Walter Vielhauer

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Walter Vielhauer (born April 1, 1909 in Reutlingen , † April 19, 1986 in Heilbronn ) was a trade unionist , KPD functionary, resistance fighter and as such a prisoner in various concentration camps . He was a member of the international prisoner committee of the Buchenwald concentration camp . After the end of the war he was appointed mayor of Heilbronn by the American military government .

Life

Vielhauer came to Heilbronn in 1914 , where he worked as a silversmith at the Peter Bruckmann & Söhne silverware factory and joined the union. In 1930 he became a member of the KPD and quickly advanced to the regional party leadership. From 1932 the KPD organized itself in Heilbronn and elsewhere with a view to the rising National Socialists in small street or company cells (mostly in groups of five), which were in contact with each other through only one member of the next higher authority. It was hoped that this would obscure the party's organizational structure. Vielhauer was in charge of the Bruckmann company cell.

However, since the local party leadership was known from before 1932 and also appeared publicly in the election campaign for the 1933 Reichstag election , the veiling failed. Vielhauer was taken into so-called “ protective custody ” on March 3, 1933, together with Erich Leucht , Adolf Herrmann, Konrad Erb, Karl Biehler, Wilhelm Egerter, Karl Feidengruber, Hermann Schmidt, Otto Kirchner and Erich Ceffinato in the police prison in Heilbronn's Wilhelmstrasse . On March 28, 1933, he and about 60 other inmates were transferred to the Heuberg concentration camp . The Heilbronn KPD then reorganized underground and set up new street and company cells, which were gradually joined by those party functionaries who were released from protective custody.

Vielhauer was also released from protective custody for health reasons in the summer of 1933 and initially returned to Heilbronn, where he escaped from further imminent arrest. He went underground in Stuttgart via Schwäbisch Gmünd . Here he immediately took part in resistance campaigns by the illegal KPD district leadership and was primarily involved in distributing the Süddeutsche Arbeiterzeitung , the tribunal , the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung and the Rote Fahne to Heilbronn. These magazines were smuggled from their place of manufacture in Switzerland to Stuttgart by the so-called transport column Otto . Vielhauer also supplied the Heilbronner Kaiser / Riegraf group with underground fonts.

In the autumn of 1933, however, the transport column was stopped, and in the course of the subsequent investigation, Vielhauer was arrested again. The left side of his face was paralyzed from torture during interrogation. In December 1933, Vielhauer's sister Hedwig tried to free her brother from remand, for which she was sentenced to prison in the summer of 1934. Vielhauer himself was sentenced to five years in prison by the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court, but remained in prison until the end of the war.

First he was in solitary confinement in the Ludwigsburg prison , later for a month in the Welzheim protective custody camp , then as inmate no.240 in the Dachau concentration camp , where he was part of the external command that built the barracks of the Mauthausen concentration camp for five months . In Dachau, Vielhauer was part of a secret prisoner resistance organization. When this was discovered at the beginning of April 1944, Vielhauer was first transferred to dark arrest and then to Buchenwald concentration camp in June 1944 . There the illegal International Committee was formed in July 1943 from representatives of the most important national prisoner groups, to which Vielhauer also belonged after his arrival as prisoner no. 39282 and which made preparations for the liberation of the prisoners when the Americans approached. On April 5, 1945, the evacuation of the camp began in front of the advancing American units. On April 8, the committee took up radio contact with the approaching 3rd US Army , which ordered the prisoners to wait until liberation. The American commander Ball, who moved in on April 13, 1945, formally dissolved the camp committee by decree.

Vielhauer returned to Stuttgart in June 1945, where he was a speaker at the first public meeting of former political prisoners in the State Theater on June 6, 1945 . On June 30, 1945, he was appointed assistant for housing, work and welfare issues in Heilbronn by Mayor Emil Beutinger, who was reinstated by the American city commandant . The American military government later appointed him head of department and then mayor.

As early as June 1945 in Heilbronn, Vielhauer was also involved in preparations for the re-establishment of the previously banned parties and unions. Again, illegal meetings took place, as the military government had initially forbidden any partisan political activity. In July 1945 he made an unsuccessful attempt to get the local military government to approve unions. In August 1945, he supported OB Beutinger in his attempt a all democratic parties bundling structure Party to found, but this failed as early as 2 September, the local SPD sought their reinstatement, which was approved by the military government on September 28 1945th In mid-October 1945, two weeks after the constituent meeting of the SPD, Vielhauer and Erich Leucht therefore applied for re-admission of the Heilbronn KPD. Leucht was elected its chairman at the founding meeting on October 21, 1945, Vielhauer did not join because of his municipal office. However, in the following years he continued to campaign for the establishment of a “unified list” of the KPD and SPD, which was initially lively discussed, but was finally rejected by the SPD shortly before the first post-war municipal council elections in early May 1946.

On May 26, 1946, Vielhauer was elected to the city council without a party, then he rejoined the newly founded KPD, which had received more than 10% of the vote in the elections and in 1948 the mayor election campaign of the SPD candidate Paul was unsuccessful Metz supported. On June 30, 1948, Vielhauer resigned as mayor. In 1954 he ran for mayor against Paul Meyle, but was only able to win 1,727 votes (Meyle: 28,640). Vielhauer was a member of the municipal council until the KPD was banned from the party in 1956 and then tried to run for election on the Heilbronn electoral association list. This list was rejected, however, and an action against it by the Federal Administrative Court in 1958 was dismissed.

Vielhauer appeared on countless anti-fascist occasions well into old age and reaffirmed Buchenwald's oath . After his death, his name was included in the Book of the Righteous in Yad Vashem , Israel .

literature

  • Beech forest. A concentration camp. Report by the former concentration camp inmates Emil Carlebach , Paul Grünewald, Helmut Röder, Willy Schmidt , Walter Vielhauer . Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-87682-786-8
  • Susanne Stickel-Pieper (arrangement): Trau! Look! Whom? Documents on the history of the labor movement in the Heilbronn / Neckarsulm area 1844–1949 . Distel-Verlag, Heilbronn 1994, ISBN 3-929348-09-8 , in the book ISBN 3-923348-09-8

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personal data
SURNAME Vielhauer, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionist, KPD functionary, resistance fighter and prisoner in various concentration camps
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Reutlingen
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1986
Place of death Heilbronn