Heinrich Duhme

Heinrich Duhme (* 1894 in Rheine ; † October 25, 1944 in Bruchsal ) was a German railroad worker and a victim of Nazi war justice.

Live and act

Duhme was the son of a textile worker. After finishing school, Duhme worked in the textile industry and later in civil engineering. From 1915 he took part in the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded. From 1918 he worked as a factory worker in Rheine, initially with the Prussian State Railways , and from 1920 with the Deutsche Reichsbahn . He remained active for them until the summer of 1943.

Politically, Duhme was close to the SPD , but did not belong to it. However, he was a member of the SPD-affiliated German Railway Union and the workers' cycling association "Solidarity". In the latter, he headed District 8 (Münsterland and Nordhorn) within the Gau Westphalia until 1933. Via the Radfahrbund Solidarity, Duhme also came into contact with the forwarding worker Gerhard Luther (1897–1944), who was active in this as a local and district group manager.

When the German defeat in the war became more and more apparent in 1943, the Soviet agent Franz Zielasko approached Duhme. Zielasko, a former German communist who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 , was parachuted into German-occupied Poland in March 1943 and returned from there to the Ruhr area to build an internal German resistance organization on behalf of the Comintern to prevent the collapse of the Nazi state should accelerate by supplementing the external attacks of the Allies with internal disintegration work. He also tried to win Duhme and Luther, whom he knew from before his emigration, to join the communist resistance cell he was building. Both refused to work in the communist underground, but repeatedly offered Zielasko the opportunity to stay overnight in their apartments and also gave him some money.

After Zielasko was arrested by the Gestapo in July 1943, the Gestapo gradually managed to identify a large number of the people with whom he had come into contact since his return to the Ruhr area. The connection between Duhme and Luther and the Soviet agent finally became known: The two were arrested on August 23, 1943. They were first taken to the Gelsenkirchen police prison, then to Gladbeck, where they were interrogated on suspicion of being guilty of preparing for high treason . After their cases were submitted to the People's Court in January 1944, Duhme and Luther were transferred to the Amberg prison near Nuremberg .

The trial of the two before the People's Court took place on July 19, 1944 in Nuremberg. Duhme and Luther were accused of having supported Zielasko in his activities by granting him overnight stays, donations of money and information, thereby committing preparation for high treason and favoring the enemy . Both were found guilty and sentenced to death.

After appeals for clemency had been rejected - and plans to execute the men in Munich and then in Stuttgart failed because the prisons and straightening machines there had been destroyed in Allied air raids - Duhme and Luther were at the place of execution on October 25, 1944 of the Bruchsal prison, executed with the guillotine .

literature

• Elena Thieme: Heinrich Duhme (1894-1944) , in: Alfred Gottwaldt (ed.): Railway workers against Hitler. Resistance and persecution on the Reichsbahn 1933-1945 , Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 310-315.