Werner Seelenbinder

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Werner Seelenbinder (born August 2, 1904 in Stettin , † October 24, 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was a German wrestler and communist . On May 6, 2008 Werner Seelenbinder was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports .

Life

Memorial plaque on the house at Mandrellaplatz 9, in Berlin-Köpenick

The family came to Berlin in 1909 and moved into an apartment in Friedrichshain . There operated soul binder parents a grocery store . Werner Seelenbinder did occasional jobs after attending primary school and was also unemployed for a long time.

He joined a workers' sports club and trained as a weight lifter and wrestler. At the same time, Seelenbinder studied the writings of Karl Marx and Lenin and approached communist ideas. In 1928, Seelenbinder was the only German worker athlete to win his competition at the Spartakiade in Moscow . After his return he joined the KPD and worked there on the production of information materials, including leaflets.

After the National Socialists came to power and the workers' sports clubs were broken up in 1933 (see Gleichschaltung ), he joined the East Berlin Sports Association , was secretly involved in the Red Aid and in 1933 was commissioned by the illegal KPD organization to qualify for international competitions and the to use possible contacts abroad for communist underground work.

In August 1933 he won the first of a total of six titles as German wrestling champion in the light heavyweight division. He refused the Hitler salute at the award ceremony . A week later he was arrested by the Gestapo for this and imprisoned for a while in the Columbiahaus . He was then banned from competition for a year and was interrogated for the first time shortly afterwards.

In 1935 he got a job as a transport worker in the AEG-Apparatefabriken Treptow (later VEB EAW Treptow ). When Seelenbinder qualified for the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936 , he planned, in consultation with the KPD, to protest against the Nazi dictatorship at the award ceremony with an appeal. After two defeats, however, Seelenbinder only finished fourth in the Olympic competition, so that the intended political action was not carried out. In the same year he got in contact with Robert Uhrig, who had just been released from prison, and thus with the Berlin underground leadership of the KPD. In 1937 and 1938 he was third in his weight class at the European wrestling championships and used his sports trips to exchange information and propaganda material, although he was constantly under surveillance by the Gestapo. In 1939, Seelenbinder moved to the Wanheim ironworks, an armaments factory in Attilastr. 61–67 in Berlin-Tempelhof , compulsory. There he managed to organize an illegal resistance cell in which Polish slave laborers also worked alongside German communists. At that time, Seelenbinder intensified his contact with the members of the communist resistance group led by Robert Uhrig and Alfred Kowalke , for whom Seelenbinder arranged accommodation and contacts. When Robert Uhrig's group was broken up, the Gestapo also arrested Seelenbinder on February 4, 1942, in his apartment at Palisadenstrasse 56 in Friedrichshain. After more than two years imprisonment in various concentration camps and prisons (including in the Wuhlheide labor education camp and in Landsberg an der Warthe ), he was sentenced to death by the People's Court in Potsdam . On October 24, 1944, Seelenbinder was beheaded in the Brandenburg-Görden penitentiary after several requests for clemency had been rejected .

On this date, the following farewell letter from Seelenbinder is handed down:

“The hour to say goodbye has now come for me. During my imprisonment, I must have been through everything that a person can go through. Illness and physical and mental anguish, nothing was spared me. Together with you, my friends and fellow sportsmen, I would have liked to experience the delicacies and comforts of life, which I now appreciate twice, after the war. There were wonderful hours that I spent with you, and I ate it during my imprisonment and wished this wonderful time back. Unfortunately, after a long period of suffering, fate has determined it differently. But I know that I have found a place in the hearts of you and many sports fans that I will always maintain. This awareness makes me proud and strong and will not see me weak in the last hour. "

Athletic career

Werner Seelenbinderhalle began in 1917 at the athletic club "Oak 1900" in Berlin-Friedrichshain with the rings and weightlifting . Around 1920 he started at the sports club "Berolina 03" Neukölln and concentrated on wrestling. These clubs belonged to the German Workers' Athletes Association. Between 1918 and 1932 he was a multiple Berlin champion of workers wrestling from featherweight to light heavyweight.

The following successes and competitions are known in detail:

  • 1925, 1st place at the Workers' Olympics in Frankfurt am Main in wrestling, Greco-Roman style (GR), light heavyweight (Hs)
  • 1926, winner in a match between the German workers' wrestlers against the Soviet Union in Berlin in the GR, Hs
  • 1926, 1st place at the international wrestling tournament on the occasion of the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Festival in Berlin, GR, middleweight (Wed)
  • 1927, participation in a competition trip of a team of the Workers 'Athletes' Association to the Soviet Union. Individual results are not known
  • 1927, 3rd place, tournament of the Finnish Workers' Sports Association TUL in Helsinki , GR, Hs, behind Juha Juhola u. Timo Aalto, both Finland and before Viljo Lindquist, Paavo Oksa and H. Rönkas, all Finland
  • 1928, 1st place at the international workers 'Spartakiade in Moscow , GR, Hs (equaled to a world championship of workers' wrestlers)
  • 1930, 1st place at the international tournament of workers wrestling in Moscow, GR, Hs
  • 1931, 2nd place, World Championship of Workers' Wrestling in Oslo , GR, Hs

In 1933, the wrestlers of the Workers 'Athletes' Association were forced to join the German Amateur Heavy Athletics Association DASV from 1891. Werner Seelenbinder continued his wrestling career at the East Berlin Sports Association, which was a member of this association, and achieved the following outstanding results:

At the German championships in the DASV he achieved the following results:

From 1937 to 1941 he represented Germany in seven international matches, with two victories.

