Heinrich Will (painter)

Henry Will (* 27. August 1895 in Treis / Lumda ; † 19th February 1943 in the Gestapo - prison Frankfurt-Preungesheim ) was a German painter . Will worked mainly in Giessen until his execution by the People's Court for "preparing for treason" and listening to " enemy broadcasters " ( radio crimes ).

Youth and Studies

Heinrich Will was born as the eldest son of a farmer in the Hessian town of Treis (today the municipality of Staufenberg ). After attending elementary school, Will passed his “one-year-old” (which today roughly corresponds to secondary school leaving certificate) in Giessen . Even as a teenager, Will was a talented draftsman.

In 1914 he was called up for military service and seriously wounded in a poison gas attack on the Galician Eastern Front. He could only be released from the hospital two years after the end of the war in 1920 and returned to Treis. Due to his permanent illness, which made heavy physical work impossible for him, his father did not insist on taking over the farm. In the same year , Will was able to start studying art as a scholarship holder at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He was first in Emil Gies's class (figurative painting) and from 1925 attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy . In 1926 he was accepted into the master class for figurative painting with Josef Jungwirth at the Vienna Academy and finished his studies in 1927. A study trip took him to Italy for several months, after which he finally settled in his home in Upper Hesse in Gießen. In 1930 he married Elisabeth (Liesl) Henriette Klein, daughter of a Jewish industrialist from Vienna, whom he had already met during his time at the Vienna Academy.

As a painter in Giessen

Will set up his studio in Gießen and mainly created landscape paintings of the Upper Hessian area and commissioned portraits. He was able to secure his livelihood to some extent through minor commissioned work and the financial support from his father-in-law.

Like broad layers of the bourgeoisie, his experiences in the First World War and his conservative upbringing never made him feel at home in the democratic order of the Weimar Republic , but rather of German-national sentiments.He joined the Kampfbund for German Culture in 1933 and became the same year appointed district manager of Upper Hesse for the “Reich Cartel of Fine Arts”.

In 1936 he was dismissed from his offices and expelled from the Reich Chamber of Culture , as he was considered to be “ Jewish misfits ” due to the “ Nuremberg Race Laws ” due to his marriage to Liesl and refused to divorce. He was also no longer allowed to show his pictures in public exhibitions, as this was only allowed to members of the Reich Chamber of Culture; in the following years this led to a loss of financial livelihood. The Wills increasingly withdrew from the public eye, as the repression against Liesl Will grew stronger from 1938 onwards.

Kaufmann-Will-Kreis

From the spring of 1941, Will and his wife took part in the so-called “Friday wreaths”, a loose discussion around the theologian and orientalist Alfred Kaufmann , in his apartment. In addition to several women from the Giessen bourgeoisie and a student, the gathering, later known as the Kaufmann-Will Circle, also included Pastor Ernst Steiner and his wife. The name "Friday wreath" was derived from the so-called "Wednesday wreath" on the Giessen Wingolf house , since Rev. Steiner and Kaufmann were both members of the Giessen Wingolf. During these little organized Friday wreaths at Kaufmann's, "enemy channels" were regularly listened to, what they heard was discussed and the Nazi regime was heavily criticized. The members of the group also agreed to boycott the clothing collections for the Nazi winter relief organization.

Arrest and execution

The smuggling in of a Gestapo agent, the Swede Dagmar Imgart (wife of the Federal archivist of Wingolf , who had moved to Giessen ), who had urged Kaufmann to invite her to the meetings, at which she emerged as " Agent Provocateur " with particularly critical remarks, became Gestapo regularly informed about the contents and names of the participants. On the evening of February 6, 1942, Heinrich Will, his wife Elisabeth, Alfred Kaufmann and four other participants were arrested in Kaufmann's apartment. The next morning, other members of the Kaufmann-Will circle, including Rev. Ernst Steiner and his wife Helene, were arrested by the Gestapo. This was followed by interrogations and deportation to the detention center in Darmstadt . Pastor Ernst Steiner was murdered while he was still in custody; the others awaited on 20/21. July 1942 a show trial in front of the 2nd Senate of the People's Court , who traveled to Darmstadt especially . Kaufmann and Will were to death (including Elisabeth Will), more women from the circle to multi-year prison sentences convicted.

This process with its first application of the maximum penalty according to the ordinance on extraordinary broadcasting measures of September 1, 1939 was widely publicized in propaganda. Some historians ( Jörg Friedrich , “Der Brand”) regard this show trial as a turning point in the intensification of the Nazi terror internally. Despite repeated appeals for clemency Heinrich Will was on the evening of February 19, together with Czech partisans in the detention center Frankfurt-Preungesheim by the guillotine executed. The following day the execution was posted by the People's Court throughout Gießen; on February 21, company parties, school parties and a day off at school were ordered to mark Will's execution. Elisabeth Will was "released to Auschwitz" from the Ziegenhain women's prison on December 7, 1942 (quote, letter from the prison board) and murdered there.

Posthumous

Heinrich Will's stumbling block at his last self-chosen place of residence at Friedrichstrasse 8 in Giessen

• Alfred Kaufmann was freed from Butzbach prison by the Americans in 1945 and died of the consequences of his imprisonment in 1946.
• On January 21, 1946, a memorial event was held by the University and City of Gießen for the couple Heinrich and Elisabeth Will.
• The Gestapo agent Dagmar Imgart was sentenced to 1 year and 3 months in prison (minus 8 months in custody) in the last instance by several instances of ruling chambers and courts (also for further offenses as a Gestapo agent) and began six months in prison in 1957. She died in Seeheim-Jugenheim in 1980 .
• In 1973 a memorial exhibition for Heinrich Will took place in the Gießen community center
• In 1983 the university town of Giessen named a street after Heinrich Will, as did his hometown Treis
• On February 12, 2009, Stolpersteine were laid for Elisabeth and Heinrich Will in front of the house at Friedrichstrasse 8 in Gießen by the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig .
• The judges and public prosecutors at the show trial against the Kaufmann-Will-Kreis resumed their legal activities after the war or were granted pension entitlements for their activities from 1930 onwards.

literature

• Jörg-Peter Jatho: The Giessen “Friday wreath” . Documents about the failure of a historical legend - at the same time an example of the disposal of National Socialism . Ulenspiegel-Verlag, Fulda 1995, ISBN 3-9801740-6-9 . (Document collection and interrogation protocols of the Gestapo from Alfred Kaufmann, Heinrich Will and others)
• Kurt Heyne: Resistance in Giessen and the surrounding area 1933–45. Announcements from the Upper Hessian History Association, Giessen. New series, 71. Giessen 1986. (on the Kaufmann-Will-Kreis p. 216ff.)
• Bertin Gentges et al. a .: Heinrich Will - life and work. Giessen 1993.
• Hans Adamo: Zuckermann's daughter. Death was stronger than love. Essen 2003. (Documentation about Elisabeth Will; unfortunately incorrect or imprecise in some regional historical issues and the political development of H. Will)

Web link

• Literature by and about Heinrich Will in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography Stolpersteine ​​Gießen

Individual evidence

1. ^ LG Kassel, November 16, 1954 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XII, edited by Adelheid L Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs and CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1974, No. 408, pp. 743-858.