Max Poepel

Max Poepel (born October 21, 1896 in Aue ; † August 28, 1966 there ) was Deputy Mayor of Aue in Saxony from 1940 to the end of 1944, and from 1945 provisional . In this function he prevented the destruction of the most important bridges in the industrial city by the German Wehrmacht .

Live and act

Poepel was the son of the blacksmith Albin Poepel. At the age of 18 Max Poepel became a soldier in the First World War , where he obtained his driver's license and worked as a driver. After returning to his hometown, he completed his training and became a master blacksmith. He eventually took over his father's “farriery and blacksmith's workshop” and, because of the emerging motorization, developed it into a car workshop. In the 1930s he was the Ford representative for Aue and the surrounding area. In 1933 he joined the National Socialist Motorist Corps (NSKK) . Because of differences of opinion with the leadership of this corps he was later expelled. In the same period Poepel was elected to the city administration. Since Mayor Paul Geipel was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1940, Poepel was in charge of official business as Deputy Mayor, and from January 1945 he was acting Lord Mayor . In the spring of 1945 he learned that a unit of the American army was advancing towards the city from the west. A short-term combat commander of the Wehrmacht , to whom an SS assault unit was also subordinate, had, in accordance with the Fuehrer's order, arranged for Aue to prepare for defense. For this purpose, the most important bridges were equipped with explosive charges and three twin machine guns were set up on the station grounds. In a last council meeting on April 25, 1945, the current military situation was discussed. The combat commander reported on the planned defense measures and the consequences of a surrender; the mayor of Loessnitz , Rudolf Weber had just been shot because he had surrendered the city to the Americans without a fight.

Although Poepel was a member of the NSDAP and despite the threatened coercive measures, he took responsibility for the residents and the refugees staying in the city: When he heard of the refusal of the head of the technical emergency aid to blow up the bridges, Poepel sought out from Captain Zind an ally to the engineer troops. By means of a personal guarantee from Poepels, he was persuaded to have the division leadership build anti-tank barriers instead of blasting bridges . Within four days, members of the technical emergency aid set up numerous anti-tank barriers with wooden beams and stones on important Auer bridges. On May 4, 1945, a weak American armored reconnaissance force reached the city of Aue and took it without a fight, bypassing the anti-tank traps. Max Poepel recorded the events of these days in private notes which were found in 1991 and which are entitled "The last days of the Third Reich in Aue, as I experienced them as a city councilor and deputy mayor." The complete text is in the district archive Aue, an abridged version was printed in continuation in 1991 and 1992 in the daily newspaper Freie Presse .

The Americans did not occupy Aue administratively, but collected some war taxes from the inhabitants, including watches, binoculars, cameras and jewelry. When the Red Army took over the city from the Americans in June 1945 according to the division of the occupied territories according to the Treaty of Yalta , Max Poepel was arrested by the Soviet occupation forces despite his merits and the advocacy of some anti-fascists . Until 1949 he was held captive in several special camps such as Torgau , Mühlberg and Buchenwald . In 1950 Poepel returned to Aue, where he was able to take over his car workshop again, which had been run by master Fritz Taut during his absence. The most important job of the workshop was to repair existing cars, as there were hardly any new cars. Poepel ran this workshop until his death in 1966.

Max Poepel was married to Grete, née Schulz, and had a daughter, Anneliese. Anneliese Poepel learned to be a car mechanic under the strict regime of her father, passed the journeyman's examination and later acquired the master craftsman's certificate. She married Erich Schmutzler, who manufactured cutting and punching tools in some of the rooms in his father-in-law's workshop. After Poepel's death in 1966, Schmutzler initially left the vehicle workshop under the direction of an employee, but did the cutting and punching himself. When the independent master craftsmen were given specifications by the state authorities on the number of employees, Erich Schmutzler finally gave up Max Poepel's auto repair shop in 1969.

Max Poepel's urn was buried in the family grave in Aue -zelle. - Anneliese Schmutzler, née Poepel, died in 2008.

literature

• Aue, mosaic stones of history , published by Stadtverwaltung Aue, printer and publisher Mike Rockstroh, Aue 1997; Pp. 170-172.
• Max Poepel: The city council's diary ; Document collection no. 657 in the Aue district archive.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} written information from Zschorlau citizen Gerd Reich; October 2009
2. ↑ ^{a b} Written information from Jana Hecker, press officer for the city of Aue; May 2009
3. ^ Advertisement in the Free Press of August 30, 1966, p. 7