Theodor Babilon

Theodor Babilon (born February 26, 1899 in Cologne ; † February 11, 1945 in the Ohrdruf subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp ) was managing director of the Kolping House in Cologne .

Life

Theodor Babilon completed a commercial apprenticeship, was drafted into the front during the First World War and was employed by the management of the Kolping Houses in Cologne from March 24, 1919. In 1932 he became the managing director of the Catholic journeyman's hospital in Cologne, which later became the Kolping House in Breite Strasse. Since the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Babilon lived in the tension between self-determined association activity and the threat of breaking up the Kolping Society . As early as 1937 he refused to recognize the so-called ban on double membership and was subsequently expelled from the German Labor Front (DAF). During the Second World War , Babilon was part of a discussion group at the headquarters of the Kolping Society, which usually met at weekly intervals to discuss the current political situation. In the summer of 1944, an employee of the Kolping House denounced this group to the district leadership of the NSDAP .

Arrest and death

Stolperstein Breite Str. 118

On 15 August 1944 Babilon was the Kolpinghaus along with Leo Schwering and Cologne Local Church President of the Kolping Society, Heinrich Richter , from the Gestapo arrested several days under inhumane conditions in the notorious EL-DE-Haus detained in the Elise street and then into the concentration camp Transit camp in Deutz . Out of consideration for his wife and four children, he did not take advantage of an opportunity to escape after a devastating bomb attack on October 14th. After the Deutz concentration camp had been completely destroyed in December 1944 , Babilon was transferred to the Klingelpütz prison and subjected to further interrogations. Interventions by the Archbishop of Cologne , Joseph Frings, failed. On January 15, 1945 Babilon was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and from there transferred to the Ohrdruf concentration camp external command (detention number 47588), where he died of starvation and exhaustion on February 11, 1945. To this day it is not clear whether he died as a result of meningitis or whether he was murdered by guards in the last days before the Allied liberation.

Appreciation

• A street in Cologne's Deutz district is named after Theodor Babilon. In his memory, two stumbling blocks were laid at his place of residence (Alarichstrasse 28) and at his place of work (Breite Strasse 118) in Cologne .
• In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Theodor Babilon as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

(Selection)

• Bernhard Ridder: Men of the Kolping Society. Cologne 1955, pp. 153–158.
• Robert Steimel: Cologne heads. Cologne 1958, column 36.
• Heinz-Albert Raem: Catholic journeyman association and German Kolping family in the era of National Socialism. Publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, vol. 35. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1982, p. 232ff.
• Leo Schwering : In the clutches of the Gestapo. Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7616-0937-X , especially pp. 231-238.
• Helmut Moll (Hrsg.): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century. Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, Vol. I, pp. 365–370, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 .
• Ekkart Sauser :  Theodor Babilon. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 18, Bautz, Herzberg 2001, ISBN 3-88309-086-7 , Sp. 117-118.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ NS Documentation Center - Stumbling Blocks | Memorials for the victims of National Socialism (Babilon, Theodor) , accessed on March 6, 2015
2. ↑ NS Documentation Center - Stumbling Blocks | Memorials for the victims of National Socialism (Babilon, Theo) , accessed on March 6, 2015

Web links

• Theodor Babilon in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints