Heinz Steyer

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Heinz Steyer on a postage stamp from the GDR Deutsche Post, 1963

Heinz Steyer (born December 20, 1909 in Dresden , † July 12, 1944 in Ai Giannis near Amaliada , Peloponnese ) was a German communist , worker athlete and resistance fighter .

Life

Steyer, a presser by profession, joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany at the age of 18 and a short time later the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Later he was a functionary of the combat community for red sports unit . He was a good footballer and was active in the Red-White-Rotsport team.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , Steyer, along with other young communists and fellow sportsmen in Dresden, distributed the illegal newspapers Depesche and Der Rote Stern , which informed the population about the terror of the Nazi regime and the resistance struggle of the illegal KPD. Steyer was arrested in August 1933 and spent two years and nine months in the Waldheim and Zwickau penitentiaries . After his release, he continued to resist. From 1937 to 1939 he was repeatedly held in concentration camps , sometimes for months .

Symbolic grave of Steyers in the honor grove of the Heidefriedhof

Although he was declared "unworthy of defense" by the Nazi authorities, he was drafted into Penal Division 999 in February 1943 . Steyer was transported to Greece with Battalion IV and used as clerk for the military command in Lechena in the Peloponnese . Here he was, together with his friend Werner Illmer , one of the organizers of the resistance organization among soldiers. On their behalf, he used his work in the office and warned Greek partisans about planned "pacification actions". He also procured German ID cards for illegally living Greek patriots to facilitate their resistance work and, together with other group members, provided them with medicines, ammunition and weapons.

Steyer was arrested on July 3, 1944 July 9 by a military court sentenced to death , and on July 12 in the village of Ai Giannis shot . His symbolic grave is located in the honor grove of the Heidefriedhof in Dresden.

Honors

The Heinz Steyer Stadium in Dresden bears his name. In front of the stadium there was a memorial stone erected in June 1949. The 55th Dresden Middle School was dedicated to Steyer until January 2010 (since then Gottlieb Traugott Bienert ), and the school in Rabenau also bore his name. There are also streets in Dresden and Riesa and a ring in Dessau named after Steyer.

The German Post of the GDR issued a special stamp in honor of Steyer in 1963 .

literature

  • Luise Kraushaar (Ed.): German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters . Volume 2. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 312-314.
  • Hans Burkhardt, Günter Erxleben, Kurt Nettball: The one with the blue ticket: on the anti-fascist resistance in the 999 formations of the fascist German Wehrmacht (1942 to 1945) . Military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1982, passim.
  • Andreas Peschel: Shot for high treason . In: Dresdner Latest News from February 15, 2010, p. 16.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Small encyclopedia of physical culture and sport . Verlag Enzyklopädie Leipzig, Leipzig 1960, p. 600 .
  2. ^ Herbert Goldhammer, Karin Jeschke: Dresden Memorial Sites for the Victims of the Nazi Regime: A Documentation . Ed .: Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime - Bund der Antifaschisten eV in the Free State of Saxony. Dresden City Association. DDP Goldenbogen, Dresden 2002, p. 56 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ News from the city council. Renaming of the 55th middle school. SPD parliamentary group in the Dresden City Council, January 28, 2010, accessed on January 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Steyer, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German worker athlete, communist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH July 12, 1944
Place of death Ai Giannis at Amaliada