Wilhelm Müller (politician, December 1890)

Johann Wilhelm "Willi" Müller (born December 23, 1890 in Mülheim an der Ruhr ; † November 16, 1944 in Neuengamme concentration camp ) was a German politician and trade unionist , chairman of the SPD in Mülheim an der Ruhr and chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the council the city.

Life

Müller was born as the son of the tanner Mathias Müller. He had three siblings. The children became orphans when their father died of a stroke in the leather factory. Müller completed an apprenticeship as a wood turner, during which he joined the union, and later worked in the Thyssen machine factory in Mülheim.

In the First World War , Müller was called up. At the end of the war he was in East Prussia. On his return to Mülheim, civil strife raged in the city; He was initially involved in the Spartakusbund and the KPD , after fighting against voluntary corps in the Ruhr area distanced himself from both organizations. On January 1, 1922, he switched to the SPD. He became chairman of the works council of Thyssen-Maschinenfabrik and first authorized representative of the German Metalworkers' Association in Mülheim.

In 1924 he married the Thyssen secretary Margarete Hesselmann, who was fired due to the connection. The son Wilhelm "Willi" Müller junior left the marriage in 1925 . emerged.

Stumbling stone in memory of Müller in Dümptener Str. 17

Müller became chairman of the Mülheim SPD and rose to chair the SPD parliamentary group in the Mülheim city council in 1929. He was also a member of the provincial parliament of the Rhine Province . After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he was briefly imprisoned from March to April and in May 1933, before his mandate officially expired in the summer of 1933 due to the co-ordination and the associated dissolution of the parties.

In the following years, Müller financed his livelihood with various odd jobs, for example as a bread driver. On this occasion he also secretly distributed political opposition pamphlets as an activist of the social democratic underground network . On August 23, 1944, as part of the nationwide wave of arrests Aktion Gewitter - triggered by the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 - he was arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . In October 1944, Müller was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp . Requests from the wife and son to Hermann Göring and the SS for his release remained unanswered.

Müller died in Neuengamme concentration camp in November 1944. Even though the official cause of death was "pneumonia", he was probably murdered. Comrades reported that at the beginning of his detention in Neuengamme he was separated in the medical barracks because of his open leg , which was already a death sentence. The Mülheim police certified the surviving family after the war that Müller “as far as it was known, had not died of an illness in the camp, but had been killed like so many others”.

literature

• Willi Müller jun. (Ed.): Democracy on site. A reader on the history of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Vor Ort Verlags-GmbH, Mülheim an der Ruhr 1979, pp. 124-136.
• Peter Grafe, Bodo Hombach u. a. (Ed.): Mülheim an der Ruhr - an idiosyncratic city . Klartext Verlag, Essen 1990. pp. 139–145.

Web links

• "Stolperstein" in Mülheim an der Ruhr for Wilhelm Müller

swell

• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, inventory 1550 No. 2 (Mülheim personalities)
• City archive Mülheim an der Ruhr, inventory 2001 (reparation files)