Ursula Goetze

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Memorial plaque on Haus Hornstrasse  3, Berlin-Kreuzberg, designed by Christa Ludwig in 1987
Memorial for Ursula Goetze and other victims of Hitler's fascism in Berlin-Mitte, Humboldt University

Ursula Goetze (born March 29, 1916 in Berlin ; † August 5, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a student and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Ursula Goetze came from a middle-class family. She was the third child of the businessman Otto Goetze and his wife Margarete, and their grandparents ran a hotel. After visiting the Lyceum and a Higher Commercial School , which she left just before graduation, she worked for several years as a stenographer. From 1938 she attended a private evening school in Schöneberg to prepare for her Abitur. Her professional goal was to be a teacher, also because she believed that this would be the most effective way to work against the now established Nazi regime. After passing the Abitur examination, she began studying philology (English and French) at the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Berlin University in April 1940 .

Through her older brother Eberhard Goetze and classmates, Goetze came to the Communist Youth Association of Germany in Berlin-Neukölln around 1930 . Even before 1933 she was picked up twice by the police distributing leaflets. After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party and its allies, they did not break off contact with their comrades who participated in rather hard on the opposition. She performed auxiliary services for members of the Jewish minority and participated in the illegal smuggling of forbidden literature from abroad. In her Kreuzberg apartment on Hornstrasse, people met to listen to "enemy broadcasts", translated leaflets for the French Resistance and planned resistance activities. Goetze collected money for politically persecuted, racially discriminated people and forced laborers. She traveled to the Paris World Exhibition in 1937, visited an emigrated Jewish friend in 1939 a few weeks before the outbreak of war and made contacts with the British Labor Party . She refused to emigrate and returned to Germany to work against Hitler. At the Salvation's night school, she became friends especially with Eva captain at (born Knieper). Fritz Thiel , Friedrich Rehmer and other classmates joined this group. Under the guidance of John Rittmeister , the group of joint schoolwork turned into a group of opponents of Hitler. Forbidden literature was discussed together, and foreign broadcasters listened to and analyzed. With her political friends, she got in touch with Harro Schulze-Boysen , the leading head of the resistance network known as the “ Red Orchestra ” by the Gestapo . With Harro Schulze-Boysen and her friend Werner Krauss , she tried to set up opposition groups among French forced laborers. She also met with them in their apartment. The efforts got stuck in the beginning. The Gestapo remained unaware of this, as did their continued contacts with their comrades in the communist underground. In the wave of arrests that followed Schulze-Boysen's arrest, she was also arrested and sentenced as a member of the Red Orchestra.

Sticky notes from the " Red Chapel "

On May 17, 1942, she and her boyfriend took part in the protest against the propaganda exhibition “ The Soviet Paradise ” initiated by Fritz Thiel and Harro Schulze-Boysen, contrary to the advice of their communist friends, and stuck to the Sachsendamm and the Rote Insel residential area to the north one hundred stickers “Permanent exhibition: THE NAZI PARADISE - Hunger, Lies, Gestapo . For how much longer?". For this reason and for passing on leaflets, she was sentenced to death on January 18, 1943 .

While in custody she developed strong feelings of guilt because she felt that she had admitted more than necessary during interrogation and thus unnecessarily incriminated Werner Krauss, who had had strong doubts about the sticky notes. In order to save her friend, she took all the blame on herself or accused the already executed Fritz Thiel of false testimony. Thiel had heavily burdened her and Werner Krauss under torture.

On August 5, 1943, the death sentence in Plötzensee was carried out by beheading with a guillotine . Her body was taken to the Charité anatomy department , was then burned and the ashes buried anonymously.

After the end of the Nazi regime there was an attempt to rename Hornstrasse to Ursula-Goetze-Strasse. A city map published in 1946 already documents an Ursula-Goetze-Strasse there. However, the attempt failed. The exact circumstances are not known.

Honors

  • There is a memorial stone in the courtyard of the Humboldt University in Berlin-Mitte (Unter den Linden 6).
  • There is a memorial plaque at her last house in Hornstrasse 3 (Kreuzberg district) (see picture above)
  • According to her was Ursula-Goetze-Straße in Berlin-Karlshorst named.
  • On the occasion of the 100th birthday, a commemorative event was held in the Kreuzberg town hall at the request of the district assembly and the SPD. The party Die Linke had also applied for “a designation in public roads”, namely to name the “green corridor in Hornstrasse” after Ursula Goetze. What was meant was the green median of the street without neighbors.
  • In the memorial of the socialists , their name is written on the large porphyry plaque.

See also

literature

  • In memoriam. Ursula Goetze (1916-1943). "Unfortunately I couldn't finish this book ...". In: Lendemains . No. 48, Vol. 12, 1987, ISSN  0170-3803 , pp. 153-161.
  • Regina Griebel, Marlies Coburger and Heinrich Scheel : Recorded? The Gestapo album for the Red Orchestra. A photo documentation. Audioscop, Halle 1992, ISBN 3-88384-044-0 .
  • Werner Krauss: Before the curtain fell. Records of a key witness of the century . Fischer-TB.-Vlg., Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12771-8 .
  • Karl Heinz Jahnke : Murdered and Wiped Out - Twelve German Antifascists. Ahriman-Verlag (series: Unwanted books on fascism No. 8): Freiburg (Breisgau) 1995, ISBN 978-3-89484-553-7 . on Google Books
  • Luise Kraushaar et al .: German resistance fighters 1933 - 1945. Biographies and letters. Volume 1, Dietz-Verlag: Berlin 1970, page 320ff

Web links

Commons : Ursula Goetze  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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 ; P. 68
  2. ↑ All information, unless otherwise stated, see: Eike Stedefeldt, Vom Hinterrücks-Vergessen, in: Junge Welt, April 15, 2016, p. 10.
  3. ^ Stefan Reichardt: Memorial in memory of the book burning on May 10, 1933. Humboldt University, archived from the original on February 2, 2007 ; Retrieved December 25, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Eike Stedefeldt, Vom Hinterrücks-Vergessen, in: Junge Welt, April 15, 2016, p. 10
  5. ↑ Thomas Frey: Memory of Ursula Goetze. In: Berliner Woche.de. February 27, 2016, accessed May 15, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Goetze, Ursula
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1943
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee