Kathe Seitz
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Käthe Seitz née Brunnemer (born February 12, 1894 in Ludwigshafen , † September 15, 1942 in Stuttgart ) was a German social democratic resistance fighter against the Nazi state .
Life
Käthe Brunnemer came from the social democratically active family of Philipp Brunnemer and his wife Luise. At the age of 18, she joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the 1920s she was a city councilor in Cleve (today: Kleve). She was married for the first time in Kleve and became the mother of her daughter Hilde Janssen. Later, as an adult, she was also active in the resistance and was sentenced to a prison sentence for "listening to enemy broadcasters" , which she had to serve in Haguenau.
In her second marriage, Käthe was married to the nurse Alfred Seitz in Heidelberg , with whom she lived in Rohrbach (Heidelberg) . In Heidelberg she and her (non-party) husband made contact with the Lechleiter resistance group. Two days after the Wehrmacht attacked the Soviet Union , they met Georg Lechleiter , Jakob Faulhaber and Gustav Suss (who later became a traitor ) in their apartment to decide on the publication of a pamphlet against the war called “The Harbinger” . With the help of a large group of employees, this plan was able to be implemented. A total of four issues appeared between 1941 and 1942, which were mainly distributed to workers critical of the regime in large companies . Käthe was involved in this project by describing the matrices with the texts that Georg Lechleiter wrote. The traitor Suss reported the incident to the Gestapo , so that a mass arrest was carried out in June 1942. The heads of the organization were arrested on February 26 and the following days. In May the trial took place at the People's Court in Mannheim Castle , with 14 of the 16 defendants sentenced to death, including the Seitz family. The attempt by Käthe to draw all accusations and exonerate her husband was unsuccessful. A week before her execution, she wrote a farewell letter to her daughter Hilde, who was already waiting for her prison sentence to begin. On September 15, 1942 at 5:10 Kathe Seitz was the guillotine executed at 5:23 PM followed her husband Alfred and at 5:47 PM, her father Philip Brunnemer.
memory
- Since 1974 a street in Neuenheim (Heidelberg) has been named "Seitzstraße". In addition, the VVN-BdA donated legend signs to the murdered spouses, which were unveiled on September 22, 2016.
- On November 28 and 29, 2011, the action artist Gunter Demnig laid stumbling blocks for Käthe and Alfred Seitz at the entrance to Karlsruher Strasse 46 in Heidelberg .
literature
- Memorial sites for the victims of National Socialism. A documentation . Volume I, Bonn 1995, p. 44, ISBN 3-89331-208-0
- AU Machmol: " Lifelong human" or outsider, the strong of the weak. A novel-like tale , ISBN 978-3-7357-3516-4 .
Web links
- Käthe and Alfred Seitz , Heidelberg Stolpersteine initiative
- Treason was their undoing , Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , September 15, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://www.thoraxklinik-heidelberg.de/fileadmin/3th_startseiten/Pressemitteilungen/Pressemitteilungen_2017/PM_Seitz_final.pdf
- ↑ https://www.metropolnews.info/mp202278/heidelberg-legendenschilder-zur-seitzstrasse-in-neuenheim-wurden-enthuellt
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Seitz, Kathe |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Brunnemer, Käthe (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German social democratic resistance fighter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 12, 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ludwigshafen |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 15, 1942 |
| Place of death | Stuttgart |