Harald Poelchau

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Dorothee and Harald Poelchau
Berlin memorial plaque on the house at Afrikanische Strasse 140b, in Berlin-Wedding
Memorial plaque on the Tegel correctional facility , in Berlin-Tegel

Harald Poelchau (born October 5, 1903 in Potsdam , † April 29, 1972 in Berlin ) was a German prison pastor , religious socialist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Harald Poelchau grew up as the son of Harald (1866–1938) and Elisabeth Poelchau (née Riem, 1871–1945) in the Silesian town of Brauchitschdorf (today the district of Chróstnik von Lüben ). His father was a Protestant pastor in the small town . By attending the secondary school in Liegnitz , where he took part in student Bible circles and was involved in the free German youth in the Bund , he turned away from a village-conservative piety. After graduating from high school in 1921, he studied Protestant theology in Bethel , Tübingen and Marburg from 1922 . In Tübingen he was secretary of the King's Federation . Paul Tillich , who taught in Marburg in 1924 , left a lasting mark on him in the direction of religious socialism and became a lifelong friend. As a student trainee at Bosch in Stuttgart , he gained an insight into the industrial world of work. After the first theological exam in Breslau in 1927 , he studied welfare and state welfare policy at the German University of Politics in Berlin.

In Tübingen, Harald Poelchau met the librarian Dorothee Ziegele (1902–1977). The couple married in 1928, lived in Berlin and had a large circle of friends who were to prove themselves even after the handover of power to the National Socialists . Poelchau was the managing director of the German Association for Juvenile Courts and Judicial Assistance in Berlin and Paul Tillich's assistant in Frankfurt / Main . In 1931 he passed his second state examination in Berlin and received his doctorate from Tillich in Frankfurt / Main on the subject of the socio-philosophical views of German welfare legislation. The book was published in 1932 as the book The Human Image of Welfare Law: An Ethical-Sociological Investigation.

Harald Poelchau applied for a job as a prison chaplain at the end of 1932 and took up his position on April 1, 1933 as the first cleric appointed by the Nazi regime in a penal institution. The judicial officer worked at the Tegel prison in Berlin as well as at various other prisons such as Plötzensee and Moabit . Set against the Nazis from the start, he did not join the Confessing Church . In 1938 his son, also baptized Harald, was born. With the beginning of World War II in 1939, the death penalties against opposition members increased. By 1945 Poelchau was supposed to accompany around a thousand people to the execution .

The pastor secretly smuggled letters and messages into and out of prison. The deportation of Jews from Germany began in October 1941 . Harald Poelchau knew early on that only an escape underground would bring salvation. The refugees should call him in his Tegel office and only talk if he answered with the code word "Tegel". The actual conversation took place in his office, which was only accessible through a number of locked doors. With the support of his wife Dorothee Poelchau, he arranged accommodation among his large circle of friends. These included Gertie Siemsen , a long-time friend from university days, Willi Kranz, canteen leaseholder of the Tegel and Plötzensee prisons, and his partner Auguste Leißner, Hermann Sietmann and Otto Horstmeier, two former political prisoners, the Reinhold and Hildegard Schneider couple, who were in welfare and The pastor's wife Agnes Wendland and her daughter Ruth, the prison doctor Hilde Westrick and the physicist Carl-Friedrich Weiss and his wife Hildegard worked in the school area.

Only a few of those supported are known by name. The Breslau couple Manfred and Margarete Latte with their son Konrad turned to Harald Poelchau in March 1943. He found accommodation for all three. Contact to Ruth Andreas-Friedrich came about through Konrad Latte . The co-founder of the resistance group, Uncle Emil, and the priest now worked together. The Gestapo captured the Latte family in October 1943. Manfred and Margarete Latte were deported to Auschwitz , Konrad Latte fled the Grosse Hamburger Strasse assembly camp and went into hiding again. The siblings Rita and Ralph Neumann, who have been hiding with Agnes Wendland since mid-1943, work as bicycle couriers for Poelchau. Those arrested in February 1945 managed to escape from the deportation camp at Große Hamburger Strasse in Poelchau.

