Theo Hespers

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theo Hespers (fully Theodor Franz Maria Hespers ; December 12, 1903 in Mönchengladbach - September 9, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a religiously and politically motivated resistance fighter during the Nazi era .

Life

Theodor Franz Maria Hespers was born as the second of six children in a middle-class Catholic family and attended the Mönchengladbach Stiftische Humanist Gymnasium as a pupil . Since 1917 he was a member of the Quickborn , an abstinent, alcohol and nicotine-rejecting Catholic youth movement. In autumn 1921, the 17-year-old made a formative trip to Rothenfels Castle on the Main, the center of the Quickborn movement. In 1923, Hespers campaigned against the separatist movement in the “Rhineland Youth Association”. This is where he met Hans Ebeling . He was also involved in the Peace Association of German Catholics. In 1925, Hespers joined the Christian-social youth of the Vitus Heller movement , temporarily together with many members from the Catholic youth movement groups Jungborn , Kreuzfahrer and Quickborn.

Hespers had been a member of the KPD since 1926 and belonged to the AM apparatus. In 1927 he became deputy chairman of the International Workers Aid and traveled with its third delegation to the Soviet Union for eight weeks . From 1928 to 1930 he worked intensively in the Christian Social Reich Party , which emerged from the Vitus Heller movement , from which he resigned in autumn 1932 because it did not sufficiently oppose him against National Socialism. He married in 1930 and became a father the following year. In 1931 he was a student at the Comintern School . From 1931 to 1933, the businessman and textile engineer Hespers was active in the revolutionary trade union opposition . At the beginning of the thirties he also joined the Westmark scouts in the Young National League around Hans Ebeling , known as Plato .

Resistance and flight to the Netherlands

After his candidacy of March 5, 1933 for the Reichstag on the "Unified List of Workers and Peasants" and for the city council as the top candidate on the list of the "fighting front of the working people" failed, he fled in April in view of the emergency ordinance of February 28, 1933 in the neighboring Netherlands to Roermond , in July his family came over the green border. From 1935 he worked again with Ebeling. They founded the working group Bundischer Jugend (AKBJ) and published the "Bündische Rundbriefe" until mid-1937. After a two-year stay in Helmond, Hespers finally came to Eindhoven in May 1936 .

In the meantime, he was put out to search on May 31, 1935, and on February 1, 1937, his membership of the German Reich was withdrawn because of alleged treasonable aspirations. The Essen trial against the Jungnationalen Bund in June 1937, in which Hans Böckling was sentenced to 12 years in prison , ultimately led to the establishment of the German Youth Front at the Brussels Conference of the AKJB in July 1937 as a democratic alternative to the Hitler Youth on a European level. Because of the trials in Stalin's Russia that began on August 19, 1937, they distanced themselves from cooperation with the communists that same month. Therefore it was decided for the German Youth Front to publish a separate magazine with the title Kameradschaft at the HTO (Holland Typing Office, Inh. Selma Meyer and Annette Monash). It appeared for the first time in November 1937 with an edition of 600 copies, the next were each around 2000 copies. In the programmatic article of the first edition, Hespers wrote: “We are in a fight, we young Germans. What our longing was in years of rich youth, what we dreamed and longed for for ourselves and our people, is more distant than ever. What we created is destroyed or mortally threatened. Our will is ostracized, our community forbidden. The brown plague is raging in Germany. The tyrant's arbitrariness destroys our homeland. The people groan heavily in the chains of bondage, their future is dark and threatened, for which we, the youth of this people, are responsible. ”In 1938 he added:“ The yoke of tyranny weighs heavily on Germany. The German people are robbed of their freedom by the totalitarian Hitler system, have no rights and are oppressed ”. On September 8, 1938, the “Comradeship” was banned by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda throughout the German Reich. In 1939 Hans Ebeling fled to England, Hespers stayed in the Netherlands. He was involved in the gathering of military intelligence for the British secret service and planned sabotage in 1939 in the Dutch border area.

Imprisonment and death

The Wehrmacht attack on the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 and the occupation that went with it marked the end of Theo Hespers' personal resistance work after seven years. He had to go into hiding, which only succeeded for less than two years.

On February 10, 1942, Theo Hespers was arrested by the Gestapo in occupied Antwerp when he tried to pick up groceries for his family with false papers . His wife was also arrested and held in Vechta until November 14th . He himself was imprisoned in various prisons and was taken to Berlin's Moabit prison on April 13, 1943 . From September 1942 to July 1943, in particular, he was tortured several times in order to obtain information about resistance fighters. The family's requests for clemency were denied. Theo Hespers was sentenced to death on July 22, 1943 and hanged on September 9, along with 250 other victims in Berlin-Plötzensee .

Honors

Stumbling block
  • In 1993 the Theo Hespers Foundation eV was founded in Mönchengladbach. The non-profit association is non-partisan and sees itself as an institution that deals with both the resistance against National Socialism and the development of neo-fascism , racism, xenophobia and violence in the present.
  • Since 1994 a memorial stone in the main municipal cemetery in Mönchengladbach has been commemorating the resistance fighter
  • On September 4, 2009, a stumbling block was set in front of his birthplace in Mönchengladbach.
  • The Catholic Church included Theodor Hespers as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .
  • On the 74th anniversary of the resistance fighter's death, a 1.90 meter high and 60 centimeter wide Hespers Steele was inaugurated on September 9, 2017 at the future Theo Hespers Comprehensive School at Dülkener Straße 85. At the time of the inauguration of the monument, the school was still called Gesamtschule Stadtmitte.

literature

  • Hans Ebeling : Theo Hespers. Look into the world. (London), 6th issue, June 1949, p. 20. Repr .: Hans Ebeling, Dieter Hespers (Hrsg.): Jugend contra Nationalozialismus. Bartmann Verlag, Frechen 1968 (2nd edition), pp. 238–241 (1st edition 1966).
  • Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Paderborn u. a. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 48–52.
  • Jutta Finke-Gödde: Theo Hespers. Mönchengladbach 2004, ed. from the Gladbacher Bank as Volume 22 of the book series "Witnesses of the Urban Past", ISBN 3-936824-22-3 .
  • Fritz Schmidt: Another Germany. Resistance and persecution by Nazi organs - the circle around Hans Ebeling and Theo Hespers in exile. Verlag Achim Freudenstein, Edermünde 2005, ISBN 3-932435-14-1 .
  • Hespers, Theodor. In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cort, Bart de, 1957-: Van vrouwen, vrede en verzet: Selma Meyer (1890–1941) en hair Holland Typing Office . Champlemy Pers Amsterdam, Amsterdam 2013, ISBN 978-90-79567-03-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Hespers, Theo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hespers, Theodor Franz Maria (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter in the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Mönchengladbach
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee