Hans Westermann

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Hans Westermann (born July 17, 1890 in Hamburg ; † March 16, 1935 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp ) was a communist politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Hans Westermann, Ehrenhain Ohlsdorf
Stumbling Stone Dammtorstrasse 20
Stumbling
Stone Rathausmarkt 1

The trained tailor Westermann joined the SPD in 1910 , where he belonged to the left wing of the party and took on various honorary functions. In 1914, the war opponent was drafted into the navy, during which time he sympathized with the Spartakusbund and the USPD . In November 1918 he was elected as a delegate of the minesweeping flotilla to the Kiel Marinerat and joined the KPD in 1919, where he became full-time party secretary in Hamburg in 1921 and was primarily responsible for works council work.

In 1925 Westermann was expelled from the party at short notice because, for tactical reasons (preventing the election of the right-wing candidate Hindenburg ) in the 1925 presidential election in the second ballot, he had voted in favor of renouncing Ernst Thalmann's candidacy in favor of the Social Democrat Otto Braun . After the removal of the ultra-left leadership around Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow , he was re-accepted into the party and in 1927 elected to the district leadership of the KPD and a little later to the Hamburg parliament. Westermann, who is known as a trade union expert in the KPD , was part of the movement of the Compromisers within the party and took a position against the intensification of the renewed ultra-left and verbally radical course of the party leadership around Ernst Thälmann, especially with regard to trade union policy and the associated promotion of RGO policy . Westermann was also one of those within the party who campaigned for closer and more solidarity-based cooperation with the SPD. For these reasons he was expelled from the KPD in 1930 together with his parliamentary colleagues Heinrich Stahmer and Albert Sanneck . Westermann now resigned his mandate, unlike Stahmer, however, he did not join the SPD and later the SAP , but together with his partner Käthe Latzke founded an independent and nameless "Compromising organization" in Hamburg , sometimes called the Westermann group .

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP in 1933, Westermann's group completely switched to working in illegality . One focus was on operational work, here the group had branch groups including dock workers, shipyard workers and employees. Westermann, who was imprisoned between June 1933 and August 1934, after his release from prison kept in contact with other "Compromising Groups" inside and outside the KPD, such as the Committee for Proletarian Unity around Eduard Wald . At the same time, his relations with the KPD improved, into which he and his group were resumed in early 1935. After he had started to reorganize the Hamburg party organization, which had been weakened by repression by the Gestapo , he and several group members were arrested shortly afterwards on the night of March 5th and 6th and murdered a few days later in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp.

Honors

In the honor grove of Hamburg resistance fighters at the Hamburg cemetery in Ohlsdorf there is a pillow stone in honor of Hans Westermann (fourth row from the left, ninth stone).

In front of Westermann's last home address, Dammtorstrasse 20 in Hamburg-Neustadt , a stumbling block reminds of him.
On June 8, 2012, stumbling blocks were laid in front of Hamburg City Hall for the murdered members of the Hamburg Parliament, including Hans Westermann.

literature

  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( bundesstiftung-aufteilung.de [accessed on January 7, 2013]).
  • Ludwig Eiber : Workers and labor movement in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg in the years 1929 to 1939. Shipyard workers, dock workers and seamen. Conformity, opposition, resistance. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-31727-1 .
  • Stefanie Harrecker: Graduated doctors. The revocation of the doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich during the Nazi era. Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8316-0691-7 (on Franz Zorell).
  • Jörn Lindner, Frank Müller: Members of the citizenship. Victim of totalitarian persecution. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Published by the citizens of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Hamburg 2012, DNB 1023694999 , pp. 87-89.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stumbling blocks for murdered MdHB final inscriptions City Hall Hamburg (PDF; 16 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Westermann, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Westermann, Hans Heinrich Emil Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD, KPD), Member of the Bundestag and anti-fascist resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1935
Place of death Hamburg