Margit Zinke

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Stumbling block for Margarethe Zinke at Falkenried 26 in Hamburg-Hoheluft-Ost .

Margit Zinke ( actually Margarete nee Meier, adopted Fleischner married Zinke ) (born January 18, 1914 in Munich ; † April 21, 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism and a victim of National Socialism .

Life

Margit was the daughter of the single worker Katharina Meier in Munich, who gave her child up for adoption . She was adopted as a child by Major Woldemar Emil Fleischner and his wife Martha, who lived in secure circumstances and settled in Neuburg , Donauwörth and, since 1924, in a bourgeois area of Hamburg . To ensure her a befitting education, she came to the age of ten Catholic Higher School for Girls at Hamburger Holzdamm where Ursuline - nuns , a private school led. Most of the students came from wealthy families. Among them were girls from Catholic consulates from Latin American and African countries. Margit was a good student and integrated into her class, her character was full of zest for action, but was sometimes also seen as decisive and loudmouthed. She enthusiastically played on the HSV hockey team . Despite all the discipline at home and by the Ursulines, Margit openly expressed what moved her and criticized what did not suit her. She was offensive to some teachers , and to comrades she was considered a rebel . That is why the Fleischners took her out of school at the age of 17 and placed her in an Ursuline boarding school in Eutin . But something similar happened here, and she had to justify herself to the school administration for her rebellious behavior again and again. In the spring of 1932 she passed her secondary school leaving certificate and went back to Hamburg.

When she found out in 1932 that she had grown up with adoptive parents without her knowledge, she broke off relations with the Fleischners. At about the same time, she had met the police sergeant Heinrich Speckin, and introduced him as her future husband. But that was rejected as not befitting. So she left the house in 1934 and married him in 1935. But Speckin had to accept a social decline and had become a dock worker. They struggled through life because they had three children in quick succession: daughter Maria-Luise in 1936, son Claus-Uwe in 1937 and son Lars in 1939. Speckin's mother Minna lived in what was then Langenkamp (today Poelchaukamp ) and ran a tobacco shop in Winterhude . The grandmother took Maria-Luise in and raised her. The marriage with Heinrich Speckin was divorced again in January 1942. Although he fulfilled his financial and personal obligations as a child father, the young mother Margit had to restrict her life further. In spring 1942 she moved into a small apartment at Falkenried 26 with Claus-Uwe and Lars . It was not an easy life because she refused to contact her wealthy adoptive mother. Now she lived in a petty-bourgeois - proletarian environment in close proximity to conscious social democrats and communists. When she moved in there, she met Paul Zinke , who lived near her , a trained electrician from the Stülcken shipyard .

Her family life took a sudden turn when Paul Zinke was drafted into the Wehrmacht . He was forced into the 999 probation battalion for being “ unworthy of military service ” . Paul Zinke was lucky anyway, because he was sent to a "replacement unit" in Yugoslavia and survived. After only ten months, at the end of April 1944, he came back from the parole battalion. A few days later, however, he was drafted again and sent to the Todt Organization (OT). Zinke worked here for another seven months, until September 1944, in different places, including Trier and Hamburg, where he was able to establish contact with friends and comrades.

Over the course of time and increasingly during the war, Margit had developed into a staunch opponent of the Nazi system. When there was an air raid in the bunker or in the house, she openly expressed herself disparagingly against the Hitler regime. Her carelessness came up at gatherings of party and like-minded comrades around her husband and Ernst Fiering , to whom Margit increasingly belonged, because - although she was not an official KPD member - she was still considered a loyal comrade. The group also involved her in dangerous actions of the resistance in the port.

One of these actions was triggered by the bombing of public buildings and prisons. In view of the destruction, the judiciary was forced to grant 2,000 prisoners on remand prisoners' leave, which was limited to two months. Many freedmen took this opportunity to avoid prison and went into hiding. 70 men and women from the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group went underground, including among the Zinkes. Paul Zinke was with the probation battalion in Yugoslavia, so Margit Zinke appeared as a safe address. Hans Hornberger was a highly endangered refugee . Margit Zinke was assigned to hide him with her if necessary. In 1943, however, the spy Alfons Pannek was smuggled into the resistance group around Fiering and Zinke . Paul Zinke met him several times without suspicion. On November 27, 1944, Paul Zinke was arrested and together with others from the group, u. a. taken into “ protective custody ” with Ernst Fiering, Marie Fiering and his sister in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel . At the beginning of February 1945 his wife Margit was arrested and taken to Fuhlsbüttel. Her three children were distributed to different families in Hamburg for care.

Margit Zinke wrote a letter from prison on March 23, 1945 in which she expressed her concern for the children. It is the only written and also the last testimony from Margit Zinke. The Gestapo had drawn up so-called liquidation lists with the names of 13 women and 58 men who were scheduled to be murdered. When the Allies approached the city at the beginning of April 1945 , SS group leader Georg Henning Graf Bassewitz-Behr , the chief of SS and police in Wehrkreis X (Hamburg), gave the order to evacuate the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel and to take the prisoners to the concentration camp Neuengamme, which happened between April 18th and 20th. In the following days all 71 people were murdered during the crime of the final phase in Neuengamme concentration camp , among them Margit Zinke.

Margit and Paul Zinke married on July 1, 1944. Their marriage resulted in a daughter Ursula.

Honors

literature

  • Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer (author) : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , pp. 371, 386
  • Hanna Elling : Women in the German Resistance 1933–1945 , p. 207
  • Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg. Reports and documents 1933–1945 , Frankfurt 1971, p. 99

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.hamburgwiki.de/wiki/Margit-Zinke-Stra%C3%9Fe ( Memento from August 2, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Zinke, Margit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meier, Margarete (maiden name); Butcher, Margarete
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 1945
Place of death Neuengamme concentration camp