Heinz Welke

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Heinz Welke (born March 16, 1911 in Iserlohn ; † November 2, 1977 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German theologian and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Career

Welke studied theology at the Universities of Münster, Zurich and Bonn and spent a semester in Zurich in 1933/1934. In December 1934 he joined the Confessing Church . In 1935 he refused to take the “ Führer oath ” on Adolf Hitler , which all students had to take. He completed his studies at the Theological School of the Confessing Church in Elberfeld and was the Pastors sent to Frankfurt, where he 1936-37 vicar at the parish priest of Otto Fricke was led Trinity Church. In 1939 he was arrested by the Gestapo and only released from prison weeks later, seriously ill. He fled to Switzerland , where he recovered from imprisonment, but returned to the German Reich at Christmas 1940 , as only there he was able to resist National Socialism.

Act

In 1942/44 he was parish administrator at the Frankfurt Trinity Parish . During this time, a network in the Bockenheim district of Frankfurt , to which Welke and the doctor Fritz Kahl and his wife Margarete belonged, saved a large number of Jews. The exact number cannot be determined. The rescue network organized hiding places and escape routes to Switzerland, the Netherlands and France. Mostly it was a “parsonage chain” through which the persecuted fled in stages of 40 kilometers, constantly afraid of being checked. The underground methods included moving dozens of times, incorrectly completed questionnaires, forged identification cards and "postal ID cards" sneaked out. Numerous people were involved in every escape operation: pastors, craftsmen, the cell attendant gave clues, a detective who warned of “actions” by the Gestapo, or the wife of a concentration camp guard who warned neighbors to shut up during her husband's home leave .

One of those rescued was the Jew Robert Eisenstädt, who fled the Majdanek concentration camp and got to Frankfurt. With him, Welke and Kahl had an eyewitness for the mass murders of Jews . They prepared Eisenstadt's escape to Switzerland. The escape succeeded and Eisenstädt reported on the extermination of the Jews there, but government agencies in Great Britain and the USA did not believe his report.

From 1945 to 1976 Welke was pastor of the Paul Gerhardt congregation in Frankfurt-Niederrad . He was active in the campaign against rearmament in the Federal Republic of Germany and the peace movement. Welke died on November 2, 1977 in Frankfurt am Main. An exhibition "What you have done ... - civil courage and resistance" in 2011 in the Katharinenkirche in Frankfurt am Main commemorated Heinz Welke.

literature

  • Petra Bonavita: With a wrong passport and potassium cyanide: Rescuers and rescued from Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart, 2009 ISBN 978-3-89657-135-9 .
  • Petra Bonavita: With a wrong passport and potassium cyanide . In: Arno Lustiger : Rescue Resistance - About the Rescuers of Jews in Europe during the Nazi Era , Wallstein, Göttingen, 2011 ISBN 978-3-83530990-6 .
  • What you've done ... Civil courage and resistance , catalog for the exhibition 2011 in Frankfurt am Main, Paul Gerhardt Gemeinde, Frankfurt am Main, 2011.
  • Doris Stickler: Wilted network . In: Publik-Forum , No. 10/2011, pp. 66–67.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilt in a conversation with Hélène Rousell. In: Petra Bonavita: With a false passport and cyanide , pp. 14, 15
  2. ↑ Barbara Schwind: The Majdanek Concentration and Extermination Camp: Functional Change in the Context of the “Final Solution” , Königshausen & Neumann, 2005 ISBN 978-3-82603123-6 , note on p. 237
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Benz : Survival in the Third Reich: Jews in the Underground and their Helpers , CH Beck, 2003 ISBN 978-3-40651029-8 , p. 295 (written there: "Welcke")
personal data
SURNAME Withered, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor and member of the Confessing Church
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Iserlohn
DATE OF DEATH November 2nd 1977
Place of death Frankfurt am Main