Heinz Priess (resistance fighter)

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Heinz Priess (born April 2, 1920 in Hamburg ; † March 12, 1945 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison ) was a German resistance fighter .

Life

Heinz Priess came from a Hamburg working class family. He became a member of the communist children's organization JSB and became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD), which was already active in the underground . From 1933, like his brothers Viktor and Bruno, he supported the anti-fascist resistance. Both brothers managed to escape from Germany after imprisonment in a concentration camp. They fought in Spain in the International Brigades , Bruno was killed in the Battle of the Ebro on September 21, 1938.

Bruno and Heinz Priess, Ehrenhain
Stumbling Stone Wellingsbütteler Landstrasse 243

Priess trained as a machine fitter and then studied construction technology at a technical college. From 1941 he worked as an aircraft designer at Blohm & Voss , where he joined a group of three that belonged to the resistance organization Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe .

Together with his mother Marie Priess (née Drews) and his former vocational school teacher Ernst Mittelbach , he helped the German communists Erna Eifler and Wilhelm Fellendorf , who had parachuted over East Prussia in the summer of 1942, and who, because of the wave of arrests against the Berlin groups of the Rote Kapelle, had already begun had tried in vain to contact them and had come to Hamburg with their reserve addresses. Heinz Priess's brother, Viktor Priess, was working for the military intelligence service of the Red Army at the time and had named his mother's address as a reliable refuge. They also received support from Katharina Fellendorf , Herbert Bittcher and Willi Milke , who later “died in fascist dungeons” for their willingness to help and for providing the two parachutists with accommodation and food.

Heinz and Marie Priess were arrested in October 1942 for providing accommodation to people wanted by the Gestapo . The court prison there was so badly damaged by heavy air raids on Hamburg that they were given prison leave with the condition that they report back after two months. But they decided to go underground and live illegally in Hamburg. Both were arrested again on June 19, 1944 and sentenced to death in October 1944 . Heinz Priess was transported to Brandenburg prison and executed there on March 12, 1945 . His mother Marie Priess survived thanks to the liberation.

The editor and Spain fighter Heinz Priess is his cousin.

Honors

There is a pillow stone for Bruno and Heinz Priess (first row from the left, thirteenth stone) in the honor grove of Hamburg resistance fighters at the Hamburg cemetery in Ohlsdorf .

On the initiative of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime - Association of Antifascists (VVN-BdA e.V.), a stumbling block was laid at his last home, Wellingsbütteler Landstrasse 243 in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf .

A feeder trawler with the identification number ROS 415 of the "Artur Becker" series also got its name.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 50 years after 1945 - preview for 1995. on: glasnost.de
  2. ^ Kraushaar: German resistance fighters. Volume 2, 1970, p. 60.
  3. ^ Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , p. 577.
  4. ^ Event calendar 2013. (No longer available online.) Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft, archived from the original on October 16, 2013 ; Retrieved July 17, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.niqel.de
personal data
SURNAME Priess, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1945
Place of death Brandenburg