Walter Klingenbeck

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Walter Klingenbeck

Walter Klingenbeck , (born March 30, 1924 in Munich , † August 5, 1943 in Stadelheim ) was a young German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Origin and motive

Walter Klingenbeck came from a Catholic family who had moved from Fechenbach / Main ( Lower Franconia ) to Munich in the early 1920s . He was a staunch member of the Catholic youth group St. Ludwig (Munich) until it was banned and dissolved by the Nazi regime in 1936. This fact sparked his early anti-regime attitude.

Together with his father he listened to the broadcasts on Vatican Radio , which reported on National Socialist violations of the Reich Concordat. His father no longer listened to the enemy radio stations that were banned at the start of the war in 1939 ; Walter Klingenbeck stayed with it.

Actions

In the spring of 1941, four apprentices between the ages of 16 and 17 joined forces. They shared a similar political and religious attitude.

The driving force was the switching technology apprentice Walter Klingenbeck. He was an apprentice at Rohde & Schwarz . There he got to know the intern Daniel von Recklinghausen. Hans (Johann) Haberl was a high-frequency technician and shared a rented room with Erwin Eidel, who was doing an apprenticeship as an aircraft engine fitter. The four friends had a great passion for technology, especially radio. By listening to German-language broadcasts on the British BBC , the international Vatican Radio and other banned radio stations, their perspective, far removed from the regime, strengthened.

They distributed leaflets which, unlike those of the Helmuth Hübener group in Hamburg, only consisted of short texts and pictures. At the same time, another group had formed in Vienna, the leader of which was Josef Landgraf . The three young groups of four had formed independently and they knew nothing of each other.

The Klingenbeck district initially only met to listen to unauthorized radio broadcasts. The boys were fascinated by the station Gustav Siegfried 1 , which spread rumors like “ typhus had broken out on the Eastern Front ” or “ high officials would indulge in wild sexual debauchery ”. Finally they tried to set up their own black channel. They came up with names for their station: “ Radio Rotterdam ” to commemorate the destruction of the city by the German Air Force , or “ Sender der Freiheit ” or “Gustav Siegfried 8” . In their first small test attempts, they broadcast French pop music and opposition propaganda to call for the overthrow of the Nazi regime they longed for.

Klingenbeck also worked on a leaflet about the late dancer La Jana . He wanted to spread the rumor that the woman had killed herself to avoid any advances by Goebbels . He had her arrested by the Gestapo in order to make her compliant. Klingenbeck's attempt was considered high treason .

In the summer of 1941, the BBC issued a call to spread the V symbol as an abbreviation for the English word "victory" in order to herald the victory of the Allies . In September 1941, Klingenbeck painted large V signs with black waste oil on around 40 buildings in the south of Munich, in the Bogenhausen district and in front of the SS barracks in the Freimann district. Recklinghausen was involved by standing guard.

Counter-actions by the Nazi regime

Arrest and remand

Out of recklessness, Klingenbeck told of this action, so that he was denounced and arrested on January 26, 1942 at the age of 17. A few days later, his friends were arrested. Eight months sat the boy in custody . Walter Klingenbeck took on the entire responsibility.

Condemnation

On September 24, 1942 there was a hearing at the People's Court in Berlin, which was responsible for high treason . In the law of majority at that time , the age was set at 21 years. The “ Ordinance on Protection against Young Criminals ” issued at the beginning of the war paved the way for 16-year-olds to be sentenced to prison or the death penalty in October 1939 .

Vice President Karl Engert sentenced Klingenbeck to the death penalty. The text of the judgment says that Klingenbeck referred to his strict Catholic upbringing and acted on the basis of this attitude: “At the same time, he was clear that his act could cost him his head. The essential content of the National Socialist world of ideas was alien to him at the time of the crime. "Hans Haberl and Daniel von Recklinghausen were also initially sentenced to death, Erwin Eidel to eight years in prison :

"All of the defendants were young at the time of the offense, but over 16 years old and their intellectual and moral development should be respected in the same way as a person over 18 years old."

Almost a year after the verdict, on August 2, 1943, Haberl and von Recklinghausen were pardoned to eight years' imprisonment. The pardon for Walter Klingenbeck, however, was rejected.

enforcement

Shortly before his execution, Klingenbeck wrote several farewell letters. In one of them, Klingenbeck made it clear that he knew what he was leaving his life for. The farewell letter to Hans Haberl, whom he called Jonny, is also frequently cited, in which Klingenbeck takes part in the pardon of his friend. On August 5, 1943, he informed Haberl of his request that he pray some Our Fathers for him if the latter wanted to do something for him.

On the same day, Walter Klingenbeck was guillotined in the Munich-Stadelheim prison at the age of only 19 . On Klingenbeck's death slip appears a saying that goes back to Father Peter Lippert SJ : “God sometimes needs people who run ahead of the day in order to announce it; but they have to die before the day comes. ”The parents were not informed of the execution and four weeks later received a package with Klingebeck's laundry. He was buried on August 6, 1943 in the Perlacher Forst cemetery and in 1949 transferred to the sister's family grave in Munich's Westfriedhof .

End of war

At the end of the war, the Allies freed his friends from prison. The 22-year-old Haberl set up a radio workshop . Recklinghausen worked as a radio mechanic in a workshop of an American unit. He later emigrated to the United States.

After the death of their son, the parents went back to their home village of Fechenbach. There, Walter Klingenbeck's name was subsequently added in the 1950s to the memorial for the fallen in World War II, which stands next to the parish church of St. Stephanus.

Commemoration

Walter Klingenbeck commemorates victims of the Nazi regime in Munich

In contrast to the White Rose, for example, Walter Klingenbeck is unknown to a broader public as a resistance fighter (as of July 2018), although his circle's actions took place before those of the White Rose. As in the case of Georg Elser , the memory of him did not begin until the 1990s and was initially limited to the historical analysis by Jürgen Zarusky . An article by Hans-Günter Richardi, which appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 1993 after the 50th anniversary of Klingenbeck's death, gave rise to the impetus to rename the state secondary school in Taufkirchen (district of Munich) founded in 1978 as the Walter-Klingenbeck-Schule on March 30, 1995 .

Klingenbeck Realschule in Taufkirchen (exterior view)

Two years later, the memory of Klingenbeck began in Klingenbeck's home quarter, Munich's Maxvorstadt, and not far from the parish church of St. Ludwig. Since January 1998, a previously unnamed path between Ludwigsstrasse and Kaulbachstrasse has been called Walter-Klingenbeck-Weg. On November 8, 2006, around 60 people in Maxvorstadt commemorated Klingenbeck for the first time with an acoustic memorial. With the help of CD players, the signal of the German service of the BBC was played; at the same time it is the Morse code for V for victory . A stumbling block in the art pavilion in the Old Botanical Garden has been a reminder of Walter Klingenbeck since 2009 . On the 75th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was placed on the family's former home at Amalienstraße 44; it is part of the Munich project Remembrance Signs for Victims of the Nazi Regime in Munich as an alternative to the controversial Munich project of the Stolpersteine .

In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Walter Klingenbeck as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century . The Archdiocese of Munich-Freising is considering the beatification of Klingenbeck and initiated a preliminary investigation.

Sources and literature

swell

The work and actions of Walter Klingenbeck and his group can be described almost exclusively through the trial files of those state bodies that supported National Socialism, against which the resistance was directed. These writings are digitized and accessible today by the Federal Archives, namely the report of the Chief Public Prosecutor Munich I and the final report of the State Police Headquarters in Munich on Walter Klingenbeck, Daniel von Recklinghausen, Erwin Eidel and Hans Haberl dated March 7, 1942 , the indictment of the High Prosecutor at the People's Court of July 6, 1942 and the death sentence against Walter Klingenbeck, Hans Haberl and Daniel von Recklinghausen as well as Erwin Eidel's sentencing to prison sentence on September 24, 1942.

The only publicly known ego document in the narrower sense is the already mentioned farewell letter from Klingenbeck to Hans Haberl dated August 5, 1943, of which a photo reproduction can be found in the holdings of the Foundation Archive of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives and which in this version is minimally from differs from the published text of the suicide note. The copy came into his possession through the membership of Hans Haberl and Erwin Eidel in the association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime . This post-war association of resistance fighters and those persecuted by the National Socialists undertook the first publication of Klingenbeck's farewell letter to Haberl in 1948. It is probably thanks to Haberl's initiative that several newspaper articles from the immediate post-war period are reminiscent of Klingenbeck. Copies of these articles can also be found in the Federal Archives.

material collection

  • Klaus Bäumler (ed.): Walter Klingenbeck. On the 60th anniversary of death August 5, 1943 - August 5, 2003 , District Committee Maxvorstadt 1998/2003: The collection contains, among other things, copies of the indictment of the senior Reich attorney from July 6, 1942 and the judgment of the 2nd Senate at the People's Court on September 24, 1942. But it also contains valuable information on the resistance in the Maxvorstadt district as well as on the development of commemoration of Walter Klingenbeck and biographical information that comes from contacts with surviving family members.

Representations

  • Ruth-Maria Gleißner: "Hitler shouldn't be so full of his mouth." The short life of Walter Klingenbeck. Bayer. Rundfunk, Munich 2004.
  • Andreas Mix: Listening to the radio is a state crime. In: Die Zeit , January 26, 2012.
  • Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 493–495.
  • Helga Pfoertner: memorials, memorials, places of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Munich 1933-1945. Live with the story. Volume 2, I to P , Literareon in Herbert Utz Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8316-1025-8 , 115-119.
  • Hildegard Vieregg: code name "Betti": youthful resistance and opposition to the National Socialists in Munich or: a plea for "young democracy". A project of the Munich City District Youth Association and the DGB Youth Munich in cooperation with the Cultural Department of the City of Munich [booklet to the traveling exhibition of the same name: "Code name Betti"], Munich City District Youth Association, Munich 1997, 70–72: with historical pictures from the prison showing the execution room and prayer chair.
  • Jürgen Zarusky : "... just a growth disease"? Youth resistance in Hamburg and Munich. In: Dachauer Hefte No. 7: Solidarity and Resistance. 1991, 210-229.

Web links

Commons : Walter Klingenbeck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b N.N .: Four boys for Germany . In: Today. A new illustrated magazine . No. 21 , October 1, 1946, printed in: Bäumler 1998/2003, 84–86, here: 85 .
  2. ↑ a b Hildegard Vieregg: Code name "Betti" . Munich 1997, p. 70-72 .
  3. ↑ a b Helga Pfoertner: memorials, memorials, places of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Munich 1933-1945. Live with the story. Volume 2, I-P . Munich 2003, p. 115 (with a photo of the grave, but erroneously stated forest cemetery instead of west cemetery).
  4. ↑ Helmut Gollwitzer, Käthe Kuhn, Reinhold Schneider (eds.): You haunted me at night . Farewell letters and records of the resistance 1933–1945 . Chr. Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1954, p. 85 (Walter Klingenbeck is referred to in the entry as a "student", the members of his group as "fellow students", even if there is never any mention of studying with him or the accused).
  5. ^ Klaus Bäumler: Walter Klingenbeck. On the 60th anniversary of his death, August 5, 1943 - August 5, 2003 . District Committee Maxvorstadt 2003, p. 87-88 .
  6. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: memorials, memorials, places of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Munich 1933-1945. Live with the story. Volume 2, I-P . tape 2 . Munich 2003, p. 118 .
  7. ↑ a b Walter Klingenbeck. In: Website of the parish of St. Ludwig (Munich). Retrieved on May 1, 2018 (with an exact location of the grave in Munich's Westfriedhof and a collection of quotes from and about Walter Klingenbeck).
  8. ^ Jürgen Zarusky: Forgotten Catholic resistance fighters in Bavaria: Walter Klingenbeck. In: YouTube. Catholic Academy in Bavaria AUDIO channel, accessed on 7 May 2018 .
  9. ^ Jürgen Zarusky: Walter Klingenbeck (1924 to 1943) . In: to debate . No. 1 , 2018, p. 28-30 .
  10. ^ Peter Pfister: Walter Klingenbeck . In: Helmut Moll on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ. The German Martyrologicum of the 20th Century . 4th edition. tape 1 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich 2006, p. 409-411 .
  11. ↑ Hans-Günter Richardi: He wanted to expose the Nazi state over the airwaves . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . November 9, 1993, p. 39 (also reprinted in Bäumler 1998/2003, 92–93).
  12. ↑ Sepp Hödl: Documentation I: Levels of remembering . In: Klaus Bäumler (Ed.): Walter Klingenbeck. For the 60th anniversary of death. August 5, 1943-5. August 2003 . 2nd edition of the 1998 edition, expanded only by a further preface. District committee Maxvorstadt, Munich 2003, p. 74-87 .
  13. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: memorials, memorials, places of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Munich 1933-1945. Live with the story. Volume 2, I-P . Munich 2003, p. 116 .
  14. ↑ Gerald Fiebig: Acoustic monument for Walter Klingenbeck. Retrieved on May 7, 2018 ("The piece is based on the composition of the same name by die Grenzlandreiter, which was performed in Munich in 2006 as a public performance").
  15. ↑ State capital Munich. Kulturreferat: ortstermine 2006. Art in public space. Retrieved May 7, 2018 .
  16. ^ Initiative Stolpersteine ​​für München eV: Chronicle of the Stolpersteine ​​in Munich. Retrieved July 22, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Honors for Walter Klingenbeck. Retrieved July 22, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Birgit Grundner and Gerhard Brack: Memorial plaque for Nazi resistance fighter Walter Klingenbeck. In: BR24 Upper Bavaria. August 4, 2018, accessed August 21, 2019 .
  19. ↑ Reminder signs . In: muenchen.de. The official city portal. Retrieved August 7, 2018 .
  20. ^ Helmut Moll (ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century . 6. again expanded u. updated edition. tape 1 . Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78080-5 , pp. 493-495 .
  21. ^ Archbishopric examines the beatification of Walter Klingenbeck. Retrieved August 3, 2018 .
  22. ↑ BArch, DY 55 / V 287/49: Instead of "If you want to do something for me" it says "If you want to do something for me".
  23. ↑ Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime: "... especially now do your duty!" Letters written by anti-fascists before their execution . Berlin 1948.
personal data
SURNAME Klingenbeck, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1943
Place of death Stadelheim