Wilhelm Henze (resistance fighter)

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Wilhelm Henze (born February 5, 1908 in Hildesheim , † March 19, 1996 in Södertälje , Sweden ) was a German resistance fighter , workers' writer and puppeteer .

Life

Henze trained as a locksmith in his father's company and became a member of the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation . In addition, he was involved in the workers' sports movement and with the Friends of Nature . Inspired by the working-class culture movement, he began to work as a journalist and in 1929 decided to become a working-class poet, albeit with only moderate success.

In May 1933 Henze joined a small group of communists and social democrats in Hildesheim who produced and distributed illegal leaflets. The group was betrayed and Henze was arrested in August 1933. In December 1933 he was sentenced to 27 months in prison for high treason . First in prison Hameln imprisoned, he was in May 1934, the Emslandlager Brual-Rhede transferred. The camp was actually planned as a concentration camp , but after its completion in the spring of 1934 it was used as a prison camp. Henze was one of the first inmates of the camp, in which political prisoners formed the minority.

On November 30, 1935, he was released after serving his prison sentence. When Henze learned of his brother's arrest, he emigrated to the Netherlands on July 18, 1936 . He and his wife came to Sweden via Norway in August 1936 . In 1937 his daughter Gunvor was born there. Henze initially kept himself and his family afloat with casual work and the support of a refugee aid organization. It was not until 1939 that he could work as a normal factory worker again. He was also active as a photographer and a member of the social democratic exile party Sopade .

After 1945 Henze did not return to Germany, but took Swedish citizenship in 1949. In the late 1950s he began building a puppet theater . In 1970 Henze became a co-founder of Dockteaterföreningen , the Swedish puppet theater association, and co-editor of a specialist magazine for puppetry.

Literary work

Henze's agitational plays written before 1933 found no publisher. Poems only appeared sporadically in workers' newspapers. Henze had recorded his experiences in prison in a diary, in poems and drawings. Between 1936 and 1939 he worked out the material for a manuscript with stories from everyday camp life, which was only released in 1992 under the title Treason Out! has been published. Further texts appeared in the book Gefangen in der Weite. Emslandlager (1933-45). Images, encounters, changes of gaze (Papenburg 2001). Henze's manuscripts before 1933 burned in the bombing raid on Hildesheim in March 1945. His later manuscripts are kept in the archive of the Documentation and Information Center Emslandlager (DIZ) .

literature

  • Hildesheim Literature Lexicon from 1800 to today . Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Olms 1996, pp. 100-102, ISBN 3-487-10238-2
  • Hans-Dieter Schmid: united front from below? The organized resistance from the workers in Hildesheim 1933-1937 . In: Hildesheimer Jahrbuch für Stadt und Stift 63 (1992), pp. 99–161.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ s. DIZ (web link)
  2. ↑ s. DIZ (web link); Hildesheimer Literaturlexikon , p. 101
  3. ↑ Hildesheimer Literaturlexikon , p. 101
  4. ↑ Exile Archive (web link); Hildesheimer Literaturlexikon , p. 101
  5. ↑ Hildesheimer Literaturlexikon , p. 101
  6. ↑ Treason out! Stories, poems and drawings of a bog soldier . Bremen: Edition Temmen 1992. ISBN 3-926958-85-5
  7. ↑ Hildesheimer Literaturlexikon , p. 101
personal data
SURNAME Henze, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and archivist
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1996
Place of death Södertälje