Mathias theses

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Mathias Thesen (born April 29, 1891 in Trier-Ehrang ; † October 11, 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp ) was a German trade unionist , politician ( KPD ) and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Mathias Thesen initially worked as a smelting worker before switching to mining. In 1910 he joined the German Metal Workers Association (DMV) and the SPD , in 1916 he switched to the USPD . Participant in the November Revolution , he later became chairman of the works council of the Walsum port and in 1920 a leading member of the KPD, which in those years had an extraordinarily strong base in the Lower Rhine mining and industrial milieu. In 1924 he was elected to the city council of the then still independent Hamborn and in the mid-1920s he was chairman of the KPD parliamentary group. In the city council he campaigned especially for the interests of the youth, the unemployed and the preservation of the Rheinaue as a sports and leisure area.

As a staunch internationalist, Mathias Thesen campaigned for solidarity with the great British miners' strike of 1926. The Beeckerwerth mine went on strike for three shifts, with great sympathy from the workforce's families.

In the 1928 election , Mathias Thesen was elected member of the Reichstag . After the merger of Duisburg and Hamborn, he became first secretary of the new KPD sub-district Duisburg-Hamborn, which also included places on the left bank of the Rhine such as Homberg , Rheinhausen and Moers . Contemporaries have described his determined but always calm and matter-of-fact manner. He relied primarily on political conviction and he was known for his human warmth and his open ear, also for issues other than political.

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists took theses of February 7, 1933 meeting of illegal Central Committee of the Communist Party in the sports store Ziegenhals part in Berlin. Submerged since March 1933, Thesen was arrested on September 14, 1933 in Hamburg and held in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. On February 26, 1935, the People's Court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison for serious falsification of documents and preparation for high treason , which he spent in prison in Oslebshausen near Bremen and Brandenburg . At the end of his prison sentence, Thesen was taken into “ protective custody ” in April 1937 and, after a brief detention in one of the Emsland camps, transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On May 3, 1939, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court sentenced him to four years in prison and four years of loss of honor . According to the indictment, Thesen is said to have prepared "treasonable ventures" during his detention in Oslebshausen. Imprisoned in Vechta and in Fuhlsbüttel prison until May 1943 , Thesen was again taken into “protective custody” and held in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he was a member of the illegal camp administration. On October 11, 1944, he was shot together with 26 other inmates, including Rudolf Hennig and Ernst Schneller , after their resistance activities had been exposed. After months, his wife Kate received the following response from the camp commandant to her worried letter: "In response to your above request, the commandant's office announced that your husband was shot in the local camp on October 11, 1944 for attempted mutiny and incitement." Mathias theses is in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp death book with prisoner number 413, 67611.

Honors

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag
  • From 1951 to 1992 the shipyard in the Hanseatic City of Wismar , which was rebuilt after the Second World War, was named after Mathias Thesen.
  • Since 1992 one of the 96 memorial plaques for members of the Reichstag murdered by the National Socialists has been commemorating theses near the Reichstag in Berlin .
  • A street near the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp bears his name, and another in the Reutershagen district of Rostock is named after him.
  • In 1966, a type X cargo ship belonging to the GDR Deutsche Seereederei was given the name Mathias Thesen.
  • In the Ostseebad Boltenhagen (now the district of Northwest Mecklenburg, at that time the district of Grevesmühlen, the district of Rostock, GDR), a holiday camp in the Tarnewitz district of the 1980s was named after Mathias Thesen, where children and young people from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium also spent their summer holidays.
  • A memorial for theses in Wismar was demolished after 1990.
  • In his birthplace Ehrang , a memorial plaque was unveiled on June 12, 1998 as part of the 650th anniversary of Ehrang's market and city rights. The memorial plaque is a work by the Ehranger artist Ulrich Lebenstedt. It was first attached to the Ehrang fire station near the house where he was born and is now attached to the Ehrang community center.
  • On October 28, 2008, a stumbling block in front of his birthplace in Fröhlicherstr. 12 relocated.

literature

  • Rudolf Tappe, Manfred Tietz (ed.): Tatort Duisburg 1933–1945. Resistance and Persecution under National Socialism. Vol. II. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-023-7 .
  • Manfred Tietz: “Only death closes my mouth.” Mathias Thesen (1891–1944). A biographical documentation. Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-89144-392-7 .
  • Theses, Matthias . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Günther Merzkirch: memorial plaque for Mathias theses Reichstag deputy from 1928 to 1933. In: Verein Ehranger-Heimat eV (Hrsg.): Ehranger Heimat. Yearbook 2000. Pages 118–123.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ List of participants
  2. ↑ On the persecution of Theses in the time of National Socialism see Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-5162-9 , pp. 582f.
  3. ↑ Langbein, Hermann: … not like sheep to the slaughter - resistance in the National Socialist concentration camps , Frankfurt / Main, 1980, p. 227f.
  4. ^ Book of the dead of Sachsenhausen concentration camp
  5. ↑ Günther Merzkirch, Stolperstein for Mathias Thesen In: Ehranger Heimat eV (Hrsg.): Ehranger Heimat. Yearbook 2010. P. 77ff.

Web links

Commons : Mathias Thesen  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Theses, Mathias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR, shot dead in Sachsenhausen concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Honor
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1944
Place of death Sachsenhausen concentration camp