Melanie Risch

Stumbling block

Melanie Risch , née Bumann (born January 24, 1887 in Konstanz , † January 27, 1944 in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison ) was a German seamstress and a victim of Nazi war justice.

Life and activity

Bumann learned the tailoring trade and ran a business as a dressmaker in her hometown of Konstanz. In 1909 she married the upholsterer Eduard Risch (1878–1944). Like her husband, Risch was hostile to the Nazi state. On March 20, 1939, Eduard Risch was sentenced to six months in prison by the Mannheim Special Court according to Section 2 of the 1934 Treachery Act as a "Jew-friendly babbler" after he had made statements critical of the regime about the November 1938 Reichspogromnacht in an inn , denounced had been.

In 1943, Risch was denounced by a trainee girl and another employee of having repeatedly made derogatory remarks to their employees about National Socialism , the Hitler government and the World War . It is said that she said that Germany was to blame for the beginning of the Second World War, that the war would end in defeat and that this was well deserved; that Allied air raids on German cities are justified because Germany was the first to introduce such attacks on the cities of other countries as a means of military conflict in the war; that the British, Americans and Russians are not monsters and that the people, if they came, would be no worse off than under the National Socialists; and that Adolf Hitler , Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt should be locked in a room where they could smash their heads without the people suffering. Her husband was also denounced because of similar remarks in which he blamed Germany for the war, announced the defeat and declared that Germany had no business in other countries and that the people would be no worse off after the lost war.

Melanie and Eduard Risch were both arrested on August 16, 1943 and indicted before the People's Court in Berlin, chaired by Roland Freisler . On October 25, 1943, both were found guilty of undermining military strength and sentenced to death. The reason given in the death sentence was:

“And that is precisely the core of the serious crime committed by the defendants, which both defendants incurred in their speeches. For a long time they systematically tried to steal their faith from young German girls and women who were entrusted to their upbringing! This attrition of our inner fighting strength by gnawing at our belief in victory is a treacherous help for our war enemy. Anyone who consciously and continuously shakes our inner front is dishonorable once and for all. But so that the victory of the troops through weakness and betrayal from within is not useless and the sacrifices of our soldiers are made in vain, as in World War I, such traitors must be punished with death.

Melanie Risch was executed with the guillotine on January 27, 1944 in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison. The body was cremated. Her husband was executed in Brandenburg prison on February 21, 1944 .

Today a stumbling block in front of the house at Scheffelstrasse 8 reminds of Risch and her husband.

literature

• Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State , Munich 2011, p. 323.

Web links

• Description of the Stolperstein zu Risch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tour. Stumbling blocks Constance . Ed. Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime Bund der Antifaschisten, o. Verlag, Konstanz 2015, o. ISBN, p. 54 f. and p. 56 f for Eduard Risch; There on p. 54 correction of the stumbling block information regarding the type of death.