Ludwig Wellhausen

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Ludwig Wellhausen

Ludwig Konrad Gustav Wellhausen (born October 3, 1884 in Hanover ; † January 4, 1940 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German politician ( SPD ), opponent of National Socialism and resistance fighter , a mechanical engineer and patented sea machinist by profession.

Family, education and work

Ludwig Wellhausen was born on October 3, 1884 as the son of Carl Ernst Wellhausen and Agnes Susanne Luise Mannweiler. His father was a master turner. He already had three children from his first marriage, and in the second marriage five more children were born in addition to Ludwig Wellhausen. Ludwig Wellhausen spent his childhood and youth in Hanover, attended secondary school here for nine years and learned mechanical engineering from 1900 in the railway workshop in Leinhausen near Hanover. From 1902 to 1911 he drove as a machine assistant and later as a patented marine machinist (patents 1st and 2nd class) on merchant ships and then worked until 1914 as a machine master in an electricity company in Hamburg . It can be assumed that he also joined the SPD during this time. In 1915 he was called up for military service and repaired submarines for the Reichswehr in Kiel , Constantinople and later in Sevastopol . After the end of the war he returned to Hamburg and in 1919 found a job as a foreman in the port of Hamburg at Norderwerft , where he was also a member of the works council . From 1924 Ludwig Wellhausen was employed as a foreman at the Stoltzenberg Chemical Factory , for which he supervised the construction and commissioning of a manufacturing plant for the production and storage of gas (presumably for agricultural purposes) in the USSR for five months in 1926 . In 1911 Ludwig Wellhausen married Helene Kuchendorf and had two daughters with her. They divorced in 1923. In 1923 he married Margarethe Scheidemann (1893-1985). They had three children together, Lieselotte (1924 - 2012), Wolfgang (1925 - 1926) and Hans (1927 - 2001).

Members of the SPD parliamentary group and the Hamburg party executive with wives, 1928 or 1929. Back row from left: Mrs. Mette, Grete Wellhausen, Heinrich Eisenbarth, Ludwig Wellhausen, Claus Umland, Hans Podeyn, Dr. Mette, Karl Meitmann, Grete Meitmann, Mrs. Podeyn, Mrs. Umland, NN
Leaflet for the Reichstag election on July 31, 1932 to the Jewish citizens

Trade union and social democratic activity in Hamburg

In the early 1920s, Ludwig Wellhausen was head of the Hamburg organization of the free trade union - which is closely related to the SPD - foremen's association . In 1926 he took over the office of party secretary of the Hamburg SPD and was responsible for the organization of the party work in Hamburg, for the general training of party members and young socialists , the activities of the district party school on Helgoland as well as for rallies and the organization of the large mass demonstrations from 1931 to 1933 in Hamburg . Ludwig Wellhausen gave numerous lectures and published in newspapers.

Werner Bruschke

Social democratic activity and resistance in Magdeburg

On January 13, 1933 Ludwig Wellhausen was in Magdeburg elected district secretary of the SPD for the Region of Magdeburg-Anhalt. His family followed him in April. He lived with his family at Quittenweg 2 in the Magdeburg garden city of Reform . At a meeting in Berlin, one day before the SPD was banned on June 22, 1933, Ludwig Wellhausen was elected to the board of directors and to a committee of five "foremen", a kind of illegal SPD leadership. In the event of the incumbent board being arrested, she was to direct the work in the Reich. In several board meetings in the spring of 1933, those involved could not agree on whether a possibly limited existence of the SPD was likely; Others advocated well-organized underground activity in order, according to Ludwig Wellhausen, to keep social democratic ideas and plans in the minds of the comrades. After the National Socialists came to power and the SPD dissolved, part of the SPD presidium, which also included Erich Ollenhauer and Siegmund Crummenerl from Magdeburg , went into exile in Prague . Ludwig Wellhausen stayed in Magdeburg and began to work illegally. Together with the members of the SPD district leadership in Magdeburg-Anhalt, Werner Bruschke , responsible for finances, education and local affairs , and Ernst Lehmann , responsible for youth, he agreed that the National Socialists represented a great danger to democracy. A speedy preparation of the party, immediately after the Reichstag elections on March 5, 1933, for the work in the illegality therefore seemed urgently necessary. Werner Bruschke had initiated this with two types of bookkeeping, according to which officially no party members could be traced via mail and money transactions. Wellhausen, Bruschke and Lehmann were of the opinion that regular contact and exchange of information was necessary to maintain a social democratic network of contacts even under illegal and dangerous conditions.