Berlin memorial plaque on the Thomasstrasse 39 school building in Berlin-Neukölln
Soulbinder memorial stele in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle is visited by boxers from Syria in 1963.
Memorial in the Sportpark Berlin-Neukölln on Oderstrasse
Grave in the Werner-Seelenbinder-Sportpark

Honors

  • The medals of the honorary titles Master of Sports and Honored Master of Sports awarded in the GDR from 1954 to 1989 bear a portrait of Werner Seelenbinder on their front.
  • On May 6, 2008 Werner Seelenbinder was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sports .
  • The Berlin wrestling club SV Berlin-Buch regularly organizes a tournament in honor of Werner Seelenbinder. Memorial tournaments in judo, handball and badminton are also held.

Memorial plaques and memorial stones

  • Around 1956, a memorial plaque was attached to the family's former home in the Friedrichshain district, Glatzer Strasse 6, which contains the following text: The anti-fascist resistance fighter Werner Seelenbinder, nee. on 2.8.1904. Murdered by the fascists on October 24th, 1944 in Brandenburg. Honor his memory.
  • At the former residence of Seelenbinder at Palisadenstrasse 56, where he lived from 1936 until his arrest in 1942, Seelenbinder was honored in 1957 with a plaque designed by the sculptor Hans Kies . The house was replaced by a new building around 1982 as part of the renovation of the palisade triangle.
  • Another memorial plaque has been on the building of EAW Treptow in Hoffmannstrasse since at least 1957.
  • A memorial plaque stolen in 2003 from the Koepenick District Court , Mandrellaplatz, corner of Seelenbinderstraße in Berlin-Koepenick , was reinstalled in 2018 as a replica of the plaque from the 1970s with the inscription “The courageous fighter against fascism, imperialism and war”.
  • At Werner Seelenbinder's former training facility in Neukölln, the Konrad Agahd elementary school, Thomasstrasse 39–40, at that time No. 20–21, a Berlin plaque has been pointing to him since 1992 . The boxers and wrestlers of SC “Berolina 03” trained and held competitions in the school's gymnasium from 1925 to 1930.
  • At Fritz-Riedel-Strasse 53 in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg there was a bronze bust for the communist and worker sportsman.
  • In the memorial for the anti-fascist resistance fighters executed in the Brandenburg-Görden prison in Brandenburg an der Havel, Werner Seelenbinder is prominently mentioned as one of four executed.
  • In Lassahn , a district of the town of Zarrentin am Schaalsee in the west of the Ludwigslust-Parchim district in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , a memorial stone with his date of birth and death has been erected.

Buildings and roads

  • On July 29, 1945, Werner Seelenbinder's urn was buried in an honorary grave on the grounds of the Neukölln Sports Park in Oderstrasse as part of a sporting event . The previously unnamed stadium of the facility was named "Werner-Seelenbinder-Kampfbahn" on that day. In the course of the Cold War, the name Stadion Neukölln was used by the West Berlin offices from 1948/49 . As a single burial place not located in a cemetery, Seelenbinder's resting place among the approx. 220 burial places in Berlin with a total of 150,000 victims of war and tyranny still occupies an exceptional position.
  • The Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle in the east of Berlin, inaugurated in 1950, got his name. Numerous major sporting events, rock concerts and SED party congresses took place there up to German unification . In 1952 a soulbinder bust by the sculptor Otto Maerker was placed in the anteroom of the hall . After the hall was demolished, the velodrome was built there .
  • In Munich's Olympic Park from 1972 , the ⊙ Werner-Seelenbinder-Weg leads to the former Olympiastadion S-Bahn station .
  • Over the years, numerous schools in the GDR (for example the children's and youth sports school in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen ; Sportforum , today part of the Berlin School and Competitive Sports Center) as well as streets, youth clubs and sports facilities have been baptized in his name.
  • Football stadiums in Luckenwalde, Brandenburg an der Havel, Hermsdorf and the sports facilities in Jena- Lobeda-West still bear his name after reunification. His bust is still on the edge of the field in Hermsdorf. The Seelenbinder bust in the entrance area of ​​the Stadium of Friendship in Frankfurt (Oder) was stolen at the beginning of February 2016. * From 1991 to 2007, the Werner-Seelenbinder-Gymnasium Fürstenwalde was named after him until it was integrated into the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium Fürstenwalde .
  • On October 24, 2004, the 60th anniversary of his murder, the sports facility on Neuköllner Oderstrasse, the Neukölln Stadium , was renamed Werner-Seelenbinder-Sportpark .
  • In Brandenburg an der Havel, the main thoroughfare of the northern district bears the name of the wrestler as Werner-Seelenbinder-Straße. It runs in its eastern section not far from the Werner-Seelenbinder sports field .
  • In Leipzig, between the Red Bull Arena and the Festwiese, there is a 43-meter-high bell tower named after Seelenbinder.

