Helmuth Hübener
Helmuth Hübener | |
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Execution by guillotine | |
Known for | Youngest anti-Nazi German to be put to death for resistance |
Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener (8 January 1925 – 27 October 1942) was a German youth who was executed at age 17 by beheading for his opposition to the Nazi regime.[1] He was the youngest person of the German resistance to Nazism to be sentenced to death by the Sondergericht ("special court") People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) and executed.[2]
Life
Helmuth Hübener, born in Hamburg on 8 January 1925, came from an apolitical, religious family in Hamburg, Germany. He belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), as did his mother and grandparents. His adoptive father, Hugo, a Nazi sympathizer, gave him the name Hübener.[3]
Since early childhood, Hübener had been a member of the
When one of the leaders in his local congregation undertook to ban
After Hübener finished middle school in 1941, he began an apprenticeship in administration at the Hamburg Social Authority (Sozialbehörde). He met other apprentices there, one of whom, Gerhard Düwer, he would later recruit into his resistance movement. At a bathhouse, he met new friends, one of whom had a
In one of his pamphlets, for example, he wrote:
"German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany – Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding."
– Helmuth Hübener[7]
In late 1941, his listening involved three friends: Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe, both of whom were fellow Latter-day Saints, and later Gerhard Düwer. Hübener had them help him distribute about 60 different pamphlets, all containing typewritten material from the British broadcasts.[8] They distributed them throughout Hamburg, using such methods as surreptitiously pinning them on bulletin boards, inserting them into letterboxes, and stuffing them in coat pockets.[9]
Arrest and execution
On 5 February 1942, Hübener was arrested by the
On 11 August 1942, aged 17, Hübener was
As stated in the proclamation, Hübener was found guilty of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy's cause.
It was highly unusual for the Nazis to try an underaged defendant, much less sentence him to death, but the court stated that Hübener had shown more than average intelligence for a boy his age. This, along with his general and political knowledge, and his behaviour before the court, made Hübener, in the court's eyes, a boy with a far more developed mind than was usually to be found in someone of his age. For this reason, the court stated, Hübener was to be punished as an adult.
Hübener's lawyers, his mother, and the Berlin Gestapo appealed for clemency in his case, hoping to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. In their eyes, the fact that Hübener had confessed fully and shown himself to be still morally uncorrupted were points in his favour. The Reich Youth Leadership (Reichsjugendführung) disagreed, however, and stated that the danger posed by Hübener's activities to the German people's war effort made the death penalty necessary.[10] On 27 October 1942, the Nazi Ministry of Justice upheld the Special People's Court verdict. Hübener was only told of the Ministry's decision at 1:05 pm on the scheduled day of execution.
On 27 October, at 8:13 pm, he was beheaded by guillotine in the execution room at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.[11][4][9] His two friends, Schnibbe and Wobbe, who had also been arrested, were given prison sentences of five and ten years respectively.[4]
Church reaction
In 1937, the president of the LDS Church, Heber J. Grant, had visited Germany and urged the members to remain, get along, and not cause trouble.[citation needed] Consequently, some church members saw Hübener as a troublemaker who made things difficult for other Latter-day Saints in Germany. This recommendation did not change after Kristallnacht, which occurred the year following Grant's visit, after which he evacuated all non-German Latter-day Saint missionaries.
The local Latter-day Saint branch president, Arthur Zander (1907-1989), was a supporter of the Nazi Party,[citation needed] and had affixed a notice to the meetinghouse entrance stating "Jews not welcome". Ten days after the arrest of Hübener, on 15 February 1942, Zander claimed to have excommunicated the young man.[12] The excommunication was also signed by the European mission president and many other leaders voiced their support.[13]
The day of his execution, Hübener wrote in a letter to a fellow branch member, "I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter… I look forward to seeing you in a better world!" This is thought to be the only surviving letter by Hübener.[14]
In 1946, four years later and after the war, Hübener was posthumously reinstated into the LDS Church by the new mission president, Max Zimmer, saying the excommunication was not carried through with the proper procedures. He was also posthumously rebaptized, ordained an elder, and endowed in 1948 to clarify that his membership in the church was never in doubt.[15]
Legacy
A youth centre, school and a pathway in Hamburg are named after Hübener. The last runs between Greifswalder Straße and Kirchenweg in Sankt Georg. At the former Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, an exhibit about young Helmuth Hübener's resistance, trial, and execution was located in the former guillotine chamber that has since been changed to highlight other victims. Floral tributes are often placed in memory of Hübener and others put to death by the Nazis there. Hübener also has a Stolperstein, which can be found at Sachsenstraße 42 in Hamburg-Hammerbrook.
