Philipp Heller

Tomb of the three Hofer resistance fighters Hans Merker, Ewald Klein and Philipp Heller in the Hof cemetery

Philipp Heller (born September 30, 1909 - † January 26, 1938 ) was a carpenter, KPD member and resistance fighter against the Nazi dictatorship .

Philipp Heller, called "Lipp", was the son of the construction worker Karl Heller and his wife Margarete. He attended primary school in Hof and trained as a carpenter . In 1931 he married the spinning mill worker Rosa, née Krauss. They had four children together. In 1933 the family built a settlement house on Streitbergerweg in Hof. As a young man, the son of a Social Democrat attended the Communist Youth Association of Germany . Because of his sporting interests, he was a member of the Solidarity cycling and motorists' association , later a wrestler and member of the Siegfried athletic sports club in Hof. Together with other comrades, he founded the Red Wehrsportverein Hof in 1932, which was supposed to protect political meetings from attacks by Nazis. Philipp Heller painted house walls and factory walls with slogans against Hitler and for the KPD. He was arrested for the first time on March 5, 1933 and spent seven days in the Hof Regional Court prison. A second arrest took place on June 12, 1933. He was accused of belonging to a communist resistance group that smuggled anti-fascist literature, such as the Brown Book , from Czechoslovakia to Germany. Without conviction he was sent to Bayreuth prison and from there, together with his comrade Hans Klier and the SPD local association chairman Christoph Fraas, to the Dachau concentration camp . In October 1933 he was sentenced to eight months imprisonment in Munich-Stadelheim prison for high treason . He was then detained in Dachau concentration camp for two years without any legal basis. Nevertheless, together with other comrades such as Hans Merker , Max Korn and Hans Schiller, he continued the resistance and they smuggled leaflets and newspaper articles from Prague . The third arrest took place in November 1937. He came from the police prison in Weiden to the regional court prison there and was interrogated by the Gestapo , tortured and died in the process. According to the death certificate from the public prosecutor's office , “suicide by hanging” was certified, which relatives and friends cast doubt on. Apparently he has not revealed his colleagues.

In 1945, Hof's city council decided to rename the Hans-Schemm- Kampfbahn on Ossecker Straße to Philipp-Heller-Sportplatz. In 1955 the name was changed in favor of Hans Peters, the honorary chairman of the Spielvereinigung Hof. At the same time, a memorial plaque was attached to Heller's house, which is no longer there. Philipp Heller's urn was buried in the Hof cemetery. A common gravestone commemorates the Hof resistance fighters Hans Merker, Ewald Klein and Philipp Heller.

literature

• Rudolf Macht: History of the Hofer Workers' Movement - Volume III / 2 (1924–1945) - Defeat . Hof 1996. pp. 379–382.
• Biographical collection in the Hof Stadtarchiv : L 2673 Heller, Philipp

Web links

• Article in the Frankenpost on the 80th anniversary of Philipp Heller's death (January 25, 2018): Death in Gestapo custody . - with the results of research by Randolph Oechslein

Individual evidence

1. ↑ District Association of Upper Franconia of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge eV (ed.): War graves in Upper Franconia . Bayreuth 1985. p. 25.