Philipp Schaeffer

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Philipp Schaeffer (born November 16, 1894 in Koenigsberg , † May 13, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German orientalist , librarian , sinologist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Schaeffer came from an officer's family and grew up in St. Petersburg . There he began to study oriental studies in 1913 . In 1914, when the war began, he was interned with his father in Arkhangelsk . In 1916 he married a Russian teacher with whom he had daughters Inka and Toska.

After the First World War, Schaeffer continued his studies in Heidelberg from 1920 ; to finance his studies, he works temporarily in a quarry. In 1924 he received his doctorate with a Tibetan thesis on Nagarjuna's Yuktisastika , which he also translated into German. While studying in Heidelberg he met Anna Seghers , who became a close friend. He continued his Asian research at the Heidelberg Institute for Buddhist Studies. In 1926 his marriage was divorced and he moved to Berlin. He financed himself with odd work as a travel agent at Ufa in Babelsberg .

In 1927 Schaeffer found a job at the central library in Berlin-Mitte . He developed it into one of the most important social science libraries in Berlin. In 1928 Schaeffer became a member of the KPD and married the sculptor Ilse Liebig . The joint move to Tiefwerder in Berlin-Spandau led to regular meetings with communists there. He took over the leadership of a philosophical training circle and made the acquaintance of the librarian Lotte Schleif . In 1932 he was dismissed for his political activities and from then on devoted himself increasingly to anti-fascist work. Schaeffer was among other things editor of the Red SA Standard , a communist publication that was directed against the SA . In 1933/34, the company moved to Dorotheenstrasse in Berlin-Mitte .

In 1935 he was arrested and spent five years in Luckau prison , where he shared a cell with Wilhelm Guddorf and at times with Wolfgang Abendroth . In 1938 he met Ernst Niekisch in the Moabit prison hospital .

After his release in 1940 he was under police supervision and worked as a travel agent for the Berlin Frigidaire GmbH. Despite the ban, he took up active contact with the resistance again, in particular through Lotte Schleif to Kurt and Elisabeth Schumacher , Elfriede Paul and the group around Harro Schulze-Boysen, as well as to his fellow prisoner Guddorf.

On Easter 1942 he had an accident while trying to save the Jewish Hohenemser couple from suicide. As a result, he spent the last few months before he was arrested again on October 2, 1942 in the hospital. Sentenced to death in February 1943 for high treason, he was beheaded on May 13, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee prison .

Honors

Memorial plaque on the house Dorotheenstrasse 68 in Berlin-Mitte
  • The district central library of Berlin-Mitte, his former place of work, is now called the Philipp Schaeffer Library .
  • A memorial plaque on his former home in Berlin's Dorotheenstrasse 68 has been commemorating him since 1975.

literature

  • Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters. Volume 2. Dietz, Berlin 1970, pp. 138-140
  • Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. - With an introduction by Heinrich Scheel. results, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0
  • Hans-Joachim Fieber et al. (Ed.): Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Volume 7 [S]. Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89626-357-9 , p. 33

Web links

Commons : Philipp Schaeffer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.berlin.de/stadtbibliothek-mitte/bibliotheken/bezirkszentralbibliothek-philipp-schaeffer/namensgeber/artikel.145719.php
  2. ↑ Christel Berger: Anna Seghers and Grete Weil - Witnesses of the Century. Edition Luisenstadt, 1998.
personal data
SURNAME Schaeffer, Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German orientalist and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee