Heinrich Muth

Heinrich Ernst Muth (born January 11, 1903 in Elberfeld , † July 10, 1989 in Haan ) was a German KPD functionary and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime . After World War II it was used as an undercover agent of the secret police convicted (Gestapo).

Political career

Heinrich Muth learned the profession of upholsterer . After the First World War , he and his older brother Willi joined the Free Youth Dawn (FJM), an anarchic organization whose brother Willi became chairman in the early 1920s.

In 1928 Muth moved to Lüdenscheid , where he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and became spokesman for the KPD faction in the city council and full-time state secretary for the party's agricultural work. In 1932 he was secretary of the Mönchengladbach sub-district of the KPD for a few months .

Resistance and undercover agent

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Heinrich Muth was imprisoned in the Benninghausen protective custody camp in March 1933 and then in the Papenburg camp until May 1934 . After his release from prison, he moved to Wuppertal and worked there in the resistance. When his brother Willi was arrested, he organized his wife Clare's escape to the Netherlands . At the beginning of February 1935 he was arrested by the Gestapo himself. To avoid prolonged imprisonment, Muth made himself available to the Gestapo as an undercover agent. He is said to have betrayed comrades from Hagen and Lüdenscheid to the Gestapo, but on the other hand continued to work illegally. When the Gestapo found out, they arrested him again on May 14, 1935. The Hamm Higher Regional Court sentenced him to three years and six months in prison as part of the Wuppertal trade union trials .

After serving his sentence in various prisons, Heinrich Muth was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In October 1943 he was released and a short time later deployed by the Gestapo as an undercover agent in the Dortmund-Hörder Hüttenunion . At the beginning of February 1945 the Gestapo arrested 44 men and women based on his information, 28 of whom were murdered together with forced laborers and prisoners of war in Dortmund at Easter 1945 .

After the Second World War

After the Allied troops marched in, Muth became involved in the Lüdenscheid Antifa . He was arrested in May 1945, handed over to the British occupation authorities and remained in custody until January 1948. He got a job at the furniture company Fudickar in Wuppertal and was elected to the works council.

Muth, who always denied his activity as an undercover agent, was arrested again on October 3, 1948 on the basis of an arrest warrant from the Dortmund District Court . In a trial against him and Dortmund Gestapo officials, Muth received the highest sentence of ten years in prison.

In the publication Dortmund under the swastika of the education and science union , the authors write: “According to recent research, the importance of the spy Muth for carrying out the arrests is controversial today. In 1952 Muth and others were tried. […] In the trial, Muth was considered the main culprit. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. 15 defendants were acquitted. The sentences for members of the Gestapo were between 1 and 2 years in prison. Muth protested at the trial that he had not been the main informant for the Gestapo. This does not seem to have been taken into account when determining the sentence, but the Gestapo members were given credit for the war situation. "

literature

Claus Jacobi: There is no grass growing over it yet . In: The time . No. 7 , 1952 ( zeit.de ).
Matthias Wagner: The police in Lüdenscheid at the time of the National Socialists. From the protector of society in the Weimar Republic to the executor of the Nazi dictatorship . In: Geschichts- und Heimatverein Lüdenscheid e. V. (Ed.): The Reidemeister. History sheets for Lüdenscheid town and country . No. 177 . Lüdenscheid February 3, 2009 ( ghv-luedenscheid.de [PDF; 10.3 MB ; accessed on May 5, 2012]).
LG Dortmund, April 4, 1952. In: L. Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter (arr.): Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966. Volume VIII, University Press, Amsterdam 1972, ISBN 90-6042-008-X , No. 312, pp. 389-556. Denunciation of a communist resistance group by an undercover agent of the Dortmund Gestapo. Abuse of detainees during interrogation. Mass shooting in a total of 10 partial executions of around 240 German and foreign Gestapo prisoners in the last weeks of the war in the Bittermark, in Rombergpark and on the Dortmund-Hörde railway site ( Memento from May 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

Willi & Heinrich Muth. FAU Düsseldorf

Individual evidence

↑ Death register of the Haan registry office No. 237/1989.
↑ Michael Brüx, Hans Frank, Renate Hetsch, Hajo Koch, Peter Velten, Ernst Weidlich: The murders in the Bittermark - Easter 1945. (PDF; 2.23 MB) The resistance. In: Dortmund under the swastika. Exemplary from the resistance of the labor movement in Dortmund. GEW Stadtverband Dortmund, September 1983, p. 45 , accessed on May 5, 2012 .

personal data
SURNAME	Courage, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Muth, Heinrich Ernst (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German KPD functionary, resistance fighter, Gestapo informant
DATE OF BIRTH	January 11, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH	Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH	July 10, 1989
Place of death	Haan

[1] Death register of the Haan registry office No. 237/1989.

[2] Michael Brüx, Hans Frank, Renate Hetsch, Hajo Koch, Peter Velten, Ernst Weidlich: The murders in the Bittermark - Easter 1945. (PDF; 2.23 MB) The resistance. In: Dortmund under the swastika. Exemplary from the resistance of the labor movement in Dortmund. GEW Stadtverband Dortmund, September 1983, p. 45 , accessed on May 5, 2012 .