Klara Stoffels

Klara Stoffels , b. Wiechert (born December 7, 1904 in Wiesdorf , † August 11, 1944 in Berlin ( Plötzensee execution site )) was a German Jehovah's Witness and a victim of the National Socialist martial law.

Life

Klara Stoffels was born on December 7, 1904. After marrying Friedrich (Fritz) Stoffels , the couple became involved in the community of Bible Students (since 1931: Jehovah's Witnesses) even before the National Socialists came to power . The couple lived in an apartment on Simrockstrasse in Cologne-Ehrenfeld until 1935 . Even after the final ban on the Bible Students' movement in June 1933, they organized the distribution of the banned magazine Watchtower and leaflets underground. Together with the Cologne members of the religious community, they continued to be active missionary and - especially after the outbreak of the Second World War - anti-militarist.

Belvedere station: House of the Stoffels family in Müngersdorf at the end of the 1930s

After Fritz Stoffels was no longer allowed to do his work because of his faith, the family moved in 1935 to the old Belvedere station building on the western outskirts of Cologne, to Müngersdorf . Her husband, Fritz Stoffels was arrested in 1939 and to three years in prison convicted. In April 1943, an underground group around Jehovah's Witnesses Julius Engelhard and Auguste Hetkamp was found in the Ruhr area . As part of the large-scale wave of arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses by the Gestapo in the Ruhr area and the Rhineland , Klara and Friedrich Stoffels were also arrested. Klara Stoffels refused to work in the armaments factory of the prison out of religious conviction . Together with her husband and a group of Jehovah's Witnesses, on June 2, 1944, the 6th Senate of the People's Court found her guilty of degrading military strength and treasonous favoring the enemy and sentenced her to death. Together with Auguste Hetkamp, ​​she was then transferred back to the Barnimstrasse women's prison in Berlin. The death sentence was carried out using the guillotine on August 11, 1944 in the Berlin-Plötzensee execution site. Klara Stoffels left friends with a farewell letter documenting her unbroken faith:

“I have the pleasure of finishing the pilgrimage together with my good, dear, loyal Fritz. Yes, what will be us, just joy and happiness. Dear ones, in this sense I am happy and happily look death in the eye and hope that Fritz does too. "

- Klara Stoffels

The men of the Jehovah's Witnesses who were co-accused and sentenced to death, Johann Hörstgen, Paul Weseler, Wilhelm Bischoff and her husband Friedrich Stoffels, were murdered three days later, on August 14, 1944, in the execution site in Brandenburg-Görden .

During the war, Klara's brothers hid Jewish fellow citizens who were able to evade their deportation by going into hiding . Her brother Karl Wiechert became a successful Cologne dialect and carnival poet after the war.

Honor

Stumbling block for Klara Stoffels in front of the Belvedere train station, Belvederestrasse 147 in Cologne-Müngersdorf

On January 20, 2007 in Cologne-Müngersdorf in front of the Belvedere-Haus , an old station building on the Cologne – Aachen railway line, two stumbling blocks were laid by Gunter Demnig in memory of Klara Stoffels and her husband Fritz as part of the art and monument project .

literature

• Detlef Garbe : Between Resistance and Martyrdom. Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. Madison 2008.
• Detlef Garbe: Between resistance and martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich. de Gruyter, 1999.
• Helmut Bieger: Memories of Aunt Klärchen. In: Focus on Müngersdorf. 17, winter 2010/11.
• Historical research of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne; Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne: The Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne (1933–1945) . Cologne 2006, 40 pp.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mike Lorsbach: The Nazi persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne (1933-1945). A representation of the history of persecution of the Cologne Jehovah's Witnesses on the basis of previously unpublished archive material . Ed .: Working group on the historical research of Jehovah's Witnesses in Cologne in cooperation with the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne. Cologne 2006, p. 25 .
2. ↑ Helmut Bieger: In memory of Aunt Klärchen - residents of the Belvedere house executed. In: Focus on Müngersdorf. Issue 17, Cologne 2010/11, p. 24 ff. There is also a note about the wrong birth name on the Stolperstein
3. ↑ Detlef Garbe: Between Resistance and Martyrdom: The Jehovah's Witnesses in the "Third Reich" . (= Studies on Contemporary History. Volume 42). 4th edition. Walter de Gruyter, 1999, ISBN 3-486-56404-8 , p. 338.
4. ↑ Barnimstrasse Women's Prison: List of women executed during National Socialism ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed March 24, 2015. 
5. ↑ Johannes Wrobel: "Goodbye!" - Farewell letters from Jehovah's Witnesses sentenced to death under the Nazi regime. In: Marcus Herrberger: Because it is written: "You shouldn't kill!" The persecution of religious conscientious objectors under the Nazi regime with special emphasis on Jehovah's Witnesses (1939–1945). Vienna 2005, p. 304 here from: Watchtower Society, historical archive of Jehovah's Witnesses 11/08/44
6. ↑ Helmut Bieger: In memory of Aunt Klärchen - residents of the Belvedere house executed. In: Focus on Müngersdorf. Issue 17, Cologne 2010/11, p. 26.
7. ↑ Karl Wiechert: Mer build op! (Kölsche Opbau-Marsch) Dedicated to our hometown Cologne. Cologne 1947, 3 pp.
8. ↑ stadt-koeln.de: Stumbling blocks for Jehovah's Witnesses , accessed on March 23, 2015.