Hans Vieregg

Portrait of Hans Vieregg, 1930

Hans Vieregg (born November 26, 1911 in Hamburg as Hans Levy ; † January 4, 2005 in Suhl ) was a German communist resistance fighter , after 1945 a trade union official of the FDGB , labor director of a state- owned company (VEB) and retired as a witness and interviewee at the Voluntary political education of young people.

Live and act

In the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic

Viereggs father was the Jewish KPD - citizenship deputies and co-founder of the " Hamburger Volkszeitung " Alfred Levy , his mother, the Hamburg worker Anna Levy, born Vieregg. At the age of nine he took part in the communist children's groups. When his father had to serve a prison sentence because of his involvement in the Hamburg uprising , he worked for a farmer for a year and a half to provide accommodation and food. A stay at the MOPR home in Elgersburg , Thuringia , also took place at this time. Since 1918 he attended the reform-oriented community school Tieloh-Süd in Hamburg-Barmbek , where the reform pedagogue Wilhelm Lamszus became his teacher. He could not learn his dream job as a lithographer because of his father's origins. He then attended the vocational school for painters from 1926 and worked as a class representative and on the student council. In the meantime he had joined the union and the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). He was expelled from school because of an illegal student council meeting. For a while he worked as a shipping expedition for the Soviet- German trading company DERUTRA until it gave up its headquarters in Hamburg. Invited by the Soviet party functionary Chitasov, he was allowed to visit the Soviet Union in 1930 for a three-month stay with two colleagues . After a period of unemployment , he made a living as a newspaper acquirer .

time of the nationalsocialism

In his Barmbek apartment, Vieregg produced an illegal group of three leaflets with which they called for resistance to the National Socialist government. He also began collecting reports on the mood and assessments of the political situation, which he could write down from chance acquaintances during his travels. He passed this on to the KPD leadership in exile in Prague . Because this activity was dangerous, he followed his friends' advice to change his place of residence. He moved to the Berlin district of Wedding , where he officially registered, but actually lived under a cover address.

Because of his Jewish surname, the bearers of which were more and more endangered, he decided to take his mother's maiden name and now called himself Hans Vieregg, which he had his acquisition clients confirm on an official business sheet. If he had to identify himself to any person or body, he introduced himself as Hans Vieregg. During his business trips, which mainly took him to numerous German cities, he camouflaged his illegal situation reports to Prague with letterheads that he wrote on with secret ink .

He survived dangerous contacts with the Nazi authorities, such as a race- biological examination by an SS doctor. After the war began, he became the Wehrmacht confiscated and had the 23rd Artillery - Replacement Battalion in Potsdam-Nedlitz complete his basic training. His company commander released him from the Wehrmacht even before he was sent to the front. This was mainly due to a recently issued decree according to which not only Jews, but also so-called " half-Jews " were classified as unworthy of defense.

In addition to his professional activity, Vieregg had acquired knowledge of how to trade and exchange food cards . He also got to know traders who supplied him with tobacco products (cigars and cigarillos), with which he in turn could barter food for Jewish acquaintances and friends.

In the last years of the war he decided to take another dangerous approach, which he survived unscathed. While reading the Fallen advertisements, he became aware of the postal addresses of families who mourned a father, brother or son. He sent them postcards with the Hitler portrait and stamped the message on them: “ The name of the murderer of your husband / father / brother / son is Adolf Hitler! "

In April 1945, Vieregg was arrested in an air raid shelter by a Red Army soldier and - after he realized that he could speak Russian , he was taken to the commandant's office. There he could be helpful to the Soviet scouts by informing them about tank trenches and SS positions.

In the occupation zones and in the GDR

From 1945 onwards, Hans Levy lived in the West Berlin district of Frohnau and had a new ID issued there in the name of Hans Vieregg. After French occupation troops occupied Frohnau, which was located within the French sector of Berlin, he was arrested in a night-and-fog operation and transferred to the Tegel military prison because he had "contacts with a foreign power" (read: Red Army ) were blamed. He was only released six months later. After that he was active in relief operations for former victims of the Nazi regime . So he organized in 1946 on the zone boundary across a transport of ash urns murdered Hamburg comrades, he made various prisons and concentration camps could find. They were buried in an honorary grove in Hamburg with a large public commemoration.

Vieregg's second term of imprisonment in Tegel lasted from December 28, 1946 to March 24, 1948. Again, he was arrested on the same charges. Due to increasing public pressure and a parliamentary intervention by former Resistance fighters in the French National Assembly , Vieregg's release was forced. Since then he has taken on numerous management functions in the GDR , initially in the FDGB trade union, and later as labor director in the GDR industry, which was developing.

Hans Vieregg had been married to Helga Kraußer since 1975.

In the Federal Republic of Germany

After the political change , he moved with his wife to their hometown Suhl. He was politically organized in the Suhl base group of the interest group of former participants in the anti-fascist resistance, those persecuted by the Nazi regime and survivors ( IVVdN ) eV He gave the impetus for a large-scale school project to come to terms with persecution, resistance and forced labor in the Nazi era in Suhl which finally three schools and two high schools participate. On January 27, 1999, the city of Suhl entered Hans Vieregg in its book of honor.

Hans Vieregg died on January 4, 2005 at the age of 93.

Honors

Entry in the book of honor of the city of Suhl

media

• DVD Persecution and Resistance in the Third Reich. Heinz Koch in conversation with Hans Vieregg, Suhl 1999. Funded by the Thuringian Ministry for Science, Research and Culture, duration 75 min. Note: The DVD will soon be available from the VVN-BdA Thuringia in Weimar.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Circular 2003 of the Bredel Society
2. ↑ Circular 2006 of the Bredel Society
3. ↑ Hans Vieregg: What do the children and grandchildren who are still alive say? Thoughts on the "Reichskristallnacht" . In: Free Word . Suhl November 9, 1996, p. 22 .
4. ↑ Democratic Citizenship - Project 23/99
5. ↑ http://stadtteilgeschichten.net/handle/2339/1836