Wolfgang Leppmann (Slavist)

Wolfgang Johannes Leppmann (born October 22, 1902 in Berlin ; † September 14, 1943 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a German Slavist and historian .

Life

The Leppmanns were originally a Jewish baker family from Peiskretscham in Upper Silesia . Wolfgang's father Friedrich and his uncle Arthur were coroners and prison doctors. Wolfgang Leppmann was baptized as a Protestant and attended the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium and the Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg . After graduating from high school in September 1922, he first studied history, Slavic studies and philosophy at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . After the first semester, he moved to Göttingen for a year , then to Vienna and to Prague at the Karl Ferdinands University in Germany and Charles University in the Czech Republic . In 1926 he returned to Berlin, where he worked in 1930 with Otto Hoetzsch through Nikolai Stankevic and his circle. Doctorate in Studies on the Moscow Literary Movement 1830-1840 .

Leppmann became a research assistant at Hoetzsch. He published mainly in the journal Eastern Europe published by Hoetzsch on literary topics as well as in the journal for Eastern European history and passed his interpreting exam for Russian in 1931 . On behalf of Hoetzsch, he took over the editing of the Soviet source edition The international relations of imperialism with sources on the outbreak of the First World War in German translation, of which five volumes were published between 1931 and 1934. In addition, Leppmann was involved in a working group of Slavists at Berlin University, which procured a bibliography, The Sovet Union 1917-1932, published by the German Society for the Study of Eastern Europe . Without joining a political party, Leppmann took part in meetings of the Leuchtenburg district , which had emerged from the youth organization of the German Democratic Party .

After the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Leppmann was dismissed as a Jew in the summer according to the provisions of the law for the restoration of the civil service . Hoetzsch made it possible for him to complete the source edition at the end of 1933. Leppmann then initially worked at the Central Office for Research into the Causes of War and its Berlin monthly magazine as an expert on Eastern European issues. His last contributions to the monthly magazine were published anonymously in 1937. In January 1936, the Friedrich Wilhelm University declared his doctoral procedure terminated without Leppmann having published his dissertation , and thus formally withdrew his doctorate from him.

While his parents and siblings, with the exception of his older brother, left Germany in 1934, Wolfgang Leppmann stayed in Germany anyway. He worked as a translator and private lecturer. After the outbreak of the Second World War , he was drafted into the war economy, carried sacks of cement for a civil engineering company in 1940 and shoveled coal at the Berlin electricity works in 1941 .

When Leppmann was about to be deported in November 1942 , he decided to go into hiding and hid in the apartment of a friend in Berlin-Friedrichshain . Rather by chance, on the evening of December 9, 1942, he was noticed by two criminal police officers who were actually looking for another suspect in the hallway. He, another Jew in hiding, and the woman who gave them shelter were arrested. Presumably because of his father's fame, Leppmann was not deported immediately, but instead imprisoned in the Moabit remand prison, where his father had been a prison doctor . According to Leppmann's family, a “fictitious suspicion” was raised against him in order to protect him from access by the Gestapo . In January 1943 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for “ racial disgrace ” . After his admission to the Rollwald prison camp in Nieder-Roden , the commandant there determined that Leppmann was to be classified as a “ full Jew ” and transferred him to the Darmstadt Stapo prison on May 6, 1943 . From there he was brought back to Berlin at the request of the Berlin police station and then deported to Auschwitz.

Little is known about Leppmann's fate in Auschwitz. His former partner received the message from there that he had died of sepsis with phlegmon on September 14, 1943 and had been cremated.

Fonts

• The Polish-Czech border problem and its development after the World War . In: Osteuropa, 1927/28, pp. 481–495.
• The development of literary groups in Soviet Russia . In: Osteuropa , 1929/30, pp. 215-235.
• Boris Pilniak . In: Osteuropa , 1929/30, pp. 798-810.
• Fedor Gladkow , In: Osteuropa , 1930/31, pp. 329–337.
• The Soviet Russian society novel . In: Osteuropa , 1931/32, pp. 13-17.
• Demian Bjedny . In: Osteuropa , 1931/32, pp. 656-666.
• Russian history in emigration . In: Journal for Eastern European History 5 (1931), pp. 215–248.
• Editing at Otto Hoetzsch: International Relations in the Age of Imperialism. Berlin 1931-1934.
• Russia and the Czech aspirations for autonomy before the world war . In: Berliner Monatshefte 12 (1934), pp. 1008-1022.
• The Polish Question in Russian Politics 1904–1914 . In: Berliner Monatshefte 8 (1935), pp. 659-679.
• Masaryk and his action during the world war . In: Berliner Monatshefte 11 (1937), pp. 1000-1020.

literature

• Ray Brandon: Political Attitude: Jew. Wolfgang Johannes Leppmann (1902–1943) . In: Eurozine January 19, 2006.
• Felix Eick, Success and Limits to Remembering. Stolperstein for Wolfgang Leppmann, in: Osteuropa , 6.2018, pp. 127-134.