literature

  • Stephan Hermlin : Werner Seelenbinder , in: Stephan Hermlin: The first row. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1951, pp. 83–89.
  • Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect . Sports publishing house Berlin 1968.
  • Red athletes in the anti-fascist resistance . Volume 1: Biographical information about Ernst Grube, Bernhard Almstadt, Werner Seelenbinder, Fritz Lesch and Paul Zobel , ed. v. Federal Executive of the DTSB of the GDR. Berlin 1978.
  • Walter Radetz: The stronger one . Neuer Weg, 1981, ISBN 3-88021-035-7 (first edition: Sportverlag Berlin 1961).
  • Karl Heinz Jahnke : murdered and extinguished. Twelve German anti-fascists. Ahriman, Freiburg i. Br. 1995, ISBN 978-3-89484-553-7 , pp. 106-114.
  • Friedel Schirm: 33 months. Memories of Werner Seelenbinder. Military publisher of the GDR: Berlin 1984.
  • Michaela Behrens: Resistance to the end: Werner Seelenbinder was buried in the sports park , in Michaela Behrens: City Talks from Neukölln . Gmeiner Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8392-1559-3 , pp. 136-141.
  • James McNeish: Soulbinder the Olympian who defied Hitler . Steele Roberts Aotearoa, Wellington (New Zealand) 2016, ISBN 978-0-947493-01-1
  • Matthias Heisig, Frieder Boehne: Difficult memory. Werner Seelenbinder and Neukölln . In: Frieder Boehne, Bernhard Bremberger, Matthias Heisig (eds.): “You have to take care of it” - Werner Gutsche (1923–2012) and Neukölln. Traces, memories, suggestions . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-322-7 , pp. 259-277.

Movies

  • One of us , director: Helmut Spieß , production: Defa Studio for feature films, 1960.

Web links

Commons : Werner Seelenbinder  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michaela Behrens: City Talks from Neukölln , Berlin 2014, p. 138
  2. ^ Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect . Berlin 1968, p. 11 f.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Hans Maur : Memorials of the labor movement in Berlin-Friedrichshain , ed. by the district management of the SED, district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement in cooperation with the district commission for researching the history of the local labor movement at the Berlin-Friedrichshain district management of the SED, 1981; Pp. 64-66
  4. ^ Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect . Berlin 1968, p. 66
  5. ^ Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect , Berlin 1968, p. 56 f.
  6. ↑ in detail: Klaus Ullrich (ie Klaus Huhn ): Werner Seelenbinder. Imprisoned even after death . In: Klaus Ullrich: You were playing Carmen… Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-933544-25-4 , pp. 29–60
  7. ^ Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect . Berlin 1968, p. 64 ff.
  8. ↑ Walter Radetz: The Stronger . Berlin 1961, p. 391 ff.
  9. ↑ Karl Heinz Jahnke : Murdered and extinguished. Twelve German anti-fascists (= unwanted books on fascism. Vol. 8). With a foreword by Karl Kielhorn. Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1995, ISBN 3-89484-553-8 , p. 110
  10. ↑ Illustration in: Walter Radetz: Werner Seelenbinder. Life attitude effect . Berlin 1968, p. 75
  11. ↑ Memorial plaque on the house at Glatzer Strasse 6 in Friedrichshain
  12. ^ Berliner Zeitung , May 15, 1957
  13. ^ New Germany , September 8, 1957
  14. ↑ Torsten Harmsen: Souvenir for Werner Seelenbinder: The man who wanted to bring Hitler down . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on March 24, 2018]).
  15. ^ Matthias Heisig, Frieder Boehne: Difficult memory. Werner Seelenbinder and Neukölln . In: Frieder Boehne, Bernhard Bremberger, Matthias Heisig (eds.): “You have to take care of it” - Werner Gutsche (1923–2012) and Neukölln. Traces, memories, suggestions . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-322-7 , p. 275 f.
  16. ↑ Werner Seelenbinder Memorial in the Wikimedia Commons
  17. ^ Michaela Behrens: City Talks from Neukölln , Berlin 2014, p. 140
  18. ^ Matthias Heisig, Frieder Boehne: Difficult memory. Werner Seelenbinder and Neukölln . In: Frieder Boehne, Bernhard Bremberger, Matthias Heisig (eds.): “You have to take care of it” - Werner Gutsche (1923–2012) and Neukölln. Traces, memories, suggestions . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86331-322-7 , p. 271
  19. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 25, 1952
personal data
SURNAME Soulbinder, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German wrestler
DATE OF BIRTH 2nd August 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1944
Place of death Brandenburg on the Havel