Ernst Lehmann

Although they were very careful not to maintain any risky connections with former comrades, they nevertheless tried to involve as many previous groups as possible and to supply them with written material. According to historian Beatrix Herlemann's research on the SPD Magdeburg and the activities of the three Social Democrats, the group was one of the most successful SPD resistance organizations in the German Reich. In the six years since the fascists came to power up to 1939, Ludwig Wellhausen, Werner Bruschke and Ernst Lehmann have maintained a wide-ranging information network that stretched from the Altmark to the Vorharz in their former party district Magdeburg-Anhalt, with around fifty places like Stendal, Burg, Dessau, Köthen, Staßfurt, Halberstadt, Aschersleben, Wernigerode and Thale. The SPD newspaper Neuer Vorwärts , produced in June 1933 by the SPD executive in exile in Prague and secretly sent in suitcases , with a total circulation of 14,000 copies, was distributed and used as a basis for discussion. Via the secret route Tetschen -Bodenbach - Prague, the group organized that the newspaper was sent by express to Magdeburg to cover addresses. However, Werner Bruschke considered the newspaper with its current political reports to be unusable due to the late delivery. In addition, sending it by rail or post was dangerous because fearful recipients, including even SPD members, had reported to the police.

New Year's Eve 1934, from left to right Trudi (Gertrud) Bruschke, Werner Bruschke, Ludwig Wellhausen, Margarethe Wellhausen, Helene Meisterfeld, Alfred Meisterfeld, NN, behind them Ernst Lehmann, in one of the living rooms of the Reform estate in Magdeburg, in the Bruschkes and Wellhausens lived

At the beginning of the illegal activity, beginning to mid-1933, Ludwig Wellhausen, Werner Bruschke and the former Volksstimme editors Albert Pauli and Alfred Meisterfeld met in the Café CK to plan. The children, Hertha Pauli and her sister, Lieselotte and Hans Wellhausen, all between 6 and 11 years old at the time, were there and played together, so it had to seem like a family outing. When Albert Pauli and his wife Ilse were arrested for about four weeks in 1933 and tortured very cruelly, the group met conspiratorially, often in a settlement house near Franz Lange in western Stadtfeld . During the Weimar Republic, he was the managing director of the construction workers' association and apartment manager of the Magdeburg construction works for a long time. He had important contacts to the Leuschner group, which was planning to build up unions after the liberation, and thus to the domestic and foreign resistance.

In addition, Wellhausen, Bruschke and Lehmann provided family members of comrades in distress due to persecution and arrest with Magdeburg SPD funds (shortly before the SA attacked the district office, Bruschke had saved 40,000 Reichsmarks and buried the money in his garden). In October 1938, Ludwig Wellhausen also helped the former head of the Magdeburg health department, Dr. Walter Landau, who was of Jewish descent, and his family to flee.

The programmatic discussion was particularly important to the resistance group. However, the group had to avoid contact with well-known public figures in order not to endanger the newly established networks. This was apparently particularly difficult in the case of Ernst Reuter , Magdeburg's mayor, a friend of the family. Since he was steadfast in seeking open contact with the citizens, he was a particular thorn in the side of the Gestapo. He was arrested three times by 1934 and then, after being persuaded by his political friends, emigrated to Ankara via the Netherlands and London .

After a period of unemployment, Ludwig Wellhausen found work from 1934 to 1938 at the Buckau R. Wolf machine factory in Magdeburg as a fitter and repairman. Through trips abroad as a mechanic, he is said to have had contact with the SPD party executive in Prague. Before a few assembly trips to Turkey, and especially in 1937 to Finland , he was advised to stay there, but this was out of the question for him, as he did not want to abandon his family and the comrades of the resistance group.

From January 1934, the group broke off all contact with the Prague-based party executive, the Sopade . Werner Bruschke and Ernst Lehmann were repeatedly arrested and questioned; they were targeted by the Gestapo through the arrest of the SAJ leadership in Berlin, who had reported their contacts in Magdeburg and other places in cruel torture interrogations. They were helped by the fact that a Magdeburg police officer had previously been a member of the SPD: he once left the interrogation room with the files open so that Werner Bruschke could take a look and they could then discuss things with one another. From now on, the group made use of its own leaflets and distributed the press review look back in time . This unusual magazine compiled domestic and foreign newspaper reports and citations from literature tolerated by the Propaganda Ministry in such a way that politically interested people, who could read between the lines, got a very good insight into actual world events. The press review was produced in Berlin and was widely distributed throughout Germany (circulation of 100,000, presumed 500,000 readers through distribution in the reading and discussion groups).

