Kurt Elvers

Kurt Elvers (born September 24, 1919 in Hamburg ; † February 20, 1945 in Hamburg) was a student at the Nordic Art Academy in Bremen and was the victim of denunciation by his fellow students, which led to his execution in Hamburg- Höltigbaum .

biography

Elvers' father came from the Lüneburg district . His grandfather had a coal and potato trade there, and he also had a motor ship on the Elbe . His mother comes from Wandsbeck . Elvers went to Erna Lüdgens' private school in Hamburg for four years and later attended the upper secondary school in Eimsbüttel up to the lower secondary school . This was followed by a four-year locksmith apprenticeship in Hamburg until 1939, as he wanted to take over his father's building metalworking shop.

In 1939 he was called up and served in Hamburg and from February 1940 in an anti-aircraft field unit in Bremen. He was stationed in Normandy until February 1941, then in Poland and from 1941 in the Soviet Union. In 1941 he was wounded and from January 1942 he was in Bremen. Through the mediation of his company, he managed to start studying art at the Nordic Art Academy in Bremen from May 1944.

Elvers is classified as 'talented' and particularly eager by the professors at the art school. The young soldier repeatedly expresses his wish not to return to the front, but instead to finish his art studies. In the circle of fellow students at the art school, he also seems to have been viewed as a 'talent'. But also as critical of the Nazi regime. So he reports on his observations as a soldier and that he does not want to die the "heroic death". When he found out about the assassination attempt by Stauffenberg's group on Hitler in the summer of 1944, he is said to have said to some of his fellow students: "It's a shame it didn't work out, otherwise we would have peace now." A student, to whom he is said to have made this statement, is appalled: “As a German, I was outraged that at a time when the last of the nation's forces were being used, insidiously hounded against the conduct of the war, thereby endangering the possibility of victory . “When Elver's statements became known, he was denounced to the Gestapo by one of his fellow students. In the main hearing on October 30, 1944 in Verden before a court martial, he was sentenced to death. All of the father's desperate attempts to obtain a pardon were unsuccessful. Even interventions by some professors did not change the judgment. Elvers was shot dead in Hamburg-Höltigbaum on February 20, 1945.

Attempts to rehabilitate and convict the perpetrators

Elvers was first buried on the war cemetery at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg. However, half a year after the end of the war in 1946, his father arranged for him to be transferred to a private grave in the Ohlsdorf cemetery.

After 1945, the father had tried several times to hold those guilty of his son's death accountable. In an extensive denazification procedure in Bremen against the chief informer Gerhard Barnstorf, he was initially sentenced to three years in a labor camp. He didn't have to take the sentence. All other participants in the denunciation emerged unmolested from the proceedings. Investigations that the father sought after the ruling by the Bremen Chamber of Judges were also discontinued by the Bremen public prosecutor. The chief public prosecutor finally stated in 1960 as a justification: “It cannot therefore be described as unusual that the convicted person [meaning Kurt Elvers] was found fully guilty according to the strict standards of the time that were set for the maintenance of male discipline ; because in the absence of the written grounds for the verdict, it must be assumed that the court martial has already dealt with the overall behavior of the then Defendant Elvers. These hard standards applied at the time - which have become alien to us today - can be justified, to use a collective term, by the necessities of war - as was seen at the time - and cannot simply be equated with unlawful or hostile purposes of sentencing. After that, no further investigations are necessary. "

Two stumbling blocks were set for Elvers . One at home in Hamburg, Osterstr. 26, and one in front of the building of the former Nordic Art Academy in Bremen, Am Wandrahm 23, the latter relocated on February 20, 2011, as part of the program of a conference on the history of the Nordic Art Academy.

In addition, the successor institution of the Nordic Art Academy , today's University of the Arts , took the Elvers case as an opportunity and starting point for their own efforts to come to terms with the history of the Nordic Art Academy.

Sources, literature

• Bremen State Archives , 4, 66 - I., 367–370.
• Hans Hesse: To the scar . Bremen 2011 (Ed. University of the Arts Bremen).
• Hans Hesse: “It's a shame it didn't work out. Otherwise we would have peace now ”- The execution of Kurt Elvers. 1944 student at the Nordic Art Academy in Bremen . In: VIER, Das Magazin der Hochschule für Künste Bremen, No. 9/2010, pp. 87–88.
• Hans Hesse: "The Nordic University of Fine Arts should, drawing from the primordial foundation of German-Nordic folklore, contribute to the development of a native culture in the spirit of Adolf Hitler" - sketches on the history of the Nordic Art College (NKH) . In: Workers' Movement and Social History, No. 23/24, 2009, pp. 85-104.

Web links

• To the Scar website for the book
• Stumbling block in Hamburg