Other people whom Harald Poelchau helped are Leontine Cohn and her daughter Rita, Ilse Schwarz and her daughter Evelyne, Ursula Reuber, Anna Drach, Edith Bruck, Charlotte Paech and Charlotte Bischoff. Since 1941 he was part of the circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and also took part in the first meeting of the Kreisau Circle resistance group . After the attempted coup on July 20, 1944 , the prison chaplain looked after many of those involved in the assassination attempt. Harald Poelchau's extensive opposition work remained undiscovered until the end of the war.

tomb

Together with Eugen Gerstenmaier , he set up the aid organization of the Evangelical Churches in Stuttgart in 1945 and became its general secretary. Back in Berlin in 1946, Poelchau was involved in the prison system of the Central Justice Administration in the Soviet occupation zone . This was connected with a teaching position for criminology and prison studies at the Humboldt University . In addition to Ottomar Geschke and Heinrich Grüber , he sat on the central board of the association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime for the Soviet occupation zone. When Poelchau was unable to enforce his ideas, he went to the West. From 1949 to 1951 he was again prison pastor in Berlin-Tegel. In 1951, Bishop Otto Dibelius appointed him the first social and industrial pastor of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg. Harald Poelchau dedicated himself to this task until his death in 1972.

Honors

S-Bahn station Poelchaustraße

Works

  • Harald Poelchau: The last hours: memories of a prison pastor. Recorded by Count Alexander Stenbock-Fermor . 3. Edition. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-353-00096-8 (first edition 1949).
  • Werner Maser , Harald Poelchau: The man who died a thousand deaths . Pabel-Moewig Verlag, Rastatt 1986, ISBN 3-8118-4361-3 .
  • Werner Maser, Harald Poelchau: Pastor at the scaffold of the Nazis: The authentic report of the man who accompanied over 1000 victims of the Hitler regime on their way to the executioner . 1st edition. Pabel-Moewig Verlag, Rastatt 1982, ISBN 3-8118-3155-0 (original edition).
  • Harald Poelchau: The order of the oppressed: autobiographical and contemporary history since the twenties . Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 1963, ISBN 3-933471-50-8 (new edition).
  • Harald Poelchau: The human image of the right to care: An ethical-sociological investigation . Protte-Verlag, Potsdam 1932 (book edition of his dissertation from 1931).

literature

Web links

Commons : Harald Poelchau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Franz v. Hammerstein :  Poelchau, Harald. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 561 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Harald Poelchau (born 1903 - died 1972). In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center . German Resistance Memorial Center , accessed on February 19, 2014 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Poelchaustraße. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  4. ↑ Who was Harald Poelchau? ( Memento from July 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ a b c d GDW: Harald Poelchau
  6. ↑ GND 118595318 German National Library
  7. ↑ a b c Johannes Tuchel (editor): Request “Tegel”. In: Silent Heroes Memorial Center - Resistance to the persecution of the Jews 1933–1945. 2nd Edition. Silent Heroes Memorial at the Foundation German Resistance Memorial Center , Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-926082-36-7 (hardcover), pp 17-18. Digital edition in: Silent Heroes Memorial Center , URL: Request “Tegel”.
  8. ^ Ulrich Schneider : What did the founding generation of the VVN want and what did? In: vvn-bda.de. Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten e. V., accessed on February 24, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Poelchau Family. In: yadvashem.org. Yad Vashem - The Authority to Commemorate the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, accessed February 19, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Poelchau High School. District Office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf of Berlin, accessed on February 24, 2014 .
  11. ^ Sports school in the Olympiapark - Poelchau School
  12. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of August 2013). (PDF; 445 kB) Poelchau, Dr. Harald. Senate Department for Urban Development and the Environment, August 1, 2013, p. 65 , accessed on February 24, 2014 .
  13. ^ Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets (10001) - (15000). (10348) Poelchau. In: minorplanetcenter.net . International Astronomical Union , February 18, 2014, accessed February 24, 2014 .
  14. ↑ Awarding of the International Human Rights Prize: Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Medal. (No longer available online.) International Society for Human Rights, archived from the original on October 14, 2016 ; accessed on January 25, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Handover of the Poelchau memorial column in Marzahn . Press release of the Marzahn-Hellersdorf District Office from August 28, 2017
  16. ↑ Stele commemorates the Poelchau New Germany , September 19, 2017
  17. ↑ Memorial for resistance fighter Harald Poelchau inaugurated press release
personal data
SURNAME Poelchau, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman, German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH October 5, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Potsdam
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1972
Place of death Berlin