Werner Ihmels

Carl Werner Ihmels (born January 14, 1926 in Leipzig , † June 25, 1949 in Bautzen ) was a German student of Protestant theology . He belonged to the Christian resistance during National Socialism and the Soviet zone of occupation . He died as a result of a prison sentence imposed by a Soviet military tribunal.

Life

He comes from a respected Protestant family of theologians. He was born in 1926 as the son of the mission director Carl Heinrich Ihmels and the grandson of the first Saxon regional bishop Ludwig Ihmels . He had five siblings. Like his brothers Ludwig (* August 18, 1920) and Johannes (* August 6, 1921) he was a student at the Königin-Carola-Gymnasium . Later he attended the humanistic Thomas School in Leipzig until 1944 . He was already hostile to National Socialism and had been a member of an illegal student Bible group since 1936. After graduating from high school, he began studying Protestant theology at the University of Leipzig . Shortly before the end of the war, he was deployed as a flak helper and drafted into the Wehrmacht .

Theology professor Jens Herzer commented on his orientation with the words:

"Like many young people, after the catastrophe of the National Socialist dictatorship, he was looking for a new beginning for himself and for his peers."

He became a member of the CDU in 1945 . At the request of his party friends, he gave a keynote speech in 1946. In the same year he joined the FDJ , which he viewed as a free and democratic organization. In 1947 he ran as a liaison officer for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony at the FDJ regional leadership in Saxony. He got into conflict with Erich Honecker, then 1st Secretary of the Central Council of the Free German Youth of the GDR . He rejected the political indoctrination of the youth through the state-directed youth policy of the Soviet occupation zone and tried to counteract this through his work in a Bible study in the Leipzig mission house . His fellow sufferers included the student Horst Krüger, the law student Wolfgang Weinoldt and the historian Hermann Mau . It was a further contact with the LDP -Funktionär Manfred Gerlach , the later denunciation of the youth group was held. Their attempt was to pass on information about the living conditions in the Soviet Zone to the London Conference (1947) of the victorious powers. His family advised him to leave the Soviet Zone and continue his studies at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen .

However, on September 11, 1947, the day of his departure, he was arrested by the NKVD at Leipzig Central Station . After the arrests of Edmund Bründl, Otto Gallus, Luise Langendorf and Karl Schwarze, he was part of the second wave of arrests. Werner Ihmels, Horst Krüger and Wolfgang Weinoldt were then interned in the Münchner Platz Dresden prison. Hermann Mau was acquitted. Ihmels and Krüger were sentenced by the Soviet military tribunal for “ espionage ” and “illegal group formation” ( Art. 58-6 and Art. 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ) to 25 and Weinoldt to 15 years of “corrective imprisonment” and were sent to the penitentiary of the Soviet Union Military tribunals (SMT) of special camp 4 ( Bautzen I , “Gelbes Elend”). There Ihmels died on June 25, 1949 after a failed medical intervention of pulmonary tuberculosis , a consequence of the extreme prison conditions there. The other convicts with him were only released after several years.

Rehabilitation and appreciation

On April 5, 1995 Werner Ihmels and the co-convicts Horst Krüger and Wolfgang Weinholdt were rehabilitated by the Chief Military Prosecutor of the Russian Federation.

The University of Leipzig , whose archive received the estate of his brother Werner from Folkert Ihmels in 1999, organized an exhibition in June 1999 in the Nikolaikirche in memory of Ihmels .

In April 2001, a street in the Anger-Crottendorf district of Leipzig was named after Werner Ihmels.

In 2002, a case against Manfred Gerlach , the last Chairman of the State Council of the GDR, took place before the Leipzig Regional Court , in which he was accused of having denounced the Ihmels group and other people to the NKVD. However, the proceedings were dropped due to the statute of limitations.

At the 1st Werner Ihmels Memorial Lecture in 2009 at the University of Leipzig, at which Joachim Gauck also gave a lecture, the dean of the theological faculty Jens Herzer summarized as follows:

“The ultimate reason for exercising freedom was Ihmels' Christian belief. When he was arrested in 1947, freedom of belief, conscience and expression had long been at stake in the Soviet occupation zone and at the university, and with it the freedom of science soon went as well. What Werner Ihmels did required courage, a courage that so many at our university did not have. "

literature

• Folkert Ihmels (ed.): In the wheels of two dictatorships. Werner Ihmels 1926–1949. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-374-01712-6 .
• Horst Krüger: Meeting Werner Ihmels . Edition Kirchhof & Franke , Leipzig 2003, ISBN 978-3-933816-42-9 .
• Carlies Maria Raddatz: Werner Ihmels (1926–1949). In: Karl-Joseph Hummel , Christoph Strohm (Hrsg.): Witnesses to a better world. Christian martyrs of the 20th century. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2000, ISBN 3-374-01812-2 , p. 418 ff.
• University of Leipzig and Association of Patrons and Friends of the University of Leipzig eV (Hrsg.): Student resistance at the University of Leipzig 1945-1955. (Development of the exhibition and the texts: Gerald Wiemers / Jens Blecher, Leipzig University Archives) Beucha, Sax-Verlag, 2., erg. U. verb. Edition 1998, ISBN 3-930076-50-0 , Werner Ihmels pp. 72-87.

Movies

• Cross and blue shirt. Christians and the FDJ . Film by Detlef Urban, MDR / 2006.

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Ihmels in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Werner Ihmels in the Leipzig Lexicon
• 1. Werner Ihmels commemorative lecture at the University of Leipzig
• 2. Werner Ihmels Memorial Lecture at the University of Leipzig
• Gerald Wiemers: Werner Ihmels (1926-1949) on the 60th anniversary of his death . Freedom and Justice 2009/2; on the website of the Federation of Resistance and Persecution Bavaria, accessed on June 17, 2015.
• Presentation of the book by Horst Krüger and Klaus-Dieter Müller: Encounter with Werner Ihmels . Edition Kirchhof & Franke, Berlin, 2009, ISBN 978-3-933816-42-9
• Jens Blecher: Student Resistance and Political Opposition . Leipzig University Archives, accessed on June 17, 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Queen-Carola-Gymnasium Leipzig: Teachers and pupils directory 1936 to 1937 , Leipzig 1937, p. 11.
2. ↑ Anna Kaminsky (ed.): Places of remembrance. Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-443-3 , p. 354.