Last sign of life on December 24, 1939
Last sign of life on December 24, 1939
Letter from the head of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp administration dated March 1, 1940

The editor was the former editor of the Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung , Andreas Gayk . The distribution was organized via the network of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft der Kinderfreunde by its secretary Hans Weinberger , as well as by means of a former ADGB employee through contacts with former social democratic and trade union bookstores. In the first few months, all available, often scornful reports on the whereabouts of persecuted party members were printed. Later forms of resistance and escape routes, smuggled camouflage scripts and still taking place trips of the Marxist youth groups were named in this special way. But also foreign ostracisms of the “new Germany” or rather unsuccessful outpourings by their own representatives as well as corruption cases by Nazi leaders were cited in the paper. Accordingly, the discussions based on this magazine were particularly fruitful. In addition, the distributors did not run the risk of being prosecuted, as the press review was legal until August 1935. For example, Willi Wegener, a member of the resistance group, had to be released in Oebisfelde after six hours of interrogation because he could only find a look at the time sheets. Ludwig Wellhausen sold Blick into the Zeit together with Werner Bruschke through his washing machine agency, which he founded after Werner Bruschke's tobacco shop at Neustädter Bahnhof in Magdeburg, with a strategically unobstructed view in all directions, had proven to be too unsafe. Many distributors “camouflaged” their illegal aisles by selling groceries, which is often the only way to feed the family due to the forced unemployment due to previous union or SPD activity. Werner Bruschke printed leaflets in the restaurant of a comrade friend in Sudenburg on two printing machines. When his wife turned down this "printing company", a former tennis partner helped. In her father's car repair shop in Puppendorf on Berliner Chaussee, Bruschke housed the machines that were never found by the Gestapo.

Imprisonment, concentration camps and death

Ludwig Wellhausen, apparently initially unknown to the Gestapo, was arrested on January 12, 1939, together with 19 other comrades from Magdeburg and the surrounding area, taken into so-called protective custody and immediately severely mistreated. He was a prisoner in the Magdeburg police prison until August 9, 1939, although the examining magistrate had already refused to issue an arrest warrant in April 1939. On August 9, 1939, Wellhausen was transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on suspicion of high treason without trial . In the winter of 1939/40 it was often very cold. This led to a high mortality rate among the exhausted concentration camp inmates. Margarethe Wellhausen also experienced how inhumanly one treated relatives. Despite repeated inquiries, she was only informed of the alleged cause of death (asthma) on March 1, 1940. Ludwig Wellhausen died on January 4, 1940.

The stone for Ludwig Wellhausen in the memorial for the victims of National Socialism on Magdeburg's Westfriedhof, which includes around 740 identical grave slabs

Honors

Stumbling stone in front of Wellhausen's house in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel
Stumbling stone in front of the Kurt-Schumacher-Haus, Hamburg
Stumbling stone in front of Wellhausen's house in Magdeburg

There are three stumbling blocks (a now far-reaching idea by the artist Gunter Demnig ) for him:

  • On February 9, 2009, a stumbling block was laid in front of the family's home in Olendbod in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel .
  • On March 1, 2010 there was a commemorative event on the occasion of the laying of a stumbling block in December 2009 in front of the SPD headquarters in the Kurt-Schumacher-Haus in Hamburg.
  • On April 16, 2019, a stumbling block was laid in front of the family's house in Magdeburg.

