Koburg (Mettmann)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View of the Villa Kocherscheidt called Koburg (around 1922)
The Koburg memorial in front of the Evangelical Church on Freiheitstrasse on Lavalplatz in Mettmann

Koburg is the name of a castle-like villa in the Lower Bergisch Neandertal in the southwest of Mettmann , which the industrialist Wilhelm Kocherscheidt (1888-1956) had built in 1921. The name Koburg originated in the Mettmann vernacular as a short form of Kocherscheidt's castle . During the Second World War , it was inhabited by the Pose family, who ran the Pose-Marré steelworks in neighboring Erkrath, making it the largest company in town at the time.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , the villa served SA Standard 258 as an accommodation. The remote location predestined them as a collection point, protective detention center and torture cellar for those arrested from the Mettmann district . About 100 opponents of the regime are said to have been held in the Koburg; at least one prisoner died from the abuse, others were shot or driven to their deaths. Alfred Hilgers, who was born in Wuppertal , was a personnel officer on the staff of the SA sub-group in Düsseldorf . In this capacity he was in command of both the Koburg and the Kemna concentration camp , which resulted in links. With the opening of the Börgermoor concentration camp , one of the Emsland camps , in the summer of 1933, the Koburg lost its function as an early prison of the National Socialist regime.

In July 1949, before the Wuppertal regional court ten former SA members to the so-called Coburg process penitentiary - and imprisonment convicted. The convictions were for grievous bodily harm and crimes against humanity .

Koburg monument

Since April 2000 there has been a memorial on Lavalplatz in the center of Mettmann, which commemorates the prisoners who were abused and killed in the Koburg. The prison gates are symbolized by three large, rectangular bars made of black steel tubes arranged in a triangle. Through the extension underpinned in the paving, they each point to the Catholic and Protestant churches as well as the town hall. A plate with inscriptions is worked into each:

In memory of the victims of the National Socialist dictatorship (1933–1945)

  • The prisoners who were mistreated and killed in the Koburg (Neandertal) and the Brown House (Bismarckstrasse).
  • The persecuted for their political and religious ideology from Mettmann
  • The outlawed Jewish fellow citizens who were murdered in the concentration camps

Web links

Commons : Koburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www-brs.ub.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/netahtml/HSS/Diss/MintertDavidMagnus/diss.pdf
  2. ↑ 51 ° 15 '2.3 "  N , 6 ° 58' 34.9"  E
  3. ↑ http://www.neills.de/02_Mettman.html

Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 37.7 ″  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 42.3 ″  E