Walter Rietig

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Walter Rietig (around 1940)

Walter Rietig , born as Walter Hermann Erich Rietig (born November 4, 1906 in Breslau ; † December 22, 1942 in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison ) was a German worker in the Rüsselsheim Opel plant , who at the time of National Socialism only worked because of contact with forced laborers and allegedly "Communist hate speech" was denounced and executed after a quick trial in the Berlin People's Court in order to intimidate other resisting colleagues in Rüsselsheim. As a victim of National Socialism , a stumbling block was dedicated to him in his home town of Langen by the “Stolpersteine ​​für Langen” initiative . Since the report published in 2013 by the University of Marburg on the Nazi past of the former mayor Walter Köbel of Rüsselsheim, a cross-party initiative of the Rüsselsheim city parliament has emerged, the nationwide known sports hall "Walter-Köbel-Halle" in "Walter-Rietig-Halle" rename it.

Life

Walter Rietig was born as the son of Max Gustav Rietig, painter, and his wife Emilie, née Gambus. He had a difficult childhood as his mother died early. But Walter had problems with his father's new wife, his stepmother Pauline. "The stepmother didn't want Walter with her and put him in a Protestant children's home where he didn't feel comfortable," reports Walter's granddaughter. When Walter left the home at the age of 14, he left the church immediately.

Rietig learned the profession of plumber. He was sent to Opel for assembly in Rüsselsheim, where he was also employed later. From 1929 he was employed by the Opel company in Rüsselsheim, initially on a temporary basis, later on a permanent basis. How he got to Langen is not exactly known. One thing is certain: on November 21, 1929, still single, he moved from Rüsselsheim to Langen at Wolfsgartenstrasse 54 to the Heinrich Werkmann II family. On May 23, 1931, he married his daughter Katharina Margarethe, who was born on September 21, 1903, called Greta. It was only a civil ceremony, because his wife - after describing his experiences in the children's home - had also left the church. Their son Gerhard was born in 1939.

Rietig was not bound by party politics, but felt that he belonged to the labor movement. From 1926 to 1928 he was a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth , a youth organization of the SPD , and since 1929 also of the SPD-related tourist association " Friends of Nature " in Langen.

Shortly after the " seizure of power ", Rietig joined the German Labor Front (DAF), which had been created as a national socialist union of workers and employers after the unions had been smashed. However, this does not have to be interpreted as an expression of a change of attitude, because membership in the DAF was more or less compulsory for workers in a large company.

The same applies to his membership in the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), which he joined in 1938. "Membership in this association was often acquired in order to demonstrate political conformity to the outside world and thus to avoid persecution."

denunciation

Rietig was considered a "harmless, good man who could not harm anyone". His carelessness and gullibility were to be his undoing. His work colleague, Fritz Zängerle from Langen (who would later become the 1st Works Council Chairman of Opel) describes him as follows: "Sometimes he was careless with critical statements about the Nazi regime and didn't pay attention to who he was talking to."

He was denounced in the summer of 1941. He had repeatedly expressed himself critical of the regime, said a work colleague at the DAF works administration (after Fritz Zängerle the denouncer was called Schmalz; Gerhard Rietig, on the other hand, names a Rüsselsheimer named Draiser). On the day he was transferred to a new department in May 1942, he complained about the poor living and working conditions for the workers. He also described the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 as an illegal attack and questioned the victory of the German Reich . And he had expressed himself critically about the national-socialist Jewish policy. In addition, the informer suspected, Rietig had illicit contacts with the French prisoners of war. Two other informers confirmed these statements.

In fact, Rietig probably belonged to one of the illegal operating groups at Opel (but only as an informant, as Fritz Zängerle later explained). In these groups, communists, but also social democratic, bourgeois-liberal and Christian-motivated workers came together for - inevitably conspiratorial - meetings to talk about their situation and to exchange information - mainly from so-called " enemy broadcasters ". They also wanted to be prepared in the event of armed resistance in the last days of the Nazi regime in order to free “their company” from the Nazis and thus prevent a scorched earth policy. In this context, Rietig had spoken to prisoners of war in order to involve them in the possible activities.

Of course, the informer could not have known any of this when he made his accusations. Friends of Rietig therefore assume that the allegation was constructed. The manager of the DAF, Arthur L., wanted to make an example, and Rietig was just right for him. "The Nazis then quite deliberately let him (Walter Rietig) run around for a few weeks unmolested, but monitored, in order to be able to get hold of other resistance fighters," recalls Fritz Zängerle, and asserts that they had warned Walter earlier (before 1939) , after the Labor Front passport had been withdrawn from them after careless remarks: "Walter, if your Labor Front passport has been confiscated, go away." But all efforts to persuade the then future father Walter Rietig to flee failed. "He believed he could get away with two to three years in prison."

