Hans Wölfel

Hans Wölfel around 1935

Johann Wilhelm Wölfel (born March 30, 1902 in Bad Hall , † July 3, 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden ) was a lawyer . He is assigned to the Catholic-motivated resistance against National Socialism .

Live and act

Hans Wölfel's father was an art and trade gardener from Untermerzbach in Lower Franconia , who had settled in Bad Hall, the mother came from Styria . From 1913 Wölfel first attended the Benedictine grammar school in Kremsmünster for two years , then his uncle Johann Wölfel, who was a pastor in the village of Ebing near Bamberg, took him in so that Wölfel could attend grammar school in Bamberg and take his Abitur there in 1922.

Then Wölfel studied law, first one semester in Munich and then in Würzburg. In Munich he became a member of the K.St.V. Ottonia Munich, in Würzburg of the K.St.V. Rheno-Frankonia, both in the KV , to which he felt a close bond until his death. As a student in Würzburg, Wölfel exerted considerable influence on the disputes over university politics at the time. Many - including Catholic - student associations had come together in the Hochschulring Deutscher Art , which was moving more and more in the National Socialist direction. As a counterpoint, Wölfel founded the Catholic Academic Association of Würzburg with like-minded people and became its second chairman. At the beginning of 1924 they went public with a large rally, the aim of this alliance was to support the Catholic worldview and to maintain a patriotic ethos without chauvinistic tendencies. Wölfel, who was also a senior at Rheno-Frankonia in the winter semester of 1924/25, fought for these goals at numerous student meetings.

In February 1925 Wölfel passed the trainee examination, in April 1929 the assessor examination and then settled in Bamberg as a lawyer. In the same year he married. His legal practice became a leading and respected law firm in both civil and criminal matters. In 1932 Wölfel became chairman of the local cartel of the Catholic associations in Bamberg. In the elections of 1932 he resolutely supported the Bavarian People's Party , the Weimar Republic and the Catholic Church and fought against National Socialism . After the " seizure of power " he had to be silent. In his work, however, his unchanged convictions were shown: He defended Bamberg citizens who had been charged with allegedly dangerous offenses before the Bamberg Special Court . He helped many people oppressed by National Socialism as far as he could.

Denunciation and execution

In July 1943, Wölfel spoke about the political situation on vacation with friends. He said the war could no longer be won and that Hitler was the greatest twist of words of all time. One of the listeners, a young woman and NSDAP member, denounced him. In the interrogations by the Gestapo , Wölfel stated that he could not agree to certain doctrines of National Socialism even now because they contradicted his Christian convictions. Wölfel was imprisoned in Berlin, tried before the People's Court and sentenced to death on May 10, 1944 for degrading military strength . On July 3, 1944, he was executed by beheading in the Brandenburg-Görden prison .

Religious belief

Not all those who stood before the People's Court and were charged with degrading military strength were sentenced to death. The execution of Wolfels must therefore be interpreted as the deliberate elimination of a man who rejected the ideology and the claim to power of National Socialism. The strength for this attitude came from his religious conviction. As a young man, Hans Wölfel had already written: Lord God, take my soul in your father's hand, shape it according to your will and free from all trinkets. Take them and strike bravely, and cut them to rock and stone, on which your faith is placed, on which lies the sea shatters - Lord God, strike! The youthful enthusiasm of this poem turned in the course of life into tireless professional work, the self-evident willingness to help everyone who needed help, into a piety that was shown in regular attendance of the church service in his home parish of St. Gangolf . A separation of private life, professional affairs and political goals was alien to him. He sought the unity of his life in the Christian faith and shaped it according to Christian principles. This enabled him to resolutely resist an unjust and anti-Christian state power.

Posthumous honors

• Friends and colleagues had a plaque put up for Hans Wölfel in the staircase of the Bamberg Higher Regional Court with the inscription: VINDEX - JURIS - PERIIT.
• A memorial plaque and a stumbling block were attached to his former home at Luitpoldstrasse 16 .
• The city of Bamberg dedicated a street on Stephansberg to him : Hans-Wölfel-Straße is a parallel street to Schellenbergerstraße.
• The city of Bamberg gave him a grave of honor .
• In the building of the Kaiser-Heinrich-Gymnasium Bamberg an honor plaque was placed for the former pupil Hans Wölfel.
• In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Hans Wölfel as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

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  Memorial plaque on Luitpoldstr. 16

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  Stolperstein on Luitpoldstrasse. 16

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  Honorary grave of Hans Wölfel in Bamberg

literature

• Judgment of the People's Court against Hans Wölfel and the reasons for the judgment. In: Günter letter , Brigitte Kaff, Hans O. Kleinmann: Persecution and resistance. Christian Democrats against Hitler. Droste, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-7700-0705-0 , pp. 177ff.
• Lothar Braun in Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 1st part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 2). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1991, ISBN 3-923621-55-8 , p. 106 f.
• Antonie Leugers: Single-handed resistance? Examples from Bamberg's church history during the Third Reich. Lecture before the Historisches Verein Bamberg together with the Studienförderverein Mainfranken Bamberg on December 16, 1994. In: Report of the Historisches Verein Bamberg. 131 (1995), pp. 439-451.
• Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century . Paderborn u. a. 1999. 7th revised and updated edition 2019. ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 . Vol. IS 112-115.
• Lothar Braun: Hans Wölfel and his political process. In: Report of the Historical Association Bamberg. 139 (2003), pp. 399-410.
• Mechthildis Bocksch (Ed.): Hans Wölfel. A Bamberg resident against National Socialism. Life and memory. Urlaub, Bamberg 2004, ISBN 3-933949-16-5 .
• Andreas Stenglein : Hans Wölfel. In: a short life story. (online at: andreas-stenglein.de )

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans Wölfel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ erzbistum-bamberg.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.