Wanda Kallenbach

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Wanda Kallenbach (born Möhring, born June 13, 1902 in Jankendorf , Kolmar i. Posen district , † August 18, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a Berlin housewife . Executed because of spontaneous critical remarks about everyday war life and those responsible Hitler and Göring , she is an example in Berlin's memory for thousands of "nameless victims" of the National Socialist terrorist justice system in World War II .

Life

As a young girl, Wanda Kallenbach left her home village, which fell to Poland in 1919 , and went to Berlin. There she worked as a housemaid, later as a packer and was temporarily a member of a trade union . She married the driver Fritz Kallenbach, gave birth to a daughter in 1933 and from then on lived at Schreinerstraße 47 in Berlin-Friedrichshain .

During the war, in August 1943, Kallenbach visited her sister in her home village, which had become German again in the Reichsgau Wartheland , to recover from the horror of the increasingly frequent air raids on Berlin by the Allies . She complained to acquaintances about Hermann Göring , the Commander in Chief of the Air Force , who had announced at the start of the war that Germany would never be hit by an enemy bomb. When asked what “little people” could do now, she replied that one person was powerless, but if everyone went on strike and the soldiers threw away their weapons, the war would soon be over.

Kallenbach had already been back in Berlin for months when the Gestapo arrested her on January 20, 1944 for denouncing her from Jankendorf. On April 20, 1944, the public prosecutor brought charges against Kallenbach for “ undermining military strength and favoring the enemy ”. On June 21, 1944 there was a hearing before the People's Court (VGH). Roland Freisler chaired the meeting , with Herbert Linden as "honorary assessor" and Karl Bruchhaus as prosecutor. In addition to the statements mentioned above, Kallenbach accused Kallenbach that she had been a union member before 1933, that she had “been noticed after the seizure of power because of her Jewish-friendly attitude”, that according to the local NSDAP is considered “politically impeccable”, and that she was concerned with the current food shortage in Berlin told a Volksdeutsche in Jankendorf, "You couldn't have had it worse than we have in Berlin in Poland", and replied to a Hitler salute with the remark that in Berlin you would get " pounded on the face " for that. The defense asserted that their neighbors called Kallenbach as always helpful and friendly, but “a bit simple-minded”. Freisler scornfully confirmed the latter by saying that she could “not count to three”. During a break in negotiations in the air raid shelter of the VGH, caused by an air raid, Pastor Wilhelm Harnisch (1887–1960) of the Samariterkirche , who had taken Kallenbach's daughter , asked the prosecutor Bruchhaus in vain to spare her mother's life. The VGH found her guilty and sentenced her to the death penalty .

The husband, supported by Wanda Kallenbach's family doctor with a reference to their "nervous weakness, mental disorders and states of excitement", asked the court in vain to convert the death penalty into a prison sentence. Pastor Harnisch sent a pardon to Hitler , but Hitler refused. On the direct order of the Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack to the senior attorney Ernst Lautz , "to arrange further with the greatest speed", Kallenbach died on August 18, 1944 in Plötzensee under the guillotine .

After the end of the war, prosecutor Bruchhaus continued his career in the West German judiciary until his early retirement with full pay as a senior public prosecutor at the Wuppertal district court in 1961. It was not until 1998 that the law repealing wrongful National Socialist judgments in criminal justice repealed the judgment of the VGH against Kallenbach.

Honor

In 2006, the Berlin called Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg the Wanda-Kallenbach-Straße at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in the district of Friedrichshain for her.

literature

  • Dietlinde Peters: "... and nobody can get me bent overhead ..." Women in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg . Berlin-Story, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95723-007-2 , p. 29 f.
  • Günther Wieland : That was the People's Court. Investigations. Facts. Documents . State publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-329-00483-5 , p. 112 f.

Web link

  • Wanda Kallenbach . In: Women personalities in Berlin Friedrichshain / Kreuzberg . Website of the Kulturring in Berlin e. V.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Dietlinde Peters: "... and nobody can get me bent over backwards ...". Women in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Published by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum . Berlin Story, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95723-007-2 , p. 29 f.
  2. ↑ Götz Aly : Stasi hoarded Nazi files , there also further details on the Kallenbach case. In: Die Tageszeitung , April 23, 1991. Retrieved January 29, 2019.
  3. ↑ Quotations from the negotiation with evidence from Günther Wieland : The fate of the Berlin worker Wanda Kallenbach . In: ders .: That was the People's Court . Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1989, ISBN 3-89085-365-X , p. 112 f.
  4. ↑ Since 1997 a Berlin memorial plaque has been commemorating Harnisch at Bänschstrasse 50
  5. ^ Quote from Günther Wieland : The fate of the Berlin worker Wanda Kallenbach . In: ders .: That was the People's Court . Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1989, ISBN 3-89085-365-X , p. 113.
personal data
SURNAME Kallenbach, Wanda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Möhring, Wanda (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German victim of the National Socialist judiciary
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Jankendorf , Kolmar i. Poses
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1944
Place of death Berlin