Reinhold Meyer
Reinhold Meyer (* July 18, 1920 Hamburg ; † November 12, 1944 ibid) was a bookseller and junior manager of the " Agentur des Rauhen Haus " bookstore in Hamburg, a student of philosophy and German studies at the University of Hamburg and was one of the central people in Hamburg White Rose in the resistance against National Socialism . On December 19, 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo , and on November 12, 1944, he died under unexplained circumstances in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison .
Life
Reinhold Meyer was born in Hamburg as the oldest child of the bookseller Johannes P. Meyer and his wife Louise Meyer. He had a younger brother, Walter, who had been missing outside Stalingrad since January 1943, and a younger sister, Anneliese, who later married Tuchel, who ran the bookstore on Jungfernstieg until 1998. The fact that his family belonged to the evangelical-free church community of St. Anschar in Eppendorf, as well as an upbringing that was both musical and liberal, influenced his development . Since his parents were connected to the Rauhen Haus - his father was head of the Rauhen Haus agency from 1903 - he attended the Wichern School in Horn , later the Wilhelm Gymnasium , at that time on the Moorweide. At the age of twelve he developed osteomyelitis , an inflammation of the bone marrow, and spent two years in hospital. By caring for his mother, he survived the disease. During this time he developed an intense friendship with his classmate Albert Suhr , with whom he caught up on school assignments, so that he never missed a grade and was able to do his Abitur in 1940.
From 1940 to 1942 Reinhold Meyer completed an apprenticeship in bookselling and at the same time enrolled in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg for German studies with the aim of obtaining a doctorate . His studies became a part-time job, as he had already started in his father's business as a junior manager in 1942 and together with him expanded the bookstore to include art exhibitions . He made contacts with the Worpswede artists' colony , in particular with the painter Walter Müller (1901–1975) and the writer Manfred Hausmann (1898–1986). Meyer also got to know the weaver Martha Vogeler , the first wife of the painter Heinrich Vogeler , in whose house in Schluh he temporarily lived in 1943 and who outsourced the books and art inventory of the Rauhe Haus agency after the bombing of Hamburg .
Together with Albert Suhr, who started studying medicine in 1940, he attended events and meetings of the Musenkabinett and came into contact with other students who were critical of the Nazi regime , in particular the former Lichtwark students Traute Lafrenz , Margaretha Rothe and Heinz Kucharski . Around 1941 Albert Suhr met the bookseller Hannelore Willbrandt and introduced her to the group, as did the medical student and former Lichtwark student Karl Ludwig Schneider . In turn, Schneider came into contact with Hans Leipelt, who, like Traute Lafrenz, transferred to Munich to study. First of all, the young people met to exchange ideas among like-minded people and to discuss literary and political texts. After the execution of Hans Scholl , Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst on February 22, 1943 in Munich, the Circle of Friends decided to take an active role against National Socialism. It became known that they copied and passed on the last leaflet of the White Rose with the addition "Your spirit lives on anyway". Reinhold Meyer made the cellar of the agency des Rauhen Haus on Jungfernstieg available for the conspiratorial meetings of the growing group .
The meeting point was betrayed by smuggling in the Gestapo informant Maurice Sachs . Albert Suhr was arrested on September 13, 1943. After Hans Leipelt was arrested in Munich on October 8, 1943, another wave of arrests began in Hamburg. Margaretha Rothe, Heinz Kucharski and Karl Ludwig Schneider were apprehended by the Gestapo on November 9, 1943. In the hope of avoiding the imminent arrest, Reinhold Meyer was sent by his father to the publisher Hellmut Mebes, a friend of his family, in Blankenburg in the Harz Mountains. The local Gestapo arrested him there on December 19, 1943 and transferred him to the Fuhlsbüttel police prison for pre-trial detention.