Judgment and death

On July 13, 1942, the Darmstadt Secret State Police came to Opel, interrogated the informers and other colleagues, and then arrested Walter Rietig at the company. After two days of "interrogation", he signed an interrogation protocol in which he admitted all the statements against which he was accused and stated that he had made them out of communist convictions.

A week later, Rietig revoked his confession before the judge. He indicated that the statements had been extracted from him. His father later cited in a pardon that his son had been forced to stand for hours with his arms crossed behind his head until he was so physically and mentally exhausted that he admitted all the allegations. Walter stuck to this statement until his death. He named vengeance as the motive of the informer. Rietig had worked with him on the same assembly line. Since his colleague worked considerably more slowly, Rietig had initially also reduced his work speed; however, according to his master's accusations, Rietig continued to work normally and thus made it clear who was responsible for the delays.

The Darmstadt judges did not believe Rietig's revocation of the confession and issued an arrest warrant for “treasonous favoring the enemy in connection with the preparation of a highly treasonable enterprise” and “unauthorized handling of prisoners of war”. He was transferred from the Gestapo prison to the Darmstadt prison on July 23 and brought to Berlin on October 13 in a collective transport. In the notorious Alt-Moabit remand prison, he waited two weeks for his trial before the People's Court.

“The trial was a farce from a rule of law perspective. The People's Court, the Reich Court for Political Crimes, was created specifically as an instrument of the National Socialist government to combat political resistance. The lay judges assisting the two professional judges in Walter Rietig's case were all functionaries of the NSDAP in high party offices. No independent judgment was to be expected from this court ”. [Heidi Fogel in the FAZ, September 14, 1983]

Only the witnesses were heard in the taking of evidence; Counter-witnesses were not allowed to appear. The guilty verdict was clear from the start and was based only on the statements of the informers. The court only dropped the accusation of “prohibited handling of prisoners of war”. Walter was sentenced to death by guillotine on October 26, 1942 . In the reasoning for the judgment, the judges made it clear why they imposed the maximum penalty: "... for reasons of deterrence". Because "the danger was ... obvious that the decomposition poison spread by the defendant would continue to have an effect on the workforce of the Opel works and result in an unpredictable impairment of the mood and the willingness to work in this important arms factory."

Long weeks of waiting began and Rietig hoped for a pardon . But then everything happened very quickly: On December 3, 1942, the Reich Minister of Justice decided not to make use of his right to pardon. As a result, the enforcement order was issued on December 8th. On the day of his death at noon, Rietig learned of the execution planned for the evening . He tried again to convince the judges of the untrustworthiness of the informers, but they refused a retrial on the same day. Rietig no longer had the opportunity to see his family; Shortly before his death he said goodbye to them by letter.

Shortly before Christmas, on the evening of December 22, 1942 at around 11 p.m., Rietig was executed with the guillotine in Berlin-Plötzensee prison. According to an order from the Reich Ministry of Justice, the execution should only be announced in one place: in the Opel works. There a red poster announced Rietig's death to the workers.

A proper burial was denied to him and his relatives; his body was handed over to the anatomical institute of the University of Berlin, the Charité , for study purposes.

Rietig was the victim of a disciplinary action by the rulers against the Opel workers. A chilling example was intended to put down the spreading unrest in the company.

Rietig's denouncer was most likely called Schmalz and belonged to the Opel trust council at the time, a kind of pseudo-employee representation. When Fritz Zängerle tried to hold him accountable after the war, he fled to France.

Rietig left a wife and a three-year-old son. His violent death cast a heavy shadow over his family's life. The wife never got over the death of her husband, and for a long time the son could not talk about the cruel fate of his father. Only the 41-year-old granddaughter Sylvia Rietig is able to evoke memories of her grandfather.

Honors, aftermath

Walter Rietig received numerous honors posthumously . Streets in Langen and Rüsselsheim were named after him.

There is a cross-party effort in the Rüsselsheim city parliament to rename the local sports hall from “Walter-Köbel-Halle” to “Walter-Rietig-Halle”. This results from a request by the left of the Hessian state parliament in 2011 about the Nazi past of Hessian state parliament members and politicians. It was there that Walter Köbel's NSDAP membership came to light. As a result, in July of the same year, the Greens commissioned the scientific elaboration of his work during the Nazi era. The shocking result of the Nazi entanglement of Köbel from the study by the Marburg historian Eckart Conze was published by his colleague Sabine Kühn on January 31, 2013 in the Rüsselsheim town hall.

Web links

• Text about Rietig on stolpersteine-langen.de
• City archive Rüsselsheim am Main
• Rietig on Leuchtende-vorbilder.de
• Farewell letter from Rietig

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​für Langen ( Memento of the original from January 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Study: Former Mayor Köbel was a National Socialist ( Memento from February 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (February 1, 2013)
3. ^ Heidi Fogel in FAZ from September 14, 1983
4. ↑ Eduard Betzendörfer: The names of the Langener Strasse , p. 36