Hilarius Gilges

Portrait photo of Hilarius Gilges, source: Dusseldorf Memorial and Memorial

Hilarius Gilges (born April 28, 1909 in Düsseldorf ; † June 20, 1933 ibid), also known as "Lari" Gilges, was a German worker , amateur actor and communist . He was murdered by National Socialists at the age of 24 .

Life

Hilarius Gilges was one of the few Afro-Germans born before the First World War . His mother Maria Stüttgen was a textile worker from Düsseldorf; the origin of his biological father cannot be fully proven. It was probably an African boatman on the Rhine who worked on a tugboat belonging to Hugo Stinnes' group . After his mother's marriage to Franz Peter Gilges on March 4, 1915, Hilarius was given the family name Gilges.

Hilarius Gilges grew up in the working class in Düsseldorf's old town and around 1925 or 1926 he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). He was an amateur actor in " Northwest ran " a communist agitprop - theater group of Wolfgang Langhoff . The often-voiced assumption that he was a “tap dancer” cannot be substantiated anywhere.

After an argument with a Stahlhelm member during a street battle in which he was fatally injured, Gilges was arrested in 1931 and sentenced to one year in prison for illicit gun possession and assault. After his release from prison in 1932, he continued to work as an agitator . At the beginning of 1933, after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he went underground , which was difficult to implement due to his popularity and his black skin color.

On the night of June 20, 1933, presumably by six SA and SS members, he was abducted from his apartment at No. 36 Ritterstrasse in Düsseldorf's old town to the banks of the Rhine, where he was brutally mistreated and murdered. Both gunshot and stab wounds were found on his body, his arms were dislocated, and sand was found in his lungs. Even after the end of National Socialism , the perpetrators were never judged.

The widow of Hilarius Gilges, Katharina Hubertine Laatsch, b. Vogels and the two children (daughter Franziska Auguste Helmus, née Gilges, and son Heinz Gilges) probably only survived the Nazi era because they were hidden by neighbors in the old town. In 1949 the two children and the widow received a one-off compensation as reparation : DM 2,000 and DM 2,200 and DM 12,000, respectively.

Honors

Street sign "Hilarius Gilges-Platz"

On December 23, 2003, the city of Düsseldorf named a square after Hilarius Gilges, right next to the Düsseldorf Art Academy . In 1988 a memorial plaque had already been placed near the site of the murder. This memorial plaque was initiated by the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf and designed by the Düsseldorf artist Hannelore Köhler . It shows a relief by Gilges and was set into the wall to the left of the Tonhallenpassage on Tonhallenufer, at the height of Joseph-Beuys-Ufer . An official commemoration ceremony on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the death of Hilarius Gilges took place here on June 20, 2008. Another memorial site is the statue of Johannes von Nepomuk, created by the sculptor Bert Gerresheim in 1985, on the ramp on the right bank of the Oberkassel Bridge (“Hofgarten ramp”). One detail shows the lettering Hilarius Gilges 1933 and thus reminds of the bloody deed that happened nearby.

Memorial plaque on the banks of the Rhine (in front of the Oberkasseler Bridge) in honor of Hilarius Gilges

On June 21, 2015, the city of Düsseldorf unveiled a stele on the Rhine embankment promenade (in front of the Oberkasseler Bridge) in memory of Gilges. Lord Mayor Thomas Geisel called the stele a reminder that "the terrible events that followed in the twelve years of the National Socialist reign of terror" should keep people's memories alive.

literature

• Udo Acht (Ed.): Düsseldorf on foot. 17 city tours through history and the present . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1989, p. 76.
• Werner Eggerath : The Cossack General and other colorful stories . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1961, pp. 236-266.
• Clarence Lusane: The Historical Experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi Era . Routledge, London 2002, ISBN 0-415-93121-5 , p. 234.
• Lothar Pützstück: “Africans in Germany and black Germans - past and present. Contributions to the conference of the same name from 13.-15. June 2003 in the NS Documentation Center ( EL-DE House ) Cologne ”. In: Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, Reinhard Klein-Arendt (ed.): Encounters. History and present of the African-European encounter . 3, LIT Verlag, Münster 2004.
• Fatia Pindra: Black people under National Socialist rule . Philosophical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf 2005 (Master's thesis).
• Heinrich Riemenschneider, cultural office of the city of Düsseldorf (ed.): Theater history of the city of Düsseldorf . Volume 2, Goethe Buchhandlung Teubig, Düsseldorf 1987, pp. 204-206.
• Werner Roemer: Bert Gerresheim. Retrospective 1960–1995 . Verlag Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1995, p. 115.
• Karl Schabrod : Resistance to Flick and Florian. Düsseldorf anti-fascists on their resistance 1933–1945 . Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1978, p. 167.
• Susanne Seelbach: Proletarian Revolutionary Theater in Düsseldorf 1930–1933. The stage as a political medium. (= European university publications. Series 30: Theater, film and television studies. Volume 55). Dissertation . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1994, ISBN 3-631-47044-4 , p. 89.
• Frank Sparing: Hilarius Gilges - a worker and communist murdered by the SS. In: Peter Martin, Christine Alonzo (ed.): Between Charleston and goose-step. Blacks under National Socialism . Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg / Munich 2004, p. 549.
• Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) - Bund der Antifaschisten (Ed.): Unpunished Nazi murders in Düsseldorf . Düsseldorf, OCLC 931537051 , p. 21 f.

Movie

• Germans are white, “negroes” cannot be Germans. Saarland radio. First broadcast on May 29, 1986.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst: Africans in Germany and black Germans. LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 978-3-8258-6824-6 , p. 70 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
2. ^ Hilarius Gilges - Forgotten Biographies - Migrants and Black People under National Socialism. In: vergierter-biografien.de. Archived from the original on August 10, 2014 ; accessed on February 9, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Hilarius-Gilges-Platz on hilarius-gilges.de
4. ↑ The memorial plaque on hilarius-gilges.de
5. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: On the 75th anniversary of Hilarius Gilges' death. ) Fördergesellschaft Kulturelle Bildung eV
6. ^ Website of the Johannes von Nepomuk statue (with images) in the portal hilarius-gilges.de , accessed on June 20, 2013.
7. ↑ Since yesterday the stele reminds us of Hilarius Gilges ; derwesten.de, published and accessed on June 22, 2015.

Web links

• TERZ - autonomous newspaper for politics and culture in Düsseldorf and the surrounding area (ed.): An unpunished murder ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) [In memoriam - Hilarius Gilges. Black actor and communist was murdered by the Nazis 70 years ago: an unpunished murder].
• Fatia Pindra (Ed.): Hilarius Gilges .