Ludwig Goehring

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ludwig Göhring (born on August 19, 1910 in Nuremberg ; died on July 6, 1999 there ) was a German resistance fighter in the Third Reich .

Childhood and youth

Ludwig Göhring grew up with a brother and two sisters in a politically interested working class . His father was an industrial worker and a member of the SPD . He himself joined the Socialist Workers' Youth - the youth organization of the SPD.

In April 1930, Goehring lost his job as a plumber and became unemployed . Soon afterwards he switched to the Communist Youth Association of Germany . He went on a journey and found work in Sweden , but was not given a residence permit there . In 1932 he was expelled and returned to Nuremberg. In the meantime he had become a member of the KPD and distributed a. a. their propaganda material. His parents' apartment was searched in the fall of 1932 on suspicion of distributing illegal documents.

time of the nationalsocialism

resistance

With the coming to power of the Nazis , the situation for the KPD was threatening. In March 1933, most of the leadership of the Nuremberg KPD had been imprisoned, had been illegally or had been murdered. Göhring took part in the resistance and took over the distribution of forbidden publications such as the Rote Fahne and the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung .

In May 1933, the illegal party leadership of the KPD decided to publish a publication for the Northern Bavaria region , which Göhring was supposed to reproduce. The printing of the papers of the socialist freedom campaign began in mid-May in a garden colony . Since the printing press turned out to be too loud, it was dismantled and taken to a cave near Neuhaus an der Pegnitz in Franconian Switzerland . It was there that the second, third and fourth editions of “Blätter” were created.

Arrest and imprisonment

The fifth edition was completed on August 12, 1933. Göhring wanted to bring the 1,500 copies to the Nuremberg Ostbahnhof , where he should hand over the parcels to the other distributors. He was observed, denounced and held in an inn near his destination until the SA arrived. When he remained silent during an initial interrogation by SA men, he was mistreated and then brought to the "staff guard" bleeding. After noticing the printing ink on his hands, he revealed where the printing press was, but not his comrades .

On August 16, 1933, Göhring was transferred to a cell in the police headquarters in the Deutschhauskaserne, where he was further interrogated and beaten. Two days later he was taken to the Dachau concentration camp , where he was immediately locked in the detention bunker with the prisoner number 2009 . With reduced food, he had to spend more than a year in solitary confinement in a dark cell . At the beginning of November 1934 he was sentenced to two years in prison in Munich for preparing for high treason and transferred to the Nuremberg judicial prison.

Ludwig Göhring should have been dismissed on October 7, 1936. Instead, he was taken into " protective custody " by the Gestapo and returned to the Dachau concentration camp immediately from prison. There he learned of his father's death from a fellow inmate in November of that year. On November 1, 1939, he and 4,000 other prisoners were taken to the Flossenbürg concentration camp , where he had to do heavy earthwork and transport work, especially in a quarry . Since his physical condition deteriorated noticeably, he was transferred back to Dachau at the end of February 1940.

In the Dachau concentration camp, Göhring was now employed in the effects room to manage the prisoners' funds. Since he - with the consent of the prisoners concerned - had transferred funds to prisoners with empty accounts “illegally”, he was punished with whipping , stake hanging and a year of punishment . On July 21, 1944, he was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp . There he had to shovel sand out of barges in the clinker works command . With the help of other political prisoners , he came to the labor office as a clerk in October.

Forced recruitment and desertion

On November 5, 1944, Ludwig Göhring was forcibly recruited and assigned to the SS Storm Brigade Dirlewanger . He was transported with other fateful companions via Krakow to Slovakia , after a short training the battalion marched towards the front . In a confusing situation, Goehring was able to withdraw in December and break through to the Soviet troops. From then on he fought on the side of the Red Army . His task was u. a. in addressing the German soldiers via loudspeaker across the front line and explaining to them the futility of their fight.

post war period

In October 1945 Göhring returned as a free man to his hometown Nuremberg, where his mother and siblings had survived. He found a job with the city ​​administration and became involved in the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN).

He kept his memories in the book Dachau, Flossenbürg, Neuengamme, which he wrote and was published in 1999 . An anti-fascist biography .

Honors

The Federal Republic of Germany initially found it difficult to deal with resistance fighters and deserters . They were often defamed and despised as " traitors to the war ". In June 2018, the Friends of Nature in Nuremberg put a memorial plaque on the Anton-Völkel-Grotto , in which Ludwig Göhring copied the writings against the National Socialists.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ludwig Göhring at the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg, accessed on January 5, 2010
  2. ↑ Hike to the Ludwig-Göhring-Höhle at naturfreunde-nürnberg-mitte.de, accessed on January 5, 2020
  3. ↑ Remembering the unknown "war traitor": Monument to deserter Ludwig Göhring? in: Sonntagsblatt 360 ° Protestant from March 17, 2019, accessed on January 5, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Goehring, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1999
Place of death Nuremberg