literature

  • Bauche, Ulrich u. a .: Labor movement in Hamburg from the beginning until 1945. Catalog book for the exhibition of the Museum for Hamburg History , Hamburg, 1988.
  • Bruschke, Werner: Episodes of my political apprenticeship years . Edited by the Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement at the district leadership of the SED. Hall, 1979.
  • For freedom and democracy: Hamburg social democrats in pursuit of resistance 1933-1945 , SPD Landesorganisation Hamburg, 2003, ISBN 978-3-8330-0637-1 , p. 442.
  • Heinrich, Guido & Schandera, Gunter (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon . 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck . Magdeburg, 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 .
  • Herlemann, Beatrix: “We stayed whatever we were, Social Democrats”. The resistance behavior of the SPD in the party district of Magdeburg-Anhalt against National Socialism . Hall, 2001.
  • Herlemann, Beatrix: Resistance and persecution of the SPD in Magdeburg , in: Unwanted - persecuted - murdered. Exclusion and terror during the National Socialist dictatorship in Magdeburg 1933–1945 , Magdeburg, 2008, pp. 113–124.
  • Jensen, Jürgen & Rickers, Karl: Andreas Gayk and his time 1893-1954. Memories of the Lord Mayor of Kiel . Neumunster, 1974.
  • Short biographies of Magdeburg resistance fighters , editor of the Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement at the Magdeburg City Administration of the SED, 1976, p. 51 f.
  • Ludwig Wellhausen . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Volume 1: Deceased Personalities. Hannover, 1960, pp. 327-328.
  • Martens, Holger: Resistance and Persecution 1933–1945 . In: Oldenburg, Christel u. a .: “Everything for Hamburg” - The history of the Hamburg SPD from its beginnings to 2007 , Hamburg, 2007, pp. 47–60.
  • Martens, Holger: Lecture given on the occasion of the laying of the stumbling blocks for Ludwig Wellhausen and Wilhelm Bock in front of the Kurt-Schumacher-House in Hamburg on March 1st, 2010. In: Wellhausen, Beate: Ludwig Wellhausen - Social Democrat in Resistance . 2nd expanded edition. Hamburg, 2020, pp. 41–53.
  • Mielke, Siegfried (ed.), Trade unionist in the Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg concentration camps. Biographical manual . Volume 1. Berlin, 2002.
  • Naujoks, Harry: My life in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 1936-1942. Memories of the former camp elder . Cologne, 1987.
  • Osterroth, Franz: Biographical Lexicon of Socialism , Hanover, 1960.
  • Rupieper, Hermann-J .: The situation reports of the secret state police for the province of Saxony 1933 to 1936 . Volume 1: Magdeburg administrative region . Hall, 2003.
  • Board of the German Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . Marburg, 2000.
  • Wellhausen, Beate: Ludwig Wellhausen - Social Democrat in the Resistance . Hamburg, 2020, ISBN 978-3-939217-21-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, cover.
  2. ^ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020.
  3. ↑ Information on the stumbling block for Ludwig Wellhausen in Magdeburg
  4. ↑ Family tree of the descendants of Bernhard Julius Wellhausen from Linden / Hannover
  5. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 9.
  6. ↑ Family tree of the descendants of Bernhard Julius Wellhausen from Linden / Hannover
  7. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 12.
  8. ↑ Bauche, Ulrich u. a., Hamburg, 1988, p. 199.
  9. ↑ This corresponds to the current position of a managing director (Holger Martens: Presentation on March 1, 2010. In: Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 44)
  10. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 106.
  11. ^ Hamburger Echo, September 11, 1926.
  12. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 14.
  13. ↑ Short biographies of Magdeburg resistance fighters , editor of the Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement at the Magdeburg City Administration of the SED, 1976, p. 52
  14. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 70.
  15. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 105.
  16. ↑ Bruschke, Werner, 1979.
  17. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 14.
  18. ↑ Magdeburger Stadtjournal, February 24, 1995, p. 3.
  19. ↑ Information on the stumbling block for Ernst Lehmann in Magdeburg
  20. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 101-102.
  21. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 104.
  22. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 14.
  23. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001.
  24. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 105-108.
  25. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 109.
  26. ↑ Bruschke, Werner, 1979, pp. 58-59.
  27. ↑ Bruschke, Werner, 1979, p. 58.
  28. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 24.
  29. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 19f.
  30. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 200–201.
  31. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 98.
  32. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, pp. 20–22.
  33. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 106.
  34. ^ Board of the German Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . Marburg, 2000.
  35. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, v. a. Pp. 75, 87-88, 91, 112-113 and 133.
  36. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 106.
  37. ^ Stange, Carmen: Wellhausen, Ludwig (1884-1940) . German Association of foremen. In: Mielke, Siegfried (Ed.), Berlin, 2002, pp. 297–298.
  38. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 110.
  39. ↑ ibid.
  40. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 123–129.
  41. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 36.
  42. ↑ ibid.
  43. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 37.
  44. ^ Jensen, Jürgen & Rickers, Karl, Neumünster, 1974.
  45. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 125.
  46. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 106, 125.
  47. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 97.
  48. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 201.
  49. ↑ Werner Bruschke and Ernst Lehmann were arrested with him. Werner Bruschke experienced the liberation in Dachau concentration camp (Bruschke, Werner, 1979, p. 70.), with bad health, while Ernst Lehmann was one of the 7,000 victims in the bombing of the prisoner ships by the Royal Air Force on May 3, 1945 in Neustädter Bay belonged to (Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, p. 293.)
  50. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 219-221.
  51. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, pp. 25–26.
  52. ↑ State Main Archives Saxony-Anhalt, Magdeburg. Rep. C 29 Pol Pres Ug bug III. Prisoner Books, Book 6, 1939.
  53. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, pp. 26, 46.
  54. ↑ State Main Archives Saxony-Anhalt, Magdeburg. Rep. C 29 Pol Pres Ug bug III. Prisoner Books, Book 6, 1939.
  55. ↑ Herlemann, Beatrix, 2001, pp. 218–221.
  56. ↑ Naujoks, Harry, Cologne, 1987, pp. 144-147, 159-160.
  57. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, p. 47.
  58. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, pp. 37, 47.
  59. ↑ Information on the stumbling block for Ludwig Wellhausen in Magdeburg
  60. ↑ Wellhausen, Beate, 2020, pp. 39–40, 54f.
  61. ↑ Information on the stumbling block for Ludwig Wellhausen in Magdeburg
  62. ↑ Open Canal Magdeburg: Stumbling blocks in Magdeburg. In memory of Ludwig Wellhausen .
personal data
SURNAME Wellhausen, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wellhausen, Ludwig Konrad Gustaf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD)
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: January 4, 1940 or March 18, 1940
Place of death Sachsenhausen concentration camp