Willy Scheinhardt

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Stumbling block for the social democrat Willy Scheinhart, tortured to death in 1936, in front of the building at An der Börse 3 in Hanover

Carl Willy Scheinhardt (born January 10, 1892 in Etzdorf , Saxony , † October 6, 1936 in Hildesheim ) was a German social democrat , trade unionist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Born in the Kingdom of Saxony during the founding of the German Empire as the son of a miner from the Mansfeld region , Willy Scheinhardt only attended elementary school and then worked as a youth as an unskilled worker in various chemical factories. At the age of 16 he joined a trade union in 1908 , and then in 1910 the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Bitterfeld , in which he was initially involved in the youth workers and soon took over their leadership.

After the First World War and at the beginning of the Weimar Republic , Scheinhardt's rise in the union began when he became Secretary of the Factory Workers' Union (FAV) in Harburg in April 1919 . He sent him to Hanover in 1922 as head of agitation . It was there that Scheinhardt began to deal with the media of film and radio, which were still new for agitation at the time.

On October 14, 1924, Scheinhardt and his wife Emma, ​​née Gerig, their daughter Gerda was born.

In 1925 "[...] Willy Scheinhardt was appointed Gauleiter of the Hanover Factory Workers Association." As one of the few trade unionists, he warned early on of the threat to democracy from the National Socialists and their accomplices .

The former Bartels bank at the - today's - address An der Börse 3 became the first building of the factory workers' association in 1930 and the residence for the Scheinhardt family, Richard Partzsch and Willy Krathz

After the factory workers' association had built the building at the then Rathenaustraße 3 (today: An der Börse 3 ), which was formerly built for the Bartels banking house and then used by the Berliner Diskonto-Bank , in February 1930 as the first association building of its own, the FAV celebrated it in June Year both the inauguration of the building coincides with its 40th anniversary. For the anniversary event, Willy Scheinhardt - together with director Albert Blum - produced the film Aufstieg , which the guests enthusiastically received.

After around four years of experience with the medium of film, Scheinhardt once said:

“We have come to believe that film is one of the most important propaganda tools . It looks convincing and loosens up the soil that needs to be worked. [...] With the help of the film we carry the union idea into the families. We not only work on large main streets and markets, we also go into the cross and side streets, that is, into the smallest village. "

Also in 1930, Willy Scheinhardt and his family moved into one of the apartments in the new FAV headquarters. The Reichstag member and secretary of the collective bargaining department, Richard Partzsch , and the caretaker Willy Krahtz also found a new home there .

When after the seizure of power by the Nazis on 30 January 1933, the first repression against unions by the SA and the SS began, Willy Scheinhardt was prepared: As a precaution, he had important documents of the FAV by motorbike abroad after Amsterdam brought where the " Factory Workers International ”, with whose secretary Claas de Jonge he had established contact years before. In March 1933, Scheinhardt traveled to southern Germany for the FAV, which had already been weakened by the repression , in order to set up another headquarters of the association there - also as a precaution. But this precaution should prove too late.

When the "Hanoverian trade union houses" were the first to be occupied by the Nazis in Germany on April 1, 1933, including the FAV as well as the trade union house of the General German Trade Union Federation ( ADGB ), Willy Scheinhardt was arrested together with other trade unionists, but longer than them most of them held in custody.

After Willy Scheinhardt was also released, he immediately became politically active again. While he was soon earning his living in a linen business that he ran together with his wife Emma, ​​he became involved in the Socialist Front , which was meanwhile underground , and also the largest resistance organization of the Social Democrats in the so-called " Third Reich ". The Scheinhardts' underwear business served as a secret contact point for fellow fighters.

Soon, however, the Nazis were able to smuggle a spy into the Socialist Front, through whom they could suddenly arrest many comrades and smash the resistance organization. Willy Scheinhardt, however, was accused of high treason and was taken by the Gestapo to the notorious Gestapo prison in Hildesheim . He was tortured there for days until the 44-year-old finally died of the abuse.

On October 14, 1936, the birthday of his daughter Gerda, the urn with the ashes of the cruel victim was quietly buried in the Ricklingen city cemetery.

An obituary for Willy Scheinhardt appeared on November 8, 1936 in the Neue Vorwärts , printed in exile in Prague , in which, among other things, Scheinhardt's selfless work, his unshaken conviction and loyalty to the ideals of the Social Democrats were recognized.

Stumbling stone in Rathenaustraße

After the biography , work and fate of Willy Steinhardt had not been taken into account in the relevant historical treatises on the state capital Hanover, his grave had been leveled in the Ricklinger Stadtfriedhof and the Social Democrat had almost been forgotten, the artist Gunter Demnig moved on March 3, 2009 In front of the former headquarters of the FAV and former residence of the Scheinhardt family, a stumbling block in memory of the murdered resistance fighter.

literature

  • Heide Kramer: The fate of a social democratic resistance fighter: Willy Scheinhardt - Gauleiter of the Hanover Factory Workers' Union from 1925 - 1933 , Hanover, 2008
  • 1933 - 2013 Unbroken, IG BCE - 80 years after the breakdown of the trade unions , publisher: IG BCE, Hanover, 2013

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Lothar Pollähne: Willy Scheinhardt on the page of the SPD city association Hanover (Uta M. Biermann (responsible)) in the version of March 25, 2016
  2. ↑ a b Edgar Ojemann, Dietmar Geyer, Reinhard Töneböhm (Red.): Willy Scheinhardt on the website of the Network Remembrance + Future in the Hanover Region , ed. from the Förderverein Gedenkstätte Ahlem eV, Hans-Jürgen Hermel
  3. ↑ Helmut Knocke : ADGB Trade Union House, In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 221.
personal data
SURNAME Scheinhardt, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scheinhardt, Carl Willy (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social democrat, trade unionist and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Etzdorf , Saxony
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1936
Place of death Hildesheim