Herbert Michaelis

Herbert Michaelis (born September 3, 1898 in Hamburg , † June 14, 1939 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German lawyer , communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Michaelis, son of a Jewish merchant, took part in the First World War from 1916 to 1918 . From 1928 he worked as a lawyer in Hamburg. Michaelis married Marie-Luise Rom that same year, with whom he had three children. He had been a member of the KPD since 1924 and was therefore anonymously denounced to the Gestapo in 1933 . Due to his Jewish origins, Michaelis was banned from working in the same year and shortly afterwards was sentenced to two years in prison for a fabricated fraud offense.

In the Lübeck prison he met the iron turner Bruno Rieboldt and the locksmith Dagobert Biermann , the father of Wolf Biermann . After their release from prison, Rieboldt and Biermann worked at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg . Rieboldt informed Michaelis about armaments work at Blohm & Voss, in particular about the construction of aircraft engines and warships. The goal of the resistance group around Michaelis was to inform foreign countries in 1937 about the military interference of National Socialist Germany in the Spanish Civil War . Biermann and his brother-in-law, Ewerführer Karl Dietrich, gave Michaelis a detailed report on the arms deliveries to the Franco Putschists from January to March 1937 . Michaelis forwarded this information in January and February 1937 through an intermediary, Richard Behre , to the KPD South Section in Basel . Rieboldt was arrested on March 26, 1937, and Michaelis and Biermann two days later. On March 2nd, Michaelis was sentenced to death by the Second Senate of the People's Court in Hamburg and executed on June 14th, 1939 in Berlin-Plötzensee.

Rieboldt received a twelve-year-old, Biermann a six-year prison sentence, only Dietrich was acquitted. Biermann, who was last imprisoned in Bremen-Oslebshausen prison, was deported to Auschwitz , where he died on February 22, 1943.

Honors

Michaelis 'name is part of the memorial in front of the house of the German Lawyers' Association in Berlin , which was inaugurated in January 2007 to commemorate the lawyers who perished as a result of National Socialism .

literature

• Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance 1933-1945. Reports and documents . Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 190f.
• Wilfried Weinke: The persecution of Jewish lawyers in Hamburg using the example of Dr. Max Eichholz and Herbert Michaelis . - In: Angelika Ebbinghaus / Karten Linne (ed.): No closed chapter. Hamburg in the "Third Reich" . Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1997, pp. 248–265.
• Wilfried Weinke: The Persecution of Jewish Lawyer in Hamburg. A Case Study: Max Eichholz and Herbert Michaelis . In: The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 1997 , Volume 42/1, pp. 221-237.
• Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel : Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945 . CH Beck, Munich 1998, 2nd edition, p. 138.
• Ludwig Eiber : Workers and the labor movement in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg from 1929 to 1939. Shipyard workers, dock workers and seamen: conformity, opposition, resistance . P. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000 (therein: The group around Herbert Michaelis , p. 352ff.)
• Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Ed.): Hamburgische Biographie. Lexicon of persons . Volume 1. Christians Verlag, Hamburg 2001, pp. 205f.
• Kirsten Heinsohn , Institute for the History of German Jews: The Jewish Hamburg. A historical reference work. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, pp. 190f.

Web links

• Memorial "Remind Lawyers"