Hermann Schönleiter

Hermann Oskar Willi Schönleiter (born March 15, 1887 in Nordhausen , † June 8, 1965 in Wennigsen am Deister ) was a German coopers , party secretary , member of the Hanover provincial council and resistance fighter against the National Socialists .

Life

Born in the early days of the German Empire in the Harz Mountains as the son of a coachman and party functionary , Schönleiter joined the union in 1904 and, after completing his apprenticeship as a journeyman, went on a journey .

After he was drafted into the German Army for military service in 1907 , he was deployed to Tsingtau , the capital of the so-called " German Protected Area Kiautschou ", but actually a colony of the German Empire in China .

After his return to Europe, Schönleiter worked as a cooper in Hanover . The marriage there resulted in two children; Hermann and Helmut .

After the beginning of the First World War , Hermann Schönleiter was drafted into the military again and deployed as a marine infantryman in the Imperial Navy .

In December 1918, Schönleiter returned to Hanover and was active there during the Weimar Republic as District Party Secretary of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). From 1925 to 1933 he was a member of the Hanover provincial parliament . He was elected chairman of the cartel for workers' sport and personal hygiene and, among other things, set up a youth camp on the Weser in 1930 . At the beginning of 1932 he called for the formation of "[...] the nationwide republic protection cartel 'Iron Front' in the Hanover area ."

After the National Socialists seized power , Schönleiter - like all SPD functionaries - became unemployed. The SPD was banned. Harassed by short-term arrests and house searches , he tried at least temporarily as a living representative with Commission sales to earn. With this activity he camouflaged - as a member of the "illegal" resistance organization Socialist Front - the connection he maintained with other members in Hildesheim .

But then Hermann Schönleiter was caught “ forging ” five Reichsmark coins with a portrait of Adolf Hitler made of lead by embossing “Germany's Verderber” into the pieces and circulating them . Schönleiter's son Helmut later said: "My father knew what to expect if you caught him - that didn't stop him". In June 1936 Hermann Schönleiter was arrested, his extensive library was confiscated and Schönleiter was initially held in custody in Hildesheim for eleven months . There he was sentenced to five years in prison by the Higher Regional Court based in Berlin on July 19, 1937 for preparing for high treason , which he then served in Hameln prison. After the five years of imprisonment, however, Schönleiter was deported from Hameln - in the middle of World War II - on June 19, 1941 to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

Almost two years later, Schönleiter suffered serious accident damage when, in March 1943, the truck, which was “fully loaded” with prisoners , rammed a tram on the icy road on the way to the barracks and fell into the ditch. Hermann Schönleiter was then in the hospital for eight weeks , after which he was no longer able to do the required heavy work outside the concentration camp. So he was briefly assigned to a light overseer job and finally released to Hanover on May 5, 1943. But he remained under the supervision of the police for the remainder of the “1000 year” Nazi empire. After the worst air raids on Hanover , Schönleiter moved from there to Wennigsen on January 12, 1945, where his family had already fled from the then Reich capital Berlin from the bombs and hunger in 1943 . In Wennigsen, the family found a makeshift shelter in a friend's arbor in the Wennigser Mark district , where Hermann Schönleiter registered on March 23, 1945.

Memorial stone to the meeting of Kurt Schumacher and Otto Grotewohl during the Wennigs conference in 1945 in the Wennigs mark

After the end of the war and at the time of the British occupation zone , in which the later SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher and his comrades from the office of Dr. Schumacher pushed ahead with the re-admission of the SPD, Hermann Schönleiter and his son Hermann actively participated in the re-establishment of the SPD in Wennigsen. Hermann Schönleiter and his son of the same name were also involved in the preparation and participation of the Wennigs conference , at which the SPD members of the three western zones as well as the previously exiled London board and the Berlin Central Committee, which was already influenced by communism , were chaired by Otto Grotewohl from 5th to 7 October 1945 met and Kurt Schumacher certain delegate for the Western zones. In the conference room of what was then the Petersen station hotel , later the Calenberger Hof , Schönleiter drew a large portrait of Karl Marx on the wall with charcoal and then decorated the room with red flags . Schönleiter's younger son Helmut , only three years old at the time, had to clear his bed for Otto Grotewohl, who later became Prime Minister of the GDR . The later mayor of Hanover, Otto Barche , went in and out of the Schönleitners at that time, as did the later Prime Minister of Lower Saxony , Alfred Kubel .

In 1947 Hermann Schönleiter was a member of the committee for denazification in the Hanover district . From September of the same year he was again active in the management of the SPD district of Hanover.

After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany , Hermann Schönleiter received a pension of 150 DM each in July 1949 for the total of 83 months in prison he had suffered in the “ Third Reich ”, as well as for the loss of his extensive library, which the Nazis had confiscated in 1936 Awarded month as compensation . In addition, he received a sum of money as compensation under the Lower Saxony Special Aid Act .

With such financial resources , the family was able to build a housing estate in Lutterbrinkstrasse in the early 1950s .

From 1952 to 1965 - the year Hermann Schönleiter died - the local politician Wilma Conradi , who is regarded as a contemporary witness of the labor movement , worked in the SPD district office of Hermann Schönleiter and Hans Striefler .

Archival material

Archival material on the biography of Hermann Schönleiter can be found, for example

• in the Lower Saxony State Archive (Hanover location) , signature Nds 110 W; Acc 45/89, No. 100705 ;
• in the city ​​archive of Hanover ;
• near the city of Wennigsen;
• in the family archive , for example the son Hermann Schönleiter in Wennigsen or the granddaughter Bärbel Runge , née Schönleiter in Garbsen (status: 2004)

Remarks

1. ↑ The following statement deviates from this: “Schönleiter joined the party at the age of 19 in 1932 - one year before the National Socialists came to power”. Compare Felix Eisele: 75 years of committed social democrat. In: Vorwärts from February 27, 2007; online edition. Compare also Jennifer Krebs: Wennigsen / With courage and conviction ... , in: HAZ of 23 August 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Schönleiter, Hermann Oskar Willi in the database of Lower Saxony Persons (new entry required) of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library in the version of March 22, 2016
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s} Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz (collaborator): Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen , Volume 222 ), Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , p. 323f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Jennifer Krebs: With courage and out of conviction / 150 years of the SPD: In Wennigsen the party was re-established after the Second World War. None of those who were there back then are still alive. Hermann Schönleiter from Wennigsen, who helped to organize the conference in October 1945, died in June 2007. His son tells ... In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) of August 23, 2013, updated on August 26, 2013; online edition
4. ^ Klaus Mlynek : Second World War. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , pp. 694f.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus Mlynek : Schumacher, Kurt. In: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon , p. 326f .; online through google books
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Jasmin Straßburger, Frank Straßburger: Wilma Conradi on the website of the SPD city association Hanover in the version of March 21, 2016
7. ↑ Susanne Döscher (Red.): Contemporary witnesses of the labor movement . From childhood ... Ed .: Freizeitheim Linden der Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Hannover: Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Der Oberstadtdirektor , 1985, passim ; contents