Johannes Enke

Johannes Enke (born April 10, 1899 in Mickten , † February 25, 1945 in Buttstädt ) was a German communist resistance fighter against the Nazi regime , a prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp and a victim of fascism .

Life

Enke came from a simple working class family in a Dresden suburb. He attended elementary schools in Drebkau and Dobrilugk . He then started an apprenticeship as an electrician at the Dobrilugk overland headquarters. From November 1917 to May 1918, his company sent him to the Buttstädt overland power station as an auxiliary fitter. He was then drafted as an army soldier in the First World War and only released in January 1920. From 1922 to 1930 he worked as a tanner in a Siegen tannery, where he was also employed as an electrician. In December 1931 he went back to Buttstädt to support his mother in need. After the transfer of power to the NSDAP at the end of January 1933, he had to do so-called “ emergency work ” in the quarry on Rudersdorfer Chaussee .

Johannes Enke had become a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the 1920s . He exercised the function of a pioneer leader and was the cashier of the Buttstadt KPD local group and a functionary of the " Red Aid " (RHD). For example, he went on hikes with young pioneers to Bachra , where they looked after the graves of those who died in March . Enke was one of the first to be arrested by the communist functionaries on February 28, 1933. After a short stopover in the Weimar regional court prison , he was sent to the first Thuringian concentration camp in Nohra on March 3, 1933 . While most of the prisoners signed a lapel on April 12, 1933, saying that they would not engage in communist activities again, Enke refused to sign and was therefore transferred with 31 other prisoners to the Ichtershausen state prison when the Nohra concentration camp was closed. Buttstädt's mayor Jacob had also taken care of that, who pleaded for Enke's detention in an internal assessment. When he was released a few weeks later, he illegally continued his political work for the KPD, collected membership fees and collected money for the families of imprisoned KPD members. The KPD members met secretly on the Mannstedter meadows to discuss the anti-fascist resistance. When the Gestapo in the spring of 1934 at a house search was freshly printed member brands, he was sentenced on 13 July 1934 to two years in prison, which he in prison Gräfentonna dismounted. Because Mayor Jacob voted again against Enke, he was arrested at the prison gate on the day of his release and sent to the second early concentration camp in Thuringia in Bad Sulza . When the Bad Sulza concentration camp was closed on July 9, 1937, he and 100 other prisoners were sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp and, on July 31, 1937, to the Buchenwald concentration camp that was to be established . On April 20, 1939, he was released from the concentration camp as part of Hitler's "birthday amnesty" . During the Second World War , he and his comrades listened to radio broadcasts from Moscow radio in a conspiratorial apartment . He was once again a victim of Nazi persecution when he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on August 22, 1944 as part of the " Operation Grid ". When he was released on September 5, along with 81 " action prisoners ", he was a broken and terminally ill man. Ordinary bronchitis led to his death on February 25, 1945.

Stumbling block for a communist resistance fighter in Buttstädt

Honors

• On October 7, 1984, a memorial was inaugurated on Roßplatz in Buttstädt to commemorate the resisting communists , where young pioneers remembered him and where young people laid flowers at youth consecration celebrations . After the political upheaval in 1990 , this memorial was removed. Circumstances that Enke had been an undercover Gestapo agent had promoted this revaluation. A street that had received his name was also renamed.
• After research by the history workshop of the Prager-Haus-Verein Apolda , the rumors circulating in Buttstädt about an alleged spying activity of the communist Enke against his comrades were proven to be incorrect. Inspired by this research, an interest group was formed in Buttstädt, which, with the consent of the mayor and city ​​council , decided to have a stumbling block laid for Enke . The Cologne action artist Gunter Demnig laid this stone on October 15, 2011 with strong public participation in front of Enke's former home at Marktstrasse 4 .

literature

• Udo Wohlfeld : The rumor. A "submarine" in Buttstädt , = found 9th series of publications by the Prager Haus Apolda eV association, Apolda 2011, ISBN 3-935275-19-6