Katharina Leipelt

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Katharina Leipelt , née Katharina Baron , also Kaethe Leipelt , (born May 28, 1892 in Boskowitz , Austria-Hungary , † December 9, 1943 in Hamburg ) was a German chemist and involved in the resistance against National Socialism at the White Rose Hamburg . She was arrested by the Gestapo on December 7, 1943 and found dead in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison on December 9, 1943 , after she had been announced that she would be deported to Auschwitz .

Life

Katharina Leipelt came from a Jewish family in Vienna and had a doctorate in chemistry . During the First World War , she met Conrad Leipelt, a graduate engineer from Silesia , whom she married after the war. Their son Hans was born in Vienna in 1921 . In the early 1920s, Conrad Leipelt took over the position of technical director of the Zinnwerke Wilhelmsburg , and the family moved into a villa in the village of Rönneburg near Harburg . In 1925 their daughter Maria was born.

Because of their origins, Katharina Leipelt and her family were affected by the provisions of the Nuremberg Laws from September 1935 , which declared all Germans who had Jewish parents to be Jews . The children Hans and Maria Leipelt were considered “ half-Jews ”. In 1936 the family moved to the Reiherstieg district in Wilhelmsburg . With the “ Anschluss of Austria ” to the German Reich in March 1938, the relatives living in Vienna became victims of Nazi persecution. Leipelt's brother committed suicide on March 12, 1938 and her parents fled to Brno , where their father also died. Konrad Leipelt traveled to Austria and brought his mother-in-law Hermine Baron to Wilhelmsburg.

With the beginning of the Second World War , the restrictions were tightened, the daughter Maria Leipelt was banned from attending secondary school , and Hans Leipelt was expelled from the Wehrmacht on August 29, 1940 . Hermine Baron was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto on July 19, 1942 , where she died on January 22, 1943. When Konrad Leipelt suddenly suffered a fatal heart attack in September 1942 , the family was deprived of their last protection from the anti-Semitic attacks of the Nazi state.

Katharina Leipelt ran a hospitable house in the Kirchenallee in Wilhelmsburg, today Mannesallee, a cross-generational circle of friends frequented there, which included in particular people who were in opposition to the Nazi regime out of personal concern . They met both for socializing and for political talks and to exchange information. After the White Rose leaflets had also reached Hamburg in 1943 , they were also discussed and approved by the older generation. After Hans Leipelt was arrested in Munich on October 8, 1943 , Katharina Leipelt traveled to Munich and tried to organize help for her son. On November 9, 1943, her daughter Maria Leipelt was arrested in connection with the activities of the White Rose in Hamburg.

On December 7, 1943, Katharina Leipelt was arrested herself and imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. Two days later, on December 9, 1943, she was found dead in her cell. Older sources say that Leipelt hanged herself in her cell on the night of January 8th to 9th, 1944 in order to avoid being transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp . After extensive research by the Gedenken in Harburg initiative and students from the Heisenberg High School in Harburg on the Leipelt family, the date of death was corrected by the registry office and doubts about the circumstances of death were also raised.

Commemoration

Stolperstein in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg

Stolpersteine in the Mannesallee in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg and in the Vogteistraße in Hamburg-Rönneburg remember Katharina Leipelt . She is named by name alongside the other victims of the White Rose with the White Rose Memorial in Hamburg-Volksdorf .

See also

literature

  • Christiane Benzenberg: Monuments for the resistance group 'White Rose' in Munich and Hamburg , Master's thesis submitted to the Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn 1993; Available as a PDF file at: Benzenberg: Denkmäler (PDF; 520 kB), accessed on May 23, 2010
  • Angela Bottin: Tight time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3
  • Ursel Hochmuth : Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday ; Editor: Association of the anti-fascists and persecuted persons of the Nazi regime Hamburg eV, Hamburg 1971
  • Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933–1945 , 2nd edition, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-87682-036-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Commemorative Book - Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945. In: www.bundesarchiv.de. Federal Archives, accessed on February 27, 2020 .
  2. ^ Klaus Möller on Kaethe Leipelt , accessed on September 29, 2013
  3. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , p. 417
  4. ↑ Information about Katharina Leipelt on Stolpersteine ​​Hamburg
personal data
SURNAME Leipelt, Katharina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Baron, Katharina (maiden name); Leipelt, Kaethe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1943
Place of death Hamburg