Imprisonment and death
He spent the first few months in solitary confinement in Fuhlsbüttel. At the beginning of June 1944, because of the overcrowding of the police prison and the upcoming renovation work, some prisoners were transferred as police prisoners to the Neuengamme concentration camp , among them Reinhold Meyer and other male prisoners from the area around the White Rose. It is known from Neuengamme that Meyer initially worked in the nursery, later in the office of the commandant's office and “lay in one room” with Albert Suhr and Felix Jud. On October 16, 1944, he and the others were transferred back to Fuhlsbüttel. The Hamburg Gestapo investigation against the group was concluded, the files were handed over to the senior Reich lawyer at the People's Court and charges were brought against 24 suspects. These were transferred to the remand prison on October 26, 1944.
No charges had been brought against Reinhold Meyer, he remained in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. A letter to his family dated November 9, 1944, which he was able to smuggle out of prison as an uncensored letter, shows that this special treatment gave him the hope of his early release. However, on November 12, 1944, his parents were informed of his death in the detention center. It was officially declared that he had been infected with diphtheria in Neuengamme . Reinhold Meyer's sister, Anneliese Tuchel, questioned the description of this cause of death. Fellow inmates told her that her brother died after being interrogated. In a conversation recording from 1994 she said: “He wrote that hopeful letter on November 9th, and he died on the 12th; you won't die of diphtheria in three days. "
Reinhold Meyer was buried in the family grave site at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, grid square Y 15 (south of the northern pond ).
Commemoration
Reinhold Meyer is remembered with a memorial plaque in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg , a memorial in Hamburg-Volksdorf and a stumbling block at Hallerplatz 15 in Hamburg-Rotherbaum . On a memorial plaque for the White Rose Hamburg on the house of the former agency of the Rauhen Haus at Jungfernstieg 50, his name is listed alongside those of the other dead of the resistance group. A street in Hamburg-Niendorf is named after him. In addition, along with other people murdered under National Socialism, he is commemorated with the Niendorf memorial table with twelve chairs .
A total of eight people from the area around the Hamburg White Rose did not survive their imprisonment:
- Katharina Leipelt (found dead on January 9, 1944 in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel)
- Elisabeth Lange (suicide on January 28, 1944 in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel)
- Reinhold Meyer (died on November 12, 1944 in the Gestapo prison in Fuhlsbüttel)
- Hans Leipelt (executed on January 29, 1945 in the Munich-Stadelheim prison)
- Margaretha Rothe (died April 15, 1945 in Leipzig-Dosen Hospital )
- Frederick Geussenhainer (starved to death in Mauthausen concentration camp in April 1945)
- Margarete Mrosek (hanged in Neuengamme concentration camp on April 21, 1945)
- Curt Ledien (hanged in Neuengamme concentration camp on April 23, 1945)
See also
literature
- Christiane Benzenberg: Monuments for the resistance group 'White Rose' in Munich and Hamburg , Master's thesis submitted to the Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn 1993; Available as a PDF file at: Benzenberg: Denkmäler (PDF; 531 kB), accessed on May 23, 2010.
- Angela Bottin: Tight time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3 .
- Ursel Hochmuth: Candidates of Humanity. Documentation on the Hamburg White Rose on the occasion of Hans Leipelt's 50th birthday ; Editor: Association of the anti-fascists and persecuted persons of the Nazi regime Hamburg eV, Hamburg 1971.
- Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933–1945 , second edition, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 .
- Günter Weisenborn : The silent uprising. Report on the resistance movement of the German people 1933–1945 , Reinbek 1962.
- Hinrich CG Westphal: A conversation with Anneliese Tuchel about her brother Reinhold Meyer . In: Anneliese Tuchel (Ed.): He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer , Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg, Hamburg 1994.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hinrich CG Westphal: A conversation with Anneliese Tuchel about her brother Reinhold Meyer . In: He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer , Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg, Hamburg 1994, pp. 9–27.
- ↑ Angela Bottin: Tight Time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3 , p. 126 ff.
- ↑ Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , pages 394 ff.
- ↑ Hinrich CG Westphal: A conversation with Anneliese Tuchel about her brother Reinhold Meyer . In: He doesn't need flowers. In memory of Reinhold Meyer , p. 27.
- ↑ Celebrity Graves
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Meyer, Reinhold |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German resistance fighters against National Socialism |
DATE OF BIRTH | July 18, 1920 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
DATE OF DEATH | November 12, 1944 |
Place of death | Hamburg |