Karl Schapper (resistance fighter)

Karl Schapper (born August 27, 1879 in Groß Möringen ; † February 1, 1941 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a Catholic resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Karl Schapper, ca.1930

Karl Schapper comes from a Protestant pastor's family and was a descendant of Cornelius Friedrich Adolf Krummacher .

After attending grammar school in Wernigerode , Schapper studied law in Leipzig , Berlin and Switzerland . As a trainee lawyer in the Prussian service, he completed positions in Haigerloch , Neuwied , Sigmaringen and Potsdam . In 1906 he became a government assessor at the Bochum district office . From 1913 to 1920 he worked in the railway administration. In 1920 he resigned from the railway administration as a member of the government and became the general representative of Count Tiele-Winckler in Upper Silesia . Around the same time he converted to the Catholic Church. In 1933/34 Schapper became legal advisor at Kattowitzer Hütten AG. During his travels to Poland , Schapper came into contact with the Nazi-critical Catholic magazine Der Deutsche in Polen , where he wrote various articles in which he described the incompatibility of the Christian understanding of faith with Nazi ideology. In 1939 there were contacts with alleged members of the military resistance against Hitler . In Niederbreisig , where Schapper had acquired the Idyllenhof, he maintained contacts with the bourgeois opposition to Hitler. Due to a denunciation , he and his wife Irmgard (née Wambsganss) were arrested by the Gestapo on September 9, 1939 . Schapper was sentenced to death by the 2nd Senate of the People's Court in Berlin for high treason and beheaded on February 1, 1941 in Plötzensee .

Schapper belonged to the early Christian resistance against Hitler. His bourgeois-humanistic education and his ecumenically oriented Christian faith led him into personal opposition to National Socialism. The case files, which are now accessible again, show a person who accepted the full consequences of the resistance and the readiness to be martyred .

The Catholic Church accepted Karl Schapper as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Frank Gausmann: “The role model of a real resistance activist in the Third Reich”. In: Heimatjahrbuch Kreis Ahrweiler 2006 , pp. 186–190 (online) .
• Pia Nordblom: Karl Schapper. In: Helmut Moll (ed.): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Volume I. 7th, revised and updated edition, Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 696-701.
• Pia Nordblom: For Faith and Nationality. The Catholic weekly newspaper “Der Deutsche in Polen” (1934–1939) dealing with National Socialism (= publications of the Commission for Contemporary History , Research, Volume 87). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 978-3-506-79992-0 .