Johann Hatje

Johann Friedrich Hatje (born December 23, 1889 in Eidelstedt ; died January 17, 1977 in Stuttgart ) was a German railroad worker, trade unionist and social democrat . From 1952 to 1957 he was a board member of the Deutsche Bundesbahn .

Life

Born as the son of a farm laborer in what is now the Hamburg district of Eidelstedt, Hatje attended elementary school and began an apprenticeship as a bookbinder at the age of 15 . In 1908 he passed the journeyman's examination and then went on a hike . During this time he was already active in the bookbinding association.

In the spring of 1914 he married his wife Lina, née Russ, who came from a Jewish family in Breslau and whom he had met in the trade union. The couple had two children, their son Gerd, born in 1915 (who founded what is now Hatje Cantz Verlag after 1945 ) and their daughter Elsa, born in 1920.

Two months after the beginning of the First World War , Hatje moved to the Prussian State Railways in October 1914 in the Altona directorate , where he was initially employed as a track construction worker. After training for the driving service, he soon became an assistant conductor. From February 1915 until the end of the war in November 1918, Hatje served as a field railroader on the Eastern Front.

After returning to Altona, Hatje became a member of the SPD and began to get involved as a rail unionist. In 1919 he became a member of the works council of Altona station . From 1920 to 1928 Hatje was chairman of the main works council at the head office of the Deutsche Reichsbahn . For health reasons he had to resign from his position. Hatje had already moved to Berlin with his family in 1925.

From the end of 1928 to 1930 Hatje worked as an administrative officer (inspector) at the Reichsbahnarbeiter-Pensionskasse in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe . In 1930 he resumed full-time trade union activity and became district manager of the Union of Railway Workers in Germany (EdED) for Württemberg , which involved another move to Stuttgart. Hatje and his whole family were closely involved in the social democratic labor movement.

With the “ seizure of power ” by the National Socialists on January 30, 1933, Hatje, a well-known trade unionist and social democrat, was soon persecuted. First of all, there were meetings with other SPD members where possible work in the underground was discussed. During the break-up of the free trade unions on May 2, 1933, Hatje, who had refused to hand over the cash register to the SA in the EdED's Stuttgart office, was also arrested. After 22 days he was released from the Stuttgart police prison.

Hatje, who had no chance of returning to the railroad due to his political activities, worked in the following years as a sales representative and unskilled worker. In 1938 he finally got a job as dispatch manager in a printing company. In the years after 1933, the family increasingly suffered from racial discrimination, as Hatje lived in a “privileged mixed marriage” . Since the remaining Jews were systematically deported to the East from 1941 onwards, the marriage of Hatje's wife no longer offered adequate protection. Following a denunciation to the Gestapo , Lina Hatje was arrested in December 1942 for allegedly defeatist statements. She was still able to visit her family in the Stuttgart Gestapo detention center, but on February 16, 1943, she was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and murdered there in the gas chamber. Hatje, who was still trying to get her released, received a succinct letter from the Gestapo at the end of March 1943, according to which his wife had died of blood poisoning on March 21, 1943 . Since 2007, a stumbling block has reminded of Lina Hatje when she last lived in Stuttgart.

After the end of the war, Hatje soon resumed union work. In the union of railway workers in Germany (GdED), which he co-founded , he became second chairman. In 1952, Federal Transport Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm appointed him a member of the four-person board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn , responsible for social and personnel issues and with the official title of "President of the Deutsche Bundesbahn". In 1956 he received a monthly pension as reparation , but compensation for the imprisonment was refused due to the short duration. Hatje retired in 1957. He died on January 17, 1977 in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt.

literature

• Andreas Engwert: Johann Hatje (1889–1977) . In: Alfred Gottwaldt : Railway workers against Hitler. Resistance and persecution on the Reichsbahn 1933–1945. Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-204-6 , pp. 124-134.
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) . Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 243 f., 336 f., 341, 343 f., 494 f. (Short biography), 584.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johann Hatje in the catalog of the German National Library
• Report of the Stuttgarter Zeitung about the Hatje couple

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Against forgetting: Stumbling blocks for Stuttgart: Lina Hatje-Russ