Wilm Hosenfeld

Wilhelm Adalbert "Wilm" Hosenfeld (born May 2, 1895 in Mackenzell near Fulda ; † August 13, 1952 in Stalingrad ) was a Wehrmacht officer in World War II who probably killed at least 30 Polish citizens, including several Jews, during the German occupation of Warsaw saved.

Hosenfeld became known through the description in Władysław Szpilman's autobiography The Pianist - My Wonderful Survival , which was filmed by Roman Polański ( The Pianist ) . The Jerusalem Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem awarded Hosenfeld posthumously the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations in November 2008 .

Life

Wilhelm (called Wilm) Hosenfeld was born as the fourth of six children of a teacher in the Rhöndorf Mackenzell , today a district of Hünfeld near Fulda . He was shaped by the principles of his Catholic family, by the Prussian - patriotic upbringing of the teacher training at that time and above all by the ideals of the wandering bird . With him he also took part in the First Free German Youth Day on the Hoher Meissner in 1913 . Later he was influenced by the Protestant - pacifist way of thinking of his wife Annemarie.

After completing his educational training, he took part in the First World War as an infantryman in 1914 . He returned home seriously wounded in 1917. Since 1918 he worked as a village school teacher, first in the communities of Roßbach and Kassel - both later districts of Biebergemünd in the Spessart  - then in Thalau near Fulda in the Rhön.

In 1920 he married Annemarie Krummacher, daughter of the Worpswede painter Karl Krummacher . This marriage resulted in five children who later took up all medical professions.

Coming from the völkisch Wandervogel movement, Hosenfeld was receptive to anti-bourgeoisie and the national socialist idea of ​​the national community . Since 1933 he was in the SA and in the Nazi teachers' union , since 1935 in the NSDAP . Diary entries from 1936 show him as an enthusiastic participant in the Nuremberg Rally .

At the outbreak of the Second World War came Hosenfeld, now 44 years old, with a regional rifle battalion to Poland. From 1940 to 1944 he was a reserve officer in the Oberfeldkommandantur in Warsaw . In 1941 he became head of the Wehrmacht sports school. He was also responsible for the logistical preparation of soccer matches for the Gauliga Generalgouvernement in the Warsaw Army Stadium, which the occupiers had renamed the "Wehrmacht Stadium".

Under the influence of German war crimes, he began to protect non-Jewish and Jewish Poles from terrorism. Among other things, he saved the priest Anton Cieciora from the SS , and later also his brother-in-law. He learned Polish and was invited by Polish families, which was extremely unusual. As the head of the sports school, he was responsible for a number of Polish workers who were responsible for maintaining the facilities. This enabled him to employ some persecuted people under assumed names. During the Warsaw Uprising in late summer 1944, he had to interrogate prisoners of the Polish AK underground army . Against the instructions of the SS leadership, he ensured that the wounded were given medical attention; He also called for their treatment under the Geneva Convention . In autumn 1944 he became company commander.

During his stay in Warsaw, Hosenfeld wrote diaries and numerous letters to his wife, in which he dealt very critically with Nazi rule and German occupation policy. The documents were published in full in 2004. The rescue of the pianist Władysław Szpilman happened in the last days of the Warsaw occupation, on November 17, 1944, Hosenfeld met him in a ruin.

In January 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets . Truthfully, he stated that the sports department he ran was organizationally subordinate to Department Ic . This information was his undoing, because in addition to the troop support, this department also performed intelligence tasks. In order to obtain information about his alleged secret service activities from Hosenfeld , he was subjected to "strict interrogation" in the Minsk remand prison . After six months of torture and solitary confinement, he was a broken man. He suffered the first stroke .

With no evidence of an offense, he was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor as a war criminal in 1950 . Several times he tried in vain to be extradited to Poland. Despite the intercession of those he rescued, Hosenfeld was not released. Half-paralyzed and desperate, he died on August 13, 1952 at the age of 57 in the Stalingrad prisoner-of-war camp of internal bleeding, probably caused by abuse.

Szpilman did not find out the name of his helper until 1950. In 1957 he visited Hosenfeld's widow in Thalau and told her that her husband had saved him.

Posthumous appreciations

The Leuphana University of Lüneburg has been awarding the Hosenfeld / Szpilman Memorial Prize annually since 2005 . Musicological studies, research work from the cultural and human sciences and studies from an educational perspective can be submitted.

In October 2007, Hosenfeld was posthumously honored by the Polish President Lech Kaczyński with the order of Polonia Restituta (Commander) for the rescue of Polish citizens .