On 8 January 1985, sixty years after Hübener's birth, ceremonies in his memory were held in Hamburg by city officials. His fellow resisters, Schnibbe and Wobbe, both of whom had emigrated to the U.S. after the war, returned to Hamburg for the commemoration, where they were honoured guests and speakers.[1]
Depiction in books, drama and film
Hübener's story has been the subject of various literary, dramatic, and cinematic works.[1] In 1970, German author Günter Grass published the book Local Anaesthetic, about the Hübener group.[16]
In 1979 Thomas F. Rogers, a university teacher at Brigham Young University, wrote a play titled Huebener, which has had several runs in various venues. Hübener's two co-accused friends, Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and Rudi Wobbe, attended some of the performances, albeit in different circumstances. Wobbe died of cancer in 1992; Schnibbe died in 2010. In February 2014, Huebener made its high school premiere in St. George, Utah.[17]
In 1995, the first-hand account When Truth Was Treason was published, narrated by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe and written by Blair R. Holmes, a professional historian, and
The book Hübener Vs. Hitler by Richard Lloyd Dewey (2004), is, in this revised and expanded edition, a biography written in a popular-historical style. It includes interviews with all then-living friends and close relatives of Hübener. It also utilises primary investigative documents from the Nazi era.
Rudolf Gustav Wobbe (Hübener's other co-resistance fighter) wrote the book Before the Blood Tribunal.[18] Published in 1989, the book provides a personal account of his own trial before the Special People's court of Nazi Germany where he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his participation in anti-Nazi resistance. Rudi, as he was known, also describes events leading up to the trials of the three German youths and his own experience as a prisoner. This book was later republished as Three Against Hitler.[19]
The 2008 juvenile novel The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, while fictional, is based on Hübener's life. Bartoletti's earlier Newbery Honor book, Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow (2005),[20] also covers Hübener's story.
Hübener's story was documented in the 2003 documentary Truth & Conviction, written and directed by Rick McFarland and Matt Whitaker.[21]
The story was also depicted in Resistance Movement, an independent 2012 film.[22]
In 2020 an exhibition about Helmuth Hübener named 'You may not know him, but....' by German artist
See also
Notes
- ^
- ^ Beuys (1987).
- )
- ^ a b c d e f g "Meet the Youngest Person Executed for Defying the Nazis". history.com. September 2018.
- )
- ^ Bartoletti, Susan. "Resisting Hitler". Nelson Literacy. Nelson. Archived from the original on 9 August 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
- ISBN 0-252-06498-4.
- )
- ^ Covenant Communications.
- Monash University.
- ^ Holmes & Keele (2003), p. 241 (1995 ed.).
- ^ Beuys (1987), p. 488.
- ISBN 978-0-8061-4668-3.
...without consulting with District President Otto Berndt, Zander claimed to have excommunicated Helmuth Hübener from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- ^ "Hübener at Dixie State College". 14 March 2005. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
- ^ Dewey (2004), pp. 174–5.
- ISBN 978-0156529402.
- ^ Scott, Kimberly (24 February 2014). "'Huebener' playwright discusses LDS Church-suppressed play, first high school performance". StGeorgeUtah.com. Archived from the original on 25 February 2014.
- ISBN 9781555033965.
- ISBN 9781608615865.
- ISBN 9780439353793.
- ^ Millett, Lisa (28 January 2003). "Documentary captures anti-Nazi Mormon youths". The Daily Universe. BYU.
- IMDb
- ^ "Kunsthalle Hamburg: Cordula Ditz".
References
- Beuys, Barbara (1987). Vergeßt uns nicht - Menschen im Widerstand 1933-1945 (in German). Berlin: ISBN 3498005111.
- Gedenkstätte Plötzensee (Brigitte Oleschinski, published by the Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, and also listed in the German article).
- Sander, Ulrich (1985). Helmuth Hübener - Heft 59, Reihe Christ in der Welt (in German). Berlin: Union Verlag.
- Review of Ulrich Sander's book Jugendwiderstand im Krieg. Die Helmuth-Hübener-Gruppe.
- The Price: The True Story of a Mormon Who Defied Hitler, by Karl-Heinz Schnibbe, with Alan F. Keele and Douglas F. Tobler. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984. (This book was the first "rough" pp and considerably shorter version of the later expanded and revised title, When Truth Was Treason).
- Holmes, Blair R.; ISBN 9780929753140.
- Dewey, Richard Lloyd (2004). Hübener Vs. Hitler: A Biography of Helmuth Hübener. Academic Research Foundation. ISBN 978-0929753133.
External links
- Alan Frank Keele papers, MSS 7726 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University. Contains research notes on Hübener.