Bright deer

Helmut "Helle" Hirsch (born January 27, 1916 in Stuttgart ; † June 4, 1937 in Berlin ) was a German- Jewish student and resistance fighter against National Socialism , who was sentenced to death and executed in connection with a planned attack.

Life

youth

Helmut Hirsch was born an American citizen . His parents had obtained American citizenship by residing in the United States for several years , but lost it again after the First World War . You had returned to Stuttgart in 1910. Hirsch grew up in Stuttgart and passed his Abitur there at Dillmann Gymnasium . At the age of 15 he joined the Bundische Horte (group) of Helmut Haug, known as schnipp, in Stuttgart in the dj.1.11 , in which he experienced significant influences. This organization was banned in 1933 after the National Socialists came to power . After Jews had been banned from studying at a German university in the summer of 1935 as a result of the Nuremberg Laws , Hirsch emigrated to Prague in the autumn of the same year , where he began to study architecture. He kept in touch with the Stuttgart friends of the now banned dj.1.11.

Planned attack

In Prague, at the suggestion of Eberhard Koebel , Hirsch came into contact with the Anti- Hitler Black Front founded by Otto Strasser . Strasser and Friedrich Beer-Grunow, the organization leaders of the Black Front, tried to convince Hirsch to take an active part in the resistance against the National Socialists . Hirsch was supposed to carry out an attack in Germany in order to shake up the Germans and abroad. They also explained to him that the future treatment of Jews in a Germany revolutionized by the Black Front would depend on his behavior. After initial hesitation, Hirsch agreed to carry out an explosive attack on a column of the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg on December 24, 1936 . Hirsch insisted that the demolition did not endanger human life - a symbol of the Nazi regime should be hit. Hirsch started his journey to Nuremberg on December 20th by train. He made a stopover in Stuttgart: giving a wrong address, he took a room near the train station in the Hotel “Pelikan”. But the very next day, December 21, 1936, he was arrested there by the Stuttgart Gestapo . Spy on the "Black Front" had followed practically every step of Hirsch. The planned bomb attack in Nuremberg did not take place and could not have been carried out, since the carrier of the “Hell Machine” turned himself in to the police after crossing the border from Czechoslovakia . The exact circumstances of Helle Hirsch's arrest, i.e. who made him known to the Gestapo, are still unclear.

Sentencing and execution

On March 8, 1937, Hirsch was sentenced to death by the People's Court in Berlin for “preparing a highly treasonable undertaking under aggravating circumstances” . He had not only seriously damaged the NSDAP , but also the German people and the state, especially at a time when the "world struggle of international power groups against Germany" was intensifying. Hirsch's family went public to save his life. Czechoslovak and American newspapers as well as the German exile press reported on the case. At the urging of the family, the United States has now returned Hirsch's citizenship. William Dodd , the American ambassador, intervened personally on behalf of Hirsch with Adolf Hitler , who refused the request for clemency. Hirsch was executed by guillotine on June 4, 1937 in the Plötzensee prison. This made him the first US citizen to be executed by the National Socialists.

After death

Even after his execution , Hirsch was used by the Gestapo and the People's Court as a “witness” for the state-endangering attitudes of the Bündische Jugend and in particular of dj.1.11. In 1938 the indictment against another member of an illegal youth group named the Reichslager of the dj.1.11 on Langeoog as a place of "decomposition", where "about 150 boys, including the one in 1937 for preparing for high treason in offense against the Explosives Act sentenced to death Helmut Hirsch ”had participated.

Commemoration

On May 8, 2007, a stumbling block was laid in front of Hirsch's parents' house at Seestrasse 89 in the west of Stuttgart . Helmut Hirsch's estate is in the possession of Brandeis University (Waltham, USA), which has created an online exhibition.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Stuttgart about Helle Hirsch

literature

• -schrift- 31 of the Federation of German Youths, Editing Günter Behrmann: helmut hirsch. January 27, 1916 - June 4, 1937. Bad Godesberg around 1967
• Paulus Buscher : the light-stag booklet . Puls 15. Südmarkverlag, Heidenheim 1987. ISSN  0342-3328
• Paulus Buscher: Helmut "bright" Hirsch - a young Jew and an alliance artist in the resistance . In: Hinrich Siefken, Hildegard Vieregg (ed.): Resistance to National Socialism: Art and resistance. Research results and experience reports. Third Nottingham Symposium. Iudicium Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-89129-232-5
• Fritz Schmidt: Murder threatens the men on the other hand: Threat and murder of young people in the Third Reich . Achims Verlag, Edermünde 2003, ISBN 3-932435-12-5
• Fritz Schmidt: Helmut Hirsch. A young life violently wiped out by National Socialism . Spurbuchverlag, Baunach 2015, ISBN 978-3-88778-468-3 .
• Christopher Dowe: Helle Hirsch (1916-1937) - executed in Stuttgart at the age of 21 . In: Angela Borgstedt et al. (Ed.): Courage proven. Resistance biographies from the southwest, Stuttgart 2017 ( S chriften political geography of Baden-Württemberg; 46), pp 321-330 ISBN 9783945414378 .

Web links

• About Helmut Hirsch in the House of History
• Information about Helmut Hirsch , Brandeis University (English)