In October 2008, a square in the Kassel district of Biebergemünd was named after Wilm Hosenfeld.

The Jerusalem Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem posthumously named Hosenfeld Righteous Among the Nations on November 25, 2008 . The appointment of the former Wehrmacht officer took place at the request of Władysław Szpilman in 1998 and after years of efforts by his son Andrzej Szpilman . This was preceded by intensive research by the memorial, which ensured that Hosenfeld had not been involved in any war crimes.

Wilm Hosenfeld's birthplace in Mackenzell was named Wilm-Hosenfeld-Haus on March 11, 2011 .

On February 25, 2018, a memorial stone was inaugurated at the Thalau elementary school. It pays tribute to Hosenfeld's work and is a reminder and reminder for future generations.

Works

• Thomas Vogel (Ed.): «I try to save everyone». The life of a German officer in letters and diaries . German Verlag-Anstalt, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-05776-1 .
  • Polish: (translation by Winfried Lipscher ): Staram się ratować każdego . Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm, Warszawa 2007, ISBN 978-83-7399-277-1 .

literature

• Dirk Heinrichs: Captain d. R. Wilm Hosenfeld - Rescuer in Warsaw. In: Wolfram Wette (Ed.): Rescuers in Uniform. Scope of action in the Wehrmacht's war of extermination. With a foreword by Fritz Stern . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-596-15221-6 , pp. 69-88.
• Dirk Heinrichs: What does forgetting & remembering good mean? Edition Temmen, Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-883-7 . Table of Contents (PDF)
• Hanns-Georg Rodek : The true story of Hosenfeld and Szpilman. In: Die Welt , October 24, 2002.
• Nicholas Stargardt : The German War 1939–1945. From d. Engl. V. U. Bischoff. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-075140-9 .
• Hermann Vinke : “I always see the person in front of me”: The life of the German officer Wilm Hosenfeld. Biography. Arche, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-7160-2714-1 .
• Wolfgang Wette: Captain Wilm Hosenfeld. About the rescue resistance of a Wehrmacht sports officer in Warsaw (1940–1944). In: Diethelm Blecking, Lorenz Peiffer (Hrsg.): Sportsmen in the 'Century of the Camps'. Profiteers, resistors and victims. Göttingen 2013, pp. 213-220.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilm Hosenfeld in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wilm Hosenfeld. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
• Link collection to Wilm Hosenfeld at hosenfeld.de
• Contemporary history August 4, 2012 on ARD Mediathek.de
• Gregor Papsch: October 10, 2007 - Order "Polonia Restituta" to Wilm Hosenfeld WDR ZeitZeichen (podcast).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Vinke: The life of the German officer Wilhelm Hosenfeld. Ed .: Arche. 2015, ISBN 978-3-7160-2714-1 , pp. 352 .
2. ^ ^{A b c d} Wilhelm (Wilm) Hosenfeld - The Righteous Among The Nations - Yad Vashem . In: yadvashem.org - The Righteous Among The Nations , accessed March 14, 2011.
3. ↑ Elmar Schick : Perpetrators and their victims. On the history of the dictatorship of the Third Reich between Rhön and Vogelsberg . Imhof, Petersberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86568-961-0 , pp. 49-50.
4. ^ Stefan Reinecke : Wilms legacy. In: taz.de , July 20, 2009, accessed on March 14, 2011.
5. ↑ Krakauer Zeitung , December 8, 1941, p. 13.
6. ↑ Thomas Urban : Black eagles, white eagles. German and Polish footballers at the heart of politics. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89533-775-8 , p. 79.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Stefanie Maeck: Officer Wilm Hosenfeld - The Nazi who saved Jews and Poles. In: Spiegel online , November 23, 2015.
8. ↑ Thomas Vogel (Ed.): Wilm Hosenfeld. "I try to save everyone". The life of a German officer in letters and diaries. Munich 2004, p. 146.
9. ↑ Kaczynski bestows high medal on German Wehrmacht officer. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 10, 2007
10. ↑ Honor for Wilm Hosenfeld. ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Gelnhäuser Neue Zeitung , October 16, 2008  
11. ^ Marie-Theres Schindler: The club house is now officially called "Wilm-Hosenfeld-Haus".  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   In: Fuldaer Zeitung , March 11, 2011; Retrieved March 14, 2011.
12. ↑ Matthias Witzel: Memorial stone at the Thalau schoolhouse reminds of Wilm Hosenfeld. In: Osthessen News. February 26, 2018, accessed July 31, 2018 .