Hermann Worch

Hermann Worch (* 12. February 1890 in Hoxter , † 24. February 1935 in Grenaa / Denmark ) was a German police officer , SPD - mayor in Thuringia Langewiesen and victims of National Socialism .

Life

Worch was one of four children of the building tradesman Robert Worch and his wife Friedrike. With six years - his father had previously died one year - he came to the town school of Hoxter, he went through his class and 1904 ended. From January 1, 1905, he was initially accepted as a clerk at the Royal Special Commission and from March 1, 1907, he was taken on as an assistant in the city's magistrate's office . In October 1909, when he was three years old, he volunteered for the 5th Squadron of the Jägerregiment on Horseback No. 5 in Mulhouse , Alsace , where he was mainly used in the office . During a fall from his horse, he retired to a complicated leg fracture, as a result, he as a military unfit retired was. From July 1912 he lived again with his mother in Höxter. In August 1912 he was hired as an office assistant in the city administration of Schwelm . Half a year later he was promoted to office assistant .

As an office assistant he worked in the internal police service and came into contact with investigations and interrogations by the criminal police . In doing so, he wanted to go straight to the police force. On February 15, 1915, he began his service as a police assistant for the city of Coburg and did secretarial work for the city police.

It was in this city that his political engagement began, because towards the end of the First World War he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Her following in Coburg also grew through his influence. In the city ​​council elections in May 1919, he became the youngest member of parliament. Well-founded speeches and inquiries earned him recognition from all political camps. When his supervisor retired , the city ​​council assigned him the post of police superintendent . But here there were already differences with superiors, and so he quit his job in the spring of 1922.

In January 1923 he went to the Thuringian State Criminal Police Office in Weimar , where he was hired as a police officer. Its task was to fight extremist anti- constitutional organizations. In the summer of 1923 he was promoted to the government council. With the attempted coup by the NSDAP on November 9, 1923 in Munich and the subsequent execution of the Reich against Thuringia, Worch got caught between the political fronts. After the February elections of 1924 in Thuringia formed a bourgeois government with tolerance by the " Völkische List ", the National Socialists who had disappeared from this list after the NSDAP was banned, intrigued against him, so that he was suspended from service in March and in May Was put on hold in 1924 . Since the summer of 1924 he worked in the Thuringian Police Association , but here too, after a year, he gave up the work of the Thuringian State Church Congress. When the mayoral elections were due in Langewiesen, he applied for the position, was elected and held this office from July 1, 1925. Worch was a member of the " Association of Religious Socialists ", with whose mandate he ran for election to the Thuringian State Church Congress in 1926.

Due to a violent police operation against ethnic students and Nazi supporters, which he had commanded on the Thuringian-Bavarian border in November 1923, he was sentenced by a court to one year in prison , but the judgment did not become final as it was revised again repealed and he was acquitted.

When in April 1932 the Reich authorities feared another attempted coup by SA and SS associations, the community leaders were also called upon to take appropriate measures against it. Hermann Worch, who knew exactly how dangerous the Nazi activists were, acted accordingly energetically, had all weapons collected in the village, appointed two citizens as auxiliary policemen and locked the NSDAP local group leader in city arrest for a few hours . After a nationwide newspaper campaign was triggered by the NSDAP, the Thuringian government suspended Worch from the mayor's office in May 1932. After the Nazi party took over government power in the country in August 1932, specific investigations were initiated against him. On July 1, 1933, he was deposed as mayor. With the impending official criminal proceedings and subsequent legal proceedings against him in mind, Worch emigrated to Prague on July 5, 1933, and from there in 1934 to the Danish town of Grenaa.

On July 23, 1933, Worch's wife Frieda and their daughter Gisela were taken into kin custody and transferred to the Bad Sulza concentration camp . After Frieda Worch was admitted to the Gräfentonna prison , she committed suicide there. Daughter Gisela survived the Nazi era.

A few days after his arrival in Prague, Hermann Worch went on to the Danish town of Grenaa because he had friends there from the Esperanto movement and the International Peace League. Between 1929 and 1930 there were also child exchanges in both places during the holiday season. Dairy owner Johnson welcomed Worch as a guest to his family. Worch also tried to participate in the public life of the place by giving lectures on Esperanto. To help his wife and daughter, he made ties to England . The relief commission that had formed there, however, stopped its efforts after the death of Frieda Worch became known. He hit Hermann Worch so hard that he broke on it. He died at the age of just 45 and was buried in the Grenaa cemetery with the strong participation of the population.

literature

• Peter Franz , Udo Wohlfeld: caught in the net. The concentration camps in Thuringia 1933–1945. In it Udo Wohlfeld, The Worch case - a family is destroyed. Mother and daughter hostage in the Bad Sulza concentration camp, with a study by Susanne Böhm; Peter Franz, The city of Apolda and the surrounding concentration camps , = "wanted 3", Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-935275-02-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thuringian Church Gazette and Church Gazette 1926, B. No. 21a, p. 278