint of the poem Marschliedchen at Gedichte.vu.
10. ^ Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt 1969, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , p. 420.
11. ^ ^{A b} Alfred Gottwaldt: Railway Workers Against Hitler - Resistance and Persecution on the Reichsbahn 1933–1945. Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-204-6 , pp. 277 ff.
12. ↑ Erwin Stresemann (ed.): Excursions fauna of Germany (complete works). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1957–1969.
13. ↑ Werner Rothmaler (Ed.): Exkursionsflora (complete works). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1959–1963.
14. ↑ Hannelore Ploog: In the network of manipulation - Aldous Huxley and his "Brave New World". Akademie, Berlin 1979 / Marxistische Blätter, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-88012-510-4 , back cover.
15. ↑ Hannelore Ploog (co-author): The illegal struggle of the KPD 1933–1945 in Berlin-Weißensee , p. 1 f.