Hermann Smeets

Hermann Smeets (* 1910 in Düsseldorf ; † December 30, 1997 ibid) was a Dutch resistance fighter against National Socialism with a German residence.

Smeets was born in 1910. He was a businessman in Düsseldorf .

In 1942 he founded a resistance group against the Nazi regime in Düsseldorf, which from 1945 called itself "Antifascist combat organization", or "AntifaKO" for short. In April 1945, independently of the group around the lawyer Karl August Wiedenhofen , he planned the surrender of the city to the US troops without a fight, but his planning was not fast enough.

Immediately after the liberation, he met the successful Aloys Odenthal and Karl August Wiedenhofen . After the invasion, the US commanders authorized Smeets to put together the Committee of Ten to prepare for elections in Düsseldorf and appointed him provisional mayor.

Smeets continued to support the city after the war. In 1951 he co-founded the Bilker Heimatfreunde, of which he was president for 30 years.

In 1997 he died at the age of 87.

Honors

• After the end of his tenure, Hermann Smeets became honorary president of the Bilker Heimatfreunde
• The archive of the Bilker Heimatfreunde bears the name Hermann-Smeets-Archiv
• Smeets received the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class , in 1986 .

Web links

• City Archives (1997)
• Christian Leitzbach H. S. and the new beginning in Düsseldorf 1945.
• Herrmann Smeets Archive on "History in Düsseldorf"