Libertas Schulze-Boysen

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Libertas Schulze-Boysen , née Libertas Viktoria Haas-Heye (born November 20, 1913 in Paris , †  December 22, 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee after being executed ) belonged to the Rote Kapelle resistance group as an accomplice and helper during the Nazi regime .

Life

Opening page of the field judgment of the Reich Court Martial of December 19, 1942

Libertas Schulze-Boysen was the youngest of three children of the Heidelberg fashion designer Otto Ludwig Haas-Heye and his wife Viktoria Ada Astrid Agnes Countess zu Eulenburg (1886–1967). The parents married in Liebenberg on May 12, 1909 and then lived temporarily in London and Paris. Her siblings were Ottora Maria Douglas-Reimer (born February 13, 1910 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ; † 2001) and Johannes Haas-Heye .

The mother, called "Tora", came from an old Prussian noble family. She was the youngest of eight children of the Prussian diplomat Philipp zu Eulenburg and his Swedish wife, Countess Augusta Sandels (1853-1941). When Libertas was eight years old, the parents divorced. Libertas spent part of her childhood on the Eulenburg estate, Schloss Liebenberg, near Berlin .

From 1922 she attended a school in Berlin and lived with her father, who headed the fashion department of the Kunstgewerbemuseum at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße  8. In the wide corridors of this building, which became the Gestapo headquarters in 1933 , Libertas played with her siblings and other children. She was looked after by the drawing teacher Valerie Wolffenstein , with whom Libertas spent the summer of 1924 in Switzerland. From 1926 to 1932 she attended the girls' lyceum in Zurich . After graduating from high school and a stay in Great Britain , she was hired as a press officer in the Berlin branch of the film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the spring of 1933 . In March 1933, Libertas also became a member of the NSDAP . In 1935 Libertas got involved in the “ Reich Labor Service of Female Youth” (RADwJ) in Glindow near Potsdam . Since the early 30s she has been writing film reviews that show a clear closeness to National Socialist ideology.

In 1934 she made the acquaintance of the publicist and adjutant in the Reich Aviation Ministry, Harro Schulze-Boysen , the son of a naval officer and grand-nephew of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz , whom she married on July 26, 1936 in the castle chapel of Liebenberg .

After the wedding, the couple gathered young intellectuals, artists and workers around them and met them at Liebenberg Castle, unobserved by the Gestapo. In the circle u. a. the artist couple Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher , the writers Günther Weisenborn , Walter Küchenmeister and Greta Kuckhoff with her husband Adam Kuckhoff , the journalists John Graudenz and Gisela von Poellnitz , the doctors John Rittmeister and Elfriede Paul , the dancer Oda Schottmüller , the actress Marta since 1938 Husemann with her husband Walter Husemann .

At the beginning of 1937 she resigned from the NSDAP under the pretext that as a wife she was no longer able to meet all the demands of party work in terms of time and health .

In addition to her work as a film critic, from 1941/1942 onwards she collected visual material on German war crimes for the Reich Propaganda Ministry . She supported her husband in the search for like-minded opponents of the Nazi regime. After the attack on the Soviet Union , at the end of October 1941, she received a call from an intermediary for the Red Army's intelligence service in Brussels , Belgium - code name "Kent" - who was charged with establishing contact with her husband Harro Schulze-Boysen. "Kent" was supposed to clarify the causes of the radio traffic to Moscow that had not yet been recorded. (Due to the short range of the radios - until now - a radio connection was not established.) Together with her husband Harro, they met in their apartment. According to the later judgment of the Reich Court Martial , Libertas is said to have given technical details for the start of broadcasting operations to the radio operator Hans Coppi , who was involved from June 1941 , and to have been there when her husband "Kent" dictated some information.

Libertas Schulze-Boysen began in the summer of 1942 in the Kulturfilmzentrale - responsible for “subject areas art, German land and people, peoples and countries” - together with her colleague, the (later) writer Alexander Spoerl , to collect visual material about violent crimes on the Eastern Front. This information became the starting point for a leaflet. After the secret radio messages of the Soviet Union's intelligence service, which contained her name and address, were deciphered - via Brussels - by the Gestapo , Libertas and her husband were arrested on September 8, 1942 and her husband were already arrested on August 31, 1942 and tried before the Reich Court Martial. The trial ended on December 9, 1942 with a death sentence . Libertas Schulze-Boysen was executed by beheading every three minutes between 8:18 p.m. and 8:33 p.m. on December 22, 1942, in Berlin-Plötzensee prison, along with five others from the resistance group . Her husband had previously been in the same prison at 7:05 p.m. and - from the National Socialists' point of view - had been particularly dishonorably hung on the meat hook .

The director of the Moringen concentration camp memorial , Ursula Gerecht, reported in her lecture Marta Wolter and “ Kuhle Wampe ” - The story of a woman and the story of a film from Marta Husemann's detention diary about Libertas Schulze-Boysen's companion: A person you can should never have initiated into the illegal work. Not a conscious traitor. But easy to speak through their excessive vanity . The writer Günther Weisenborn, who was imprisoned at the same time and friend, later spoke of the fact that shortly after her arrest Libertas could still laugh about the fact that the cells of the headquarters of the secret police were in the buildings of the former art school whose director her father had been .

Honors

Berlin memorial plaque for the Schulze-Boysens at Haus Altenburger Allee 19 in Berlin-Westend

literature

Web links

Commons : Libertas Schulze-Boysen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Liebenberg Castle was described by Theodor Fontane in the walks through the Mark Brandenburg (Volume 5: Five castles , 1889).
  2. ↑ Silke Kettelhake: "Tell everyone, everyone about me!" The beautiful short life of the Libertas Schulze-Boysen. Reading sample, PDF, accessed on November 16, 2014.
  3. ^ Günter Agde: Review of: Aurich, Rolf; Jacobsen, Wolfgang; German Kinemathek Museum f. Film u. Watch TV. (Ed.): Libertas Schulze-Boysen. Film publicist. Munich 2008, in: H-Soz-u-Kult, from January 13, 2010
  4. ↑ Harro Schulze-Boysen was promoted to lieutenant in April 1939.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Rainer Blasius: Libertas Schulze-Boysen. A Christmas angel before the execution . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 22, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: The Red Orchestra in the Resistance to National Socialism , Berlin 1994, p. 135.
  7. ↑ Hans Coppi: Thinking about Libertas Schulze-Boysen . Commemoration for the 100th birthday of Libertas Schulze-Boysen on November 17, 2013 in Liebenberg; P. 5.
  8. ^ Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel: Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945 . CH Beck; 2. revised u. exp. Edition 1998; ISBN 3-406-43861-X ; P. 178f.
  9. ↑ Kurt Finker: Part of the Inner Front (reprint at Junge Welt, December 21, 2007) ( Memento of the original from December 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kominform.at
  10. ↑ geschichtswerkstatt-goettingen.de
  11. ↑ Schulze-Boysen-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  12. ↑ deutschland-im-internet.de ( memento of the original from September 28, 2010 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / deutschland-im-internet.de
  13. ↑ Special exhibition - Libertas Schulze-Boysen and the Red Orchestra ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2014 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dkb-stiftung.de
personal data
SURNAME Schulze-Boysen, Libertas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haas-Heye, Libertas Viktoria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter, member of the Rote Kapelle resistance group
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1942
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee