Julius Nees

House Offenbacher Landstrasse 9

Julius Nees (born September 28, 1898 in Pfaffenwiesbach ; † September 17, 1942 in the Preungesheim prison, Frankfurt am Main ) was a German resistance fighter during the Nazi era (Leis-Breitinger group).

Life and activity

After attending school, Nees worked as a forest and factory worker. From 1917 he took part in the First World War. From 1919 he was a member of the Foreign Legion for six years . In 1927 he settled in Frankfurt am Main as a casual worker.

In the 1930s, Nees became a painter. In this job he was finally hired by the Emda company. Here he met the former communist Anton Breitinger among his work colleagues , who won him over in 1939 to work in a communist group he had set up in the Frankfurt area and which worked underground against the Nazi system. In addition to Breitinger and Nees, Wilhelm Hugo , Edmund Germann and Heinrich Ochs , who were employed at the Frankfurt Post Office 9 , as well as Anton Leist, Otto Häuslein and Wilhelm Klöppinger belonged to the inner circle of this group .

During the Second World War, the group distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and leaflets in the hope of being able to contribute to the efforts of the Allied powers to overthrow the Nazi dictatorship and to accelerate the overthrow of the Hitler dictatorship domestically. In particular, the members of the group used their position as employees of post offices to enclose anti-Nazi documents in field post parcels that they were processing at the front. In addition, she passed word of mouth on reports from foreign radio stations that she illegally listened to and contained information that spoke in favor of a development of the war to Germany's disadvantage and which was therefore likely to cast doubts about the chances of a victorious end to the war for Germany, so that the Nazi government wished to withhold them from the German population as far as possible.

Stumbling stone Offenbacher Landstrasse 9 for Julius Nees

When the group was broken up in the summer of 1941, Nees was also arrested. There followed charges before the People's Court of preparation and high treason and degradation of military strength . The most important members of Breitinger's group, with the exception of Ochs, who hanged himself in custody, were found guilty and sentenced to death in three successive sessions: Nees was sentenced together with Breitinger, Wilhelm Hugo and Edmund Germann on 24. June 1942. In the grounds of the judgment it was stated, among other things, that the accused had tried through their activities to prepare the ground for the spread of the communist world revolution to Germany by a corresponding intellectual influence on the population.

The execution of all seven was carried out with the guillotine in September 1942 in the Preungesheim prison .

Since June 22, 2014, a stumbling stone in front of Nees' last house in Offenbacher Landstrasse 9 Frankfurt has been a reminder of his fate .

Web links

• Short biography of Julius Nees on the website of the City of Frankfurt, accessed on February 22, 2020