Werner Gerhardt (Young People's Leader)

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Werner Gerhardt (born December 22, 1912 in Zeitz ; † June 30, 1932 there ) was a youth leader and was venerated as the first " martyr of the Nazi movement " in the Halle-Merseburg district .

Life

Gerhardt's father died in the First World War . At the end of the 1920s he joined the Hitler Youth and became a youth leader. On the way back from a meeting of the Hitler Youth in Zeitz , Werner Gerhardt was stabbed in the right side with a knife by Helmut Fritz, a member of the Zeitz Reichsbanner , on May 31, 1932 and collapsed a little later on Wendischer Berg. The perpetrator was arrested a short time later. The news of this bloody act spread quickly. Members of the NSDAPtried to break into the prison and get hold of the perpetrator. They were dispersed by the police with rubber truncheons. There were then further fights and attacks in the urban area of ​​Zeitz, which continued in the following weeks.

Werner Gerhardt had meanwhile been taken to the city hospital, unconscious. He was operated on a total of five times and died four weeks later. His burial on July 3, 1932 in the lower Johannisfriedhof in Zeitz was accompanied by hoots and whistles from political opponents. Again there was violence.

Honors

In the years up to 1945 Gerhardt was venerated by the Nazi system as the “blood witness of the movement”. A memorial stone was erected for him on the Wendish mountain in Zeitz. The driving school in Gimritz was named after him in 1933 . A school in Zeitz bore his name and the path on the Wendish mountain, where he was stabbed on May 31, 1932, also bore his name. He was also remembered in the “Museum of the National Socialist Uprising” in Halle (Saale) . The memorial stone on Wendischer Berg was removed during the GDR era .

literature

  • Young people leader Werner Gerhardt, a martyr of our movement . In: Between Harz and Lausitz . Breslau 1935, pp. 218-220.
  • Werner Klose : Generation in lockstep. The Hitler Youth. A documentary report. New edition updated in the appendix and expanded by an epilogue. Stalling-Verlag, Munich et al. 1982, ISBN 3-7979-1365-6 , p. 10 u. a.
  • Joachim Stephan Hohmann: First World War and National Socialist "Movement" in the German Reader , P. Lang, 1988, p. 259.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ria Hänisch: The Museum of the National Socialist Survey in Halle, in: Hallische contributions to contemporary history, issue 13, 2003, p. 122ff.
personal data
SURNAME Gerhardt, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German NS-Jungvolkführer and "blood witness of the NS-movement" in the Gau Halle-Merseburg
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Time
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1932
Place of death Time