Jakob Johannes

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jakob Johannes (born November 20, 1877 in Saarbrücken ; † October 20, 1919 there ) was a German railway fitter . He was executed in 1919 during the French administration on behalf of the League of Nations by the French authorities for illegally possessing weapons and thus became a symbol of the 1935 Saar referendum .

Life

Jakob Johannes was a trained locksmith and worked in the Burbach railway workshop . On October 7, 1919, he visited a restaurant in Saarbrücken. The exact course of the evening can no longer be researched today. According to the half-monthly publication Saarfreund , one of the guests present had a revolver with him and showed it to the guests present. A shot was released. When a French military patrol entered the restaurant, they found Jakob Johannes, who only picked up the weapon from the floor. The rest of the guests had fled. Johannes was arrested and sentenced to death by a French military tribunal on October 8, 1919 . There were doubts about the representation and they asked for the verdict to be overturned by the government in Paris, but on October 20, 1919, the execution was finally ordered, which was carried out on the same day in the Seventy Barracks in Saarbrücken. He was buried in the main cemetery in Saarbrücken .

rating

The circumstances of his death led to criticism of the French occupation. The verdict was considered arbitrary. Johannes was not the only case; between 1918 and 1924, a total of 17 people were victims of the French military police. This John was a symbolic figure in the referendum campaign in 1935. On November 1, 1933, his grave was a grave of honor awarded. It has this status to this day. The dramaturge Willi Schäferdiek dedicated a radio play to him and Hans Franck dedicated the Nazi propaganda story to Jakob Johannes. The sacrifice of a Saar German .

In his honor, the National Socialists named several streets, especially in the former Saar area. Among other things, today's Gutenbergstrasse in the Völklingen district of Fürstenhausen and in Neunkirchen Johannesstrasse (today and originally named after the first resident Johann Henrich Fried) were renamed Jakob-Johannes-Strasse. In 1940/41 today's Moselstrasse in Rohrbach was renamed “Jakob-Johannes-Weg”. The names lasted until 1945.

Jakob Johannes was stylized as an anti-French symbolic figure in the Saar referendum campaign (“ Schlageter Saarbrückens” or “Schlageter des Saargebietes”). In 1935, Breite Straße was renamed “Jakob-Johannes-Straße” (until 1945) November 1933 to this day a “grave of honor” for Jakob Johannes in the main cemetery in Saarbrücken (grave site in field 4) and lists him as an “honored personality” of the city. Reliefs with a sword in the victory wreath and a bent, lowered torch in the victory wreath decorate his grave as reliefs. The glorification of Jakob Johannes was largely initiated by the landlord of the old Saarbrücker Hofbräuhaus, Mathias Biehler. According to his own statements, Biehler had campaigned for the convicted Johannes with Joseph Louis Marie Andlauer , the then head of the French military administration in the Saar area ("Administrateur supérieur de la Sarre"). Andlauer referred him to the War Ministry in Paris, which, however, rejected a petition for clemency. After the execution of Jakob Johannes von Biehler, several newspaper articles referred to what he described as the "despicable criminal murder of the French military". The Jakob Johannes case only became known to a larger audience after the Saar rally "Homecoming of the Saarland" at the Niederwald Monument on August 28, 1933 with Adolf Hitler as the main speaker. Now propagandistic descriptions of the case followed in several press publications. The coordinated Westdeutsche Rundfunk Köln broadcast a radio play in this regard by the dramaturge Willi Schäferdiek , who later worked for the Reichsender Saarbrücken from 1937 . On April 11, 1935, Biehler asked Gauleiter Josef Bürckel to create a memorial for Jakob Johannes. However, Bürckel's requested memorial was already reduced to a projected memorial plaque at the Malstatter restaurant "Zur Recreation" and in 1939 the project was postponed due to the war. The first tomb for Jakob Johannes was erected by his work colleagues in 1920. In view of the French occupation of the Saar area, the first grave inscription spoke of a "tragic death" of Jakob Johannes. According to a report by the municipal garden department, the grave had been in permanent maintenance from municipal funds since 1931. In June 1937 the base of the tomb was raised at the expense of the city and the inscription on the tombstone now read in bronze letters: HERE RUHT / JAKOB JOHANNES / THE FRENCH / WAR COURT DISTRIBUTED / JUDGED HIM, ALTHOUGH / INNOCENT, OBJECTIVE / LEGALLY TO DEATH . / HE DIED FOR GERMANY / LAND ON October 20, 1919. A stairway to the tomb was also created. After the Second World War, except for the name, the inscription was removed again, probably at the instigation of the French military government. The traces of the distance are visible in today's tombstone. Jakob-Johannes-Straße in Malstatt was renamed Breite Straße again.

literature

  • Armin Schlicker: Street Lexicon Neunkirchen. Streets, squares and bridges in the past and present . Published by Historischer Verein Stadt Neunkirchen e. V. Neunkirchen 2009. ISBN 978-3-00-027592-0 . P. 219

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Changing street names • Street renaming in Völklingen. Völklingen im Wandel, accessed on December 13, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Graves of honor for distinguished personalities. Saarbrücker Friedhöfe, accessed on December 13, 2015 .
  3. ^ Sascha Kiefer: The German novella in the 20th century: a genre history . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20582-9 , pp. 126 .
  4. ^ Armin Schlicker: Street Lexicon Neunkirchen. Streets, squares and bridges in the past and present . Published by Historischer Verein Stadt Neunkirchen e. V. Neunkirchen 2009. ISBN 978-3-00-027592-0 . P. 223
  5. ↑ Ludwig Schmidt-Herb: Tabular chronicle of Rohrbach . Ed .: Heimatmuseum Rohrbach. December 1, 2015, p. 185 ( heidelberg-rohrbach.com [PDF]). Tabular chronicle of Rohrbach ( Memento from February 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Albert Zühlke: Sentenced to death! Jakob Johannes, a debt account of the French court martial in Saarbrücken . In: Saarkalender , 1930, pp. 37–41.
  7. ^ Albert Zühlke: Saarlands Schlageter . In: Saarkalender , 1935, p. 54 f.
  8. ^ Term of office: from February 17, 1919 to November 20, 1919.
  9. ↑ The Niederwald Monument near Rüdesheim (PDF) schloesser-hessen.de. Archived from the original on August 30, 2014. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  10. ↑ Stadtarchiv Saarbrücken, Großstadt inventory, No. 3737 and No. 6269.
  11. ↑ a b Saarbrücken City Archives, Großstadt inventory, No. 5490.
  12. ↑ Clemans Zimmermann, Rainer Hudemann, Michael Kuderna: Medienlandschaft Saar, From 1945 to the present , volume 1. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich, 2010, p. 40, ( Google Books )
  13. ^ Hans-Walter Herrmann, Georg Wilhelm Sante: History of the Saarland . Ploetz Verlag, 1972, p. 32.
  14. ^ Rainer Knauf: Graves of honor at Saarbrücker Friedhöfe . Manuscript for the journal for the history of the Saar region, Volume 47, 1999, pp. 11–12.
  15. ↑ Graves of honor for distinguished personalities . saarbruecker-friedhoefe.de. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  16. ^ Application for a grave dated January 28, 1920, in: FBS, "Rote Bauakte", applications for the installation of memorial signs, Südfriedhof 1919/1920.
  17. ↑ June 6, 1944.
personal data
SURNAME Johannes, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German railway mechanic
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Saarbrücken
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1919
Place of death Saarbrücken