Hans Deichmann

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Hans Deichmann (born September 9, 1907 in Cologne , † December 7, 2004 in Bocca di Magra , Italy ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , lawyer, entrepreneur and author who lived in Italy since 1948. In 1996 he received the Geschwister-Scholl-Prize for his memoirs / Oggetti published in 1995 .

Family and work

Hans Deichmann was born in Palais Deichmann as the second son of the Cologne private banker Carl Theodor Deichmann (grandson of Wilhelm Ludwig Deichmann ) and his wife Ada, a daughter of Paul von Schnitzler . From 1923 he attended the boarding school Deutsches Kolleg in Bad Godesberg and then studied law . He spent the summer semester of 1927 in Vienna , where he had an encounter with the pedagogue and social reformer Eugenie Schwarzwald , from whom he "[learned] everything that is needed to be a relatively free person."

At the University of Bonn doctorate Deichmann 1931 Dr. jur. After the bankruptcy of his father's bank in the same year due to the global economic crisis , he was unable to continue his legal career for economic reasons and, through the mediation of his uncle, IG Farben board member Georg von Schnitzler , initially began a commercial apprenticeship at IG Farben in Frankfurt on Main . After the National Socialists came to power , he finally gave up his actual wish to become a judge because he did not want to be part of the Nazi judiciary .

From July 1934 Deichmann worked for IG Farben in Paris for a year . From 1937 he was responsible for color sales in Italy as an authorized signatory in the Frankfurt headquarters.

His marriage to the Dutch woman Senta Fayan Vlielander Hein in Paris on July 5, 1934 resulted in a daughter and two sons.

Deichmann's younger sister Freya had been married to Helmuth James Graf von Moltke since 1931 . Hans Deichmann had connections to the Kreisau district through them .

Act as a resistance fighter

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Deichmann succeeded in finding an indispensable position for IG Farben due to his "war-important" work . In November 1940, during a private visit to his uncle Georg von Schnitzler, he witnessed a conversation he had with IG Farben board member Fritz ter Meer . Both welcomed the possible use of concentration camp prisoners in the construction of a new Buna plant in Auschwitz as a locational advantage .

In March 1942, Deichmann was chosen for its state and language skills as an agent of the "Plenipotentiary for Special Questions of chemical production in the four-year plan" (GBChem), Carl Krauch , after Rome sent to Italian construction workers to build the Upper Silesian Hydrierwerke of IG Farben and the IG Farben plant in Auschwitz. In this function Deichmann visited the IG Farben construction site at Auschwitz ten times between 1942 and 1944, the first time on March 16, 1942. During these visits, he not only observed the brutal exploitation of the concentration camp inmates, but also learned of the mass murder of the Jews . This led him to the decision to actively offer resistance and do everything possible to sabotage the German war effort .

He got the first chance to do this in July 1943. From the head of the foreign labor camp in Auschwitz, he learned about the V weapons that were being developed at the Peenemünde Army Research Center . Back in Rome, he sent this information through Italian contacts to the British, who attacked Peenemünde a week later as part of Operation Hydra , which delayed the deployment of the V1 and V2 for a full year.

Deichmann made connections to the Italian resistance movement ( Resistenza ) and worked here in particular with the group Giustizia e Libertà . Stationed in Verona since September 1943 , he continued his life-threatening activities until the liberation of northern Italy in April 1945. Since he had access to the highest German staff positions until the end, he became the most important German informant of the Resistance in northern Italy. He supported acts of sabotage and provided the Italian partisans and the Allies with important information about German troop movements and material transports.

post war period

After the end of the war, Deichmann moved to Hesse and took part in the negotiations for the unbundling of the IG Farben group. In Oberursel , he was chairman of the ruling chamber for the district of Obertaunus as part of the denazification process . Repelled by the unwillingness of most Germans to deal with National Socialist crimes, he moved back to Italy with his family in 1948, where he co-founded and partnered the import company SASEA, for which he worked in a managerial position until 1975. After the failure of his first marriage, Deichmann lived with the architect Luisa Castiglioni from 1960. He got involved in society by supporting social and cultural projects. Deichmann visited Auschwitz-Monowitz again in 1991 and wrote his autobiography, which he published in 1995 in a volume that contained both the German version (objects) and the Italian version (Oggetti) . As the title suggests, Deichmann recalls his life in loose episodes that are linked to individual objects, whereby he only speaks of himself in the third person with the abbreviation HD . In 1996 he was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl Prize for his book . Erich Kuby gave the laudatory speech .

Fonts

  • Objects / Oggetti. All'insegna del pesce d'oro di Vanni Scheiwiller, Milano 1995 (bilingual)
    • German only: objects . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag dtv, Munich 1996 ISBN 3-423-30592-4 . Autobiographical writings
    • English: Objects. A Chronicle of Subversion in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Marsilio, Venezia 1997
  • Life with Provisional Permission: The Life, Work, and Exile of Dr. Eugenie Black Forest . A chronicle by Hans Deichmann, Guthmann-Peterson-Verlag, Berlin 1988 ISBN 3-900782-02-4

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Ullrich: What it means to be a free person . The unusual chronicle of memories of Hitler's opponent and Adenauer refugee Hans Deichmann. In: The time . No. 7 , February 9, 1996, p. 15 ( zeit.de [accessed on November 10, 2014] review of Deichmann's memoirs).
  2. ^ Hans Deichmann: Auschwitz . In: Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century (Ed.): 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th Century . tape 5 , no. 3 . Volksblatt Verlag, 1990, ISSN  0930-9977 , p. 110–116, here p. 114 (online text on homepage: http://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/resolveppn/?PID=PPN884817873_0005%7CLOG_0065 [accessed on November 20, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Jürgen Schultheis: November 1940, a table talk in the family circle . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 2, 1993, p. 3.
  4. ^ The unusual life of Hans Deichmann in: Berliner Zeitung November 23, 1996
  5. ^ Wollheim Memorial biographies of leading IG employees
  6. ^ Geschwister-Scholl-Preis-1996 Hans Deichmann, laudation by Erich Kuby
personal data
SURNAME Deichmann, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 2004
Place of death Bocca di Magra