Walther Lüders

Walther Lüders (born October 4, 1896 in Hamburg ; missing since August 1945 ) was a German mechanical engineer and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Live and act

Walther Lüders was the son of the real estate agent Louis Georg Jacob Ferdinand Lüders and his wife Marie Dorothea Hermine Lüders, née Knack. His mother had three sisters, with whom he and three siblings in Hamburg-St. Georg grew up. The father did not pay child support for his children. His mother ran a “tailor's studio for senior daughters” in St. Georg, but could only earn occasional income and thus not be able to feed the children on her own. Walther Lüders attended school and was forced by his aunts to start training as a craftsman. He began an apprenticeship as a locksmith. His first employer fired him because Lüders did not show up for work and instead stayed on the Elbe to study the works of Karl Marx . Lüders then learned the trade of mechanical engineering at the Hütter Elevator Construction company and completed his training in 1914.

Lüder's eldest brother Fritz died during the First World War . Walther Lüders did military service and became a member of the Spartakusbund and the KPD after the end of the war . Lüders gave training courses for the Free Socialist Youth and met his future wife, Karoline Kling, there. The couple married in 1919 and had their son Axel in the same year. In 1926, Lüders, who was taking evening courses in radio technology alongside his job, got a job at Van Kalker & Co. - German Technical Society . He took on jobs as a fitter and truck driver for the Hamburg-based company. In July 1930 he was dismissed due to the global economic crisis .

In 1929 Walther Lüders joined the Hamburg KPO , which planned to work underground from 1932. After the seizure of power in 1933, Lüders led the KPO in Hamburg together with Kurt Iser and Fritz Ruhnau. The group met, among other places, in Lüder's apartment at Steindamm 76, where writings by the resistance group such as the Junius letters were copied. At the end of 1933, leading members of the KPO, including Walther Lüders, were arrested. After his admission on November 19, 1933, the Gestapo tortured Lüders in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp in order to obtain information from him about other members of the resistance group, which Lüders did not provide. On September 17, 1934, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court ruled on Lüders and 19 other members of the KPO. Three people were acquitted, 16 defendants received sentences ranging from nine months in prison to two and a half years in prison. Walther Lüders received a prison sentence of two and a half years, which he had to serve in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp.

During the imprisonment period, Lüder's wife could no longer afford the necessary school fees for the couple's son. Axel Lüders therefore began training as a bookseller with Paul Hennings in Hamburg, who sold second-hand books. Karoline Lüders visited her husband regularly, changed his laundry every week and stayed in contact with other prisoners and their relatives. Walther Lüder's imprisonment ended on August 19, 1936.

Although he had a criminal record, Walther Lüders got a job as a technician at Sonneberg - Haus der Technik in March 1937 . The company based in Mönckebergstrasse was one of the leading radio stores in Hamburg. In addition to private meetings with other resistance activists and former KPO members, Lüders gave a lecture on the history of the labor movement in his apartment. While his son had to take up military service immediately at the beginning of the Second World War , the convicted Lüders was considered "unworthy of defense".

The Gestapo arrested Lüders on January 19, 1942 at his workplace. The reasons for the arrest are unknown. Presumably she had found out that Lüders was still in contact with persons of the resistance. Since Lüder's employer was a meeting point for the swing youth active in Hamburg , the arrest could also be related to the persecution of this movement. Although no misconduct could be proven, Lüders remained imprisoned. His stay in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison was followed by a transfer to the Neuengamme concentration camp on June 11, 1942 , where the principle of extermination through work was pursued. Since Lüders had to do lighter jobs as a skilled worker, he was able to survive two years in prison.

At the beginning of November 1944, Lüders was forcibly assigned to the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger together with 71 other camp inmates . On November 7th of the same year the camp administration "solemnly" released the prisoners for "parole on the Eastern Front". Since many of the prisoners with SS pay books and uniforms were unwilling to fight, they deserted before the end of 1944. The correspondence between Lüders and his family ended in December 1944, presumably due to the defection to the Soviet armed forces . Lüders received the same treatment as other prisoners of war and reached the Stalino 280 / III prisoner-of-war camp near Donetsk with about 140 other prisoners from the Dirlewanger special unit . Alfred Dunkel last saw Walther Lüders there in August 1945 doing forced labor in a 60 centimeter high tunnel. It was a "completely dilapidated shaft" in which there was up to 20 centimeters of mud and water, according to Dunkel. Since then there have been no further signs of life from Walther Lüders.

Lüder's son Axel and his wife Elsa opened a bookstore in Eimsbüttel in 1956 . In particular, they sold antiquarian books with a focus on works from Marxism and early socialism .

A stumbling block in Hamburg-St. Has been remembering Walther Lüders since March 2005 . George .

literature

• Herbert Diercks: Lüders, Walther . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 234-235 .

Web links

• Benedikt Behrens: Walther Lüders on Stolpersteine-Hamburg.de