Heinrich Christian Meier

Heinrich Christian Meier , pseudonym: Meier-Parm , (born April 5, 1905 in Altona , † August 30, 1987 in Hamburg ) was a German writer , artist and astrologer .

Working in political resistance

Heinrich Christian Meier was a son of the commercial gardener Heinrich August Meier. He attended the Lichtwark School , where he received a variety of musical suggestions. After graduating from high school in 1924, he initially considered joining his father's company, but refrained from visiting Italy. Instead, he studied psychology, new languages, literary studies and philosophy at the University of Hamburg without a degree. In 1927 he traveled as a freelance writer through Italy and Switzerland. In that year he also worked as a dramaturge in Gera . He also worked as a playwright and critic. A theater in Gera showed his first play Amrie Delmar in 1929 . Since the work criticized the war, it was immediately no longer allowed to be performed. From 1930 Meier researched as an astrologer under the pseudonym Meier-Parm on cosmobiology . In that year he married Els Hoffmann's first marriage.

After the German Reich had left the League of Nations , Meier took part in civil resistance against National Socialism from October 1933 . He acted because of his nationalistic attitude. Meier ran errands for the Black Front from Otto Strasser and Wilhelm Humbert, who headed a Hamburg resistance group. He also wrote for both communications. In 1933 Meier traveled to Prague , where Strasser had emigrated. Since Meier did not want to become a member of the SA , he could not finish his studies from 1934 to 1936. He tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to Switzerland or Denmark. In autumn 1936 he visited the escaped Hans Henny Jahnn in Bornholm, Denmark . During this time, until his later arrest, he wrote for the Hamburg Foreign Gazette and the Niederdeutsche Warte . In December 1936 he stopped cooperation with the Black Front. In the following year, his stage drama "The Green Island" was no longer allowed to be played. In 1938 he married Annemarie Fürth. The marriage lasted until 1940.

After their invasion of the so-called "rest of Czech Republic" , the Gestapo found Meier's correspondence with Otto Strasser. On September 8, 1938, the Gestapo arrested Meier and reported him because of his preparations for high treason. The People's Court imposed Meier on August 4, 1939, a two-year prison sentence, which he initially in police prison Fuhlsbüttel and in the Moor colony Neusustrum dismounted. On November 4, 1940, he was relocated to Fuhlsbüttel again. From June 22, 1941 he worked in the "Elbe Command" and in the Clinker Works Work Command . The forced labor there was considered ruinous and was accompanied by abuse, so that Meier became critically ill there.

In 1942 Meier was considered a prisoner functionary . He had to work in several commandos, including helping to clear rubble in Hamburg. In 1943 he worked in the office of the Neuengamme concentration camp , which was considered the most important place of resistance in this concentration camp . Since he was in charge of the production of index cards for the Main Economic Administration Office, he was able to protect several foreign forced laborers from dangerous operations. On November 7, 1944, Meier was assigned to the Dirlewanger SS special unit and ended up in Russian custody.

Work after the end of the war

Meier was released from prison on November 15, 1945 and returned to Hamburg. He worked as a cultural advisor in the committee of former political prisoners and co-founded the cultural council there. In 1946 Meier kept his memories of the time in Neuengamme in So it was. It was the first German-language overview of this concentration camp. From 1946 to 1948 he was the editor of the cultural magazine Das Neue . In 1950 he worked as a radio editor in Berlin. From 1958 to 1961 he published the magazine Unter der Lupe for the Democratic Cultural Association of Germany . Since he criticized the division of Germany, Meier was seen as potentially close to the KPD . An engagement as a dramaturge at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus therefore ended after a short time in January 1948.

Gravestone of Heinrich Christian Meier

As a writer, Meier wrote the drama Sisyphus in 1960 and the donkey stories in 1970 . He described the time in political resistance in 1950 in the novel Im Frühwind der Freiheit . Meier was involved in the association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - the Association of Antifascists . From 1957 he supported the newly founded International Union of Survivors of the Neuengamme Amicale Internationale de Neuengamme (AIN). After the Hamburg Senate had excluded German participants in the AIN from negotiations about a memorial in the concentration camp, Meier resigned all offices on March 26, 1963 as a sign of protest. From 1968 to 1980 he worked again on the board of the Neuengamme working group .

As a member of the German Astrologers Association , Meier took over its chairmanship for some time. He was no longer politically active. In the city council elections in Hamburg in 1957 , he campaigned for the Bund der Deutschen ( Bund der Deutschen Bund) , but after that he was no longer politically active.

In 1985 he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his services .

At the Hamburg cemetery Ohlsdorf there is a grave slab for Heinrich Christian Meier in grid square AD 5 (southwest of Chapel 8) .

literature

• Thomas Käpernick: Meier, Heinrich Christian . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 6 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1025-4 , p. 211-212 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Christian Meier in the catalog of the German National Library