Hans Gasparitsch

Hans Gasparitsch (born March 30, 1918 in Stuttgart ; † April 13, 2002 ibid) was a German communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Hans Gasparitsch grew up as the only child of the married couple Johannes and Elisabeth Gasparitsch in 1920 on Kanonenweg 174 in Ostheim . From 1924 he attended the Ostheim primary school. He had to drop out of secondary school in Stöckach after his father could no longer pay the school fees. He had initially worked in a shoe factory and, after he had become unemployed, started his own business as a shoemaker at Rotenbergstrasse 106 in 1926, which did not bring in enough money. In 1930 and 1931 he took part in international summer camps of the socialist children's friends movement , was active in the workers' swimming club and joined a group of his own age who hiked in their free time. At home, he enjoyed a pacifist upbringing that stems from his father's experiences during World War I. Hans Gasparitsch began an apprenticeship as a typesetter in 1932 . In the same year he celebrated his youth consecration with the free thinkers.

After the National Socialists “ seize power ” , a resistance group formed in Gasparitsch's circle of friends, which had initially formed as a hiking group, led by Fritz Brütsch , alias Kolka : the Stuttgart “Group G”, which meant “community”. Among other things, leaflets against Hitler were produced and distributed by the members in 1934 . The official institutions of the labor movement and culture were already banned and confiscated at this point. In December of the same year, the head of the group, Fritz Brütsch, was arrested. But so that the political police should not realize that they had caught the main actor of Group G, they carried out a high-profile action.

Ludwig von Hofer's horse tamer

On March 14, 1935, Hans Gasparitsch, who had the code name “Micha” in Group G, wrote “Hitler = War” and “Red Front” in red on the pedestals of the Rossebändiger statues in the Lower Palace Gardens . Without realizing it, he stained his clothes with the red paint. As a result, he was convicted when he returned to the palace garden an hour after the crime to look at his work. Gasparitsch was initially interrogated repeatedly by the Gestapo in the Hotel Silber for about a year and sentenced on March 25, 1936 to two and a half years in prison on the Upper Kuhberg in Ulm . About 20 young people between the ages of 14 and 26 were convicted of preparation for high treason in this trial; a photo album in the Gasparitsch house had shown the police the trail. Gasparitsch's imprisonment was reduced to 18 months due to the previous remand. After this time, however, he was not released on October 26, 1937, as expected, but was imprisoned in various concentration camps. First he was held in " protective custody " in the Welzheim concentration camp until November 15, 1937 , and then to Dachau . From September 27, 1939 to March 2, 1940 he was in the Flossenbürg concentration camp , then again in Dachau, before he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on July 18, 1944 because of a denunciation . Fellow prisoners saved the young man from a death squad in the quarry; under Willi Bleicher he worked in the "effects room" and after most of the SS guards had fled from the approaching Americans on April 11, 1945, he and other members of the camp resistance took control of the camp before the 3rd US Army arrived. On April 19, 1945, he and other survivors took the Buchenwald oath , and in May he returned to Stuttgart, where he was engaged in denazification investigations for the American military administration until 1948 . In 1946 he married Lilly Frank. The marriage resulted in two daughters.

With other returnees, including Fritz Brütsch, he founded "The Swabian People's Youth" at the end of 1946 to overcome the causes and consequences of fascism and war. From the American military administration he received a publishing license to publish the newsletter "Free Youth". In 1947 Gasparitsch was one of the founders of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime in Southwest Germany. In the meantime, banned again, they traded as "Free Youth" and in November 1948 formed their own regional association "Baden-Württemberg", whose chairman Wolf Weitbrecht (1920–1987) was elected. But as Hans Gaspari Czech did not, sufficient for a vocational training school, he went to Jena in 1949 to the Workers 'and Peasants' Faculty and brought here in 1950, in the East , the High School of. He then studied journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig . He wrote his diploma thesis on the subject of the National Committee Free Germany . After completing his studies, he returned to Stuttgart. From 1953 to 1956 he was editor of the KPD organ “Volksstimme” in Stuttgart. After the KPD ban in 1956, the newspapers “Volksstimme” and “Badisches Volksecho” were also banned. He was unable to gain a foothold in other newspapers because of his political stance. Still committed to the goals of the KPD and published the bulletin for the district groups East and Neckarland of the illegal KPD. He earned his living with his wife Lilly in a milk shop , which had to be closed again after three years for financial reasons. In 1959 he found employment as a construction technician and, on the side, completed a distance learning course in architecture from 1960 to 1967 . He then worked as a civil engineer until he retired in 1980.

In 1960, Hans Gasparitsch, together with three other members of the resistance group, brought out the book "The Fates of Group G". It was relocated to the GDR. Gasparitsch published here under the pseudonym Fritz Kaspar. In 1994 this book was also published in the Federal Republic of Germany , supplemented by images . Here it was titled "Hanna, Kolka, Ast and others ..."

Gasparitsch organized numerous tours in the memorials Oberer Kuhberg, Dachau and Buchenwald as well as in Stuttgart. For a long time he headed the supporting association of the documentation center Oberer Kuhberg. In addition, he repeatedly visited schools and universities to report on his experiences. He was also involved in numerous anti-war and anti-armament demonstrations. In 1993 he appeared in Bonn in his concentration camp prisoner clothing from the Nazi era to demonstrate against a change in the asylum law .

On May 26, 2000 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class in recognition of his anti-fascist commitment . Hans Gasparitsch's estate is kept in the Stuttgart City Archives. He died on April 13th in Stuttgart.

literature

• Roland Müller: Hans Gaspartisch (1918-2002) - from resistance to memory work . In: Angela Borgstedt et al. (Ed.): Courage proven. Resistance biographies from the southwest, Stuttgart 2017 ( S chriften political geography of Baden-Württemberg; 46), ISBN 9783945414378 , pp 437-448.
• Christoph Leclaire and Ulrich Schneider : Hans Gasparitsch - resistance fighter and former inmate of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. Documentation for the 100th birthday , ed. from the Buchenwald-Dora camp community / Freundeskreis , Ruhr Echo Verlag , Bochum 2018, ISBN 978-3-931999-24-7 .

Web links

• biography
• Virtual historical site Hotel Silber A biographical sketch about Hans Gasparitsch
• Roland Müller: Hans Gasparitsch (1918-2002), published on April 19, 2018 in: Stadtarchiv Stuttgart, Stadtlexikon Stuttgart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Gasparitsch on www.gedenkstaettenpaedagogik-bayern.de ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. calls May instead of March  
2. ^ Fritz Kaspar: The fates of the group G. According to records and letters . Berlin, Verlag Neues Leben 1960, ² 1985.
3. ^ Fritz Kaspar: Hanna, Kolka, Ast and others. Stuttgart youth against Hitler. With a foreword by Peter Steinbach . Tübingen and Stuttgart, Silberburg Verlag 1994, ISBN 3-87407-194-4 .
4. ↑ Young people fight against the Nazi regime - eyewitness report ( memento of the original from June 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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.