Willy Jannasch

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Stumbling block for Willy Jannasch in Cottbus

Willy Jannasch (born September 3, 1905 in Cottbus ; † September 30, 1938 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Willy Jannasch was born in Cottbus as the youngest of three children. His mother Marianne worked as a textile worker in a carpet factory. His father Robert was a cabinet maker, furniture maker and model maker for Cottbuser Maschinenbauaktiengesellschaft (COMAG) and since 1903 a member of the SPD .

After attending the community school , Willy Jannasch trained as a model carpenter in his father's company between 1920 and 1924. After COMAG closed in 1926, he lost his job along with his father, older brother and his sister's husband. He couldn't find a new job and kept himself afloat with odd jobs like distributing promotional materials. Together with his father, he was occasionally employed as a pallbearer.

In 1927 he married Gertrud Rönsch, who came from Ebersbach . She worked as a textile worker in Cottbus. Their daughter Jutta was born in 1932. In 1935 the couple separated and Gertrud and her daughter returned to their family in Ebersbach. The marriage ended in divorce in 1937.

Political activity

During his apprenticeship, Willy Jannasch joined the woodworking youth and the socialist youth workers . He was also a member of the Workers' Association of Friends of Nature , where he met his future wife. He was involved in the Red Aid and also took part in many strikes and wage disputes.

In 1933, an illegal group of 25 members of the banned KPD in Cottbus led by Walter Wagner, Oskar Hoffmann and Michael Bey were arrested and later sentenced. Then Josef Thomas got in touch with Willy Jannasch. The two already knew each other from various political activities. Together with Bruno Dickhoff , Georg Dix , Albert Förster , Theo Schneider and Kurt Vieweg, among others , they set up a resistance group whose leader was Jannasch. This group essentially consisted of 13 people. Together with only temporarily active people, it comprised around 28 members. To minimize the risk of discovery, many of these members were only known by those they needed to know in order to carry out their duties.

The main activity of the group initially included the resumption of Red Aid. She also collected money with which she supported the families of the KPD members arrested in 1933. The group also made contact with German communist emigrants in Czechoslovakia and members of the KPČ . Among them was Max Vieweg, the older brother of Kurt Vieweg. It was an advantage that Ebersbach, Gertrud Jannasch's hometown, was in close proximity to the Czechoslovak border. Therefore Willy Jannasch could visit him without attracting special attention.

Through the contacts in Czechoslovakia and another group from Forst / Lausitz , Willy Jannasch and his colleagues received various socialist and communist leaflets and publications, including issues of the Rote Fahne , the Inprekorr and the Junge Garde . The Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terrorism was also among them. These were distributed to households in Cottbus, but also to inmates of Reich labor camps.

Arrest, conviction and death

In January 1936, Willy Jannasch was arrested along with the twelve members of the core of his resistance group. They were held in Cottbus until March and then transferred to Berlin. In May they received their indictment, accusing them of preparing "the highly treasonable undertaking of forcibly changing the constitution of the empire".

The hearing took place on June 29th and 30th in the Berlin Superior Court . Willy Jannasch was to four years and six months prison convicted. In addition, his civil rights were revoked for five years . Thus, as the leader of the group, he received the heaviest punishment. But the other defendants were also sentenced to prison or prison terms of at least one year; three other defendants also temporarily lost their civil rights. With the exception of co-defendant Willi Graf, all of them had to begin their prison sentences. Instead, Graf was released after just a few days. This raised suspicions that he had betrayed the group. Willi Graf was arrested by SMAD after the end of World War II in 1945 and committed suicide shortly afterwards.

Willy Jannasch was brought to the Brandenburg-Görden prison together with six of his colleagues . A pardon from his parents in January 1938 was rejected. He died in prison on September 30, 1938. The official death certificate spoke of heart failure . However, the injuries that his father discovered when the body was personally transported to Cottbus suggest that he died as a result of abuse. Willy Jannasch was buried on October 4th in the Cottbus south cemetery.

Honors

Willy-Jannasch-Strasse in Cottbus

After the end of the Second World War , a street was dedicated to Willy Jannasch in Cottbus, which was wrongly called Jannaschkestraße . It was not until the 1980s that the error was corrected. Jannaschkestrasse was renamed Lausitzer Strasse . For it was in the Cottbus district Sandow the Merzendorfer street renamed Willy Jannasch Street . In the same residential area, streets were named after Jannasch's companions Bruno Dickhoff , Georg Dix and Albert Förster . Both Bruno-Dickhoff-Straße and Georg-Dix-Straße were renamed again after German reunification in 1991 . The Willy-Jannasch Street and Albert Road Ranger still exist today.

Since July 11, 2007, a stumbling stone in Cottbuser Gartenstrasse has been remembering Willy Jannasch.

literature

  • Ernst-Otto Roeber, Erna Roeber, Walter Hanig, Otto Last: Willy Jannasch and Comrades - The KPD's anti-fascist resistance struggle in Cottbus from 1934 to 1936 . Committee of the Antifascist Resistance Fighters of the German Democratic Republic, District Committee Cottbus City and Country, Cottbus 1985.
  • On the 100th birthday: Willy Jannasch - Resistance against Hitler . In: Cottbus home calendar 2005 - remarkable things from the city and the surrounding area. City administration Cottbus - Press office, Historischer Heimatverein Cottbus (publisher), Cottbus 2005.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 26 ff.
  2. ↑ See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 11 f.
  3. ↑ Otto Rückert : On the history of the first Cottbus communist trial . Committee of the Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters of the German Democratic Republic, District Committee Cottbus-City and -Land, Cottbus, p. 22 ff.
  4. ↑ a b c d See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 13 f.
  5. ↑ See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 15 ff.
  6. ↑ See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 18 f.
  7. ↑ See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 20 ff.
  8. ↑ a b c See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 22 ff.
  9. ↑ In the resistance against the fascists. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . September 23, 2015, accessed October 5, 2017 .
  10. ↑ See Roeber et al. 1985, p. 56.
  11. ↑ Helmut Donner: Cottbus street names explained . Euroverlag, Cottbus 1999.
  12. ↑ Bruno Dickhoff. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . October 27, 2005, accessed October 5, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Georg Dix. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . January 17, 2007, accessed October 5, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Willy Jannasch on the website of the Brandenburg alliance against violence, right-wing extremism and xenophobia ( memento from October 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Jannasch, Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH cottbus
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1938
Place of death Brandenburg-Görden prison