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Fiete Schulze nach seiner Verhaftung April 1933
© Privatbesitz

Fiete Schulze * 1894

Schiffbeker Weg 9 (Hamburg-Mitte, Billstedt)

HIER WOHNTE
FIETE SCHULZE
JG. 1894
INHAFTIERT
GEFÄNGNIS HAMBURG
ENTHAUPTET
6.6.1935

• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiete_Schulze
  (Fiete Schulze bei Wikipedia)

further stumbling stones in Schiffbeker Weg 9:
Rudolf Krooß

Fiete Schulze, born 10/22/1894 in Schiffbek, executed on 6/6/1935 at the Hamburg remand center

Schiffbeker Weg 9

"His tongue is more dangerous than bullets”, prosecutor Stegemann declared in his plead to sentence Tiete Schulze to death, whom he considered a functionary of the Communist party.

Fritz Karl Franz Schulz, known as Fiete Schulze, was born on October 22nd, 1894 in Schiffbek. His parents, Karl Schulze and his wife Auguste, nee Pallwitz, both worked at the Norddeutsche Jute-Spinnerei und Weberei, the Jute mill in Schiffbek. Nine of Fiete’s siblings died in early childhood, and he grew up with three brothers and a sister. His father was active in the SPD, the Social Democratic Party. Fiete entered elementary school, where he already spoke up for weaker classmates. He joined the workers’ sports club "Frei Heil.” Having finished school in 1909, he wanted to go to sea. Unable to find a ship, Fiete started an apprenticeship as a metalworker. Working as a riveter at the Blohm und Voss shipyard was at least a bit nearer to the fulfillment of his dream.

Still in his apprenticeship, he joined the metalworkers’ union, and in 1913, the SPD. Two years later, he married Johanna Schröder, who worked in a wool mill. They had three children. Both of their sons died in childhood, only the Schulzes’ daughter Wilma, born February 2nd, 1914, survived. In World War I, Fiete Schulze was drafted and badly wounded in Romania. In 1918, he returned to Hamburg. Marked by the war, the death of two brothers, the 1918 November revolution and poor living conditions in Schiffbek, he in 1919 decided to leave the SPD and join the USPD, which seemed more promising to him.

Fiete Schulze formed his own opinion by self-instruction, ideological disputes and his experience and on the job. On February 4th, 1920, the law on works council came into effect. USPD candidates won the first works council elections at the jute mill and the tin smelter. When the improvements expected by the workers did not come true, the laborers of these companies and of the Moorfleth garbage dump went on strike the same year. After almost three months, the strike ended in success, not the least thanks to the solidarity from the people of Schiffbek. Fiete Schulze also took part in the crushing of the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. After the union of the KPD and the leftist majority of the USPD, the KPD founded a local chapter in Schiffbek, which Fiete Schulte joined. He handled the setting up of the paramilitary security guard. In those days, the years of hyperinflation and famine, Fiete Schulz became a confident and counselor of many persons. Schulze worked as a foreman at the Veddel rice mill. To help the unemployed of Schiffbek, he and his colleagues confiscated a barge full of rice. When they were arrested, he took the blame in order to protect the others.

In mid-October 1923, the political situation in Germany climaxed when the Stresemann government tried to topple the labor governments in Saxony and Thuringia. The left planned an uprising against this. On October 23rd, Hamburg was to give the signal for an armed insurgency. However, the call expected from a conference in Chemnitz did not arrive. Unaware of this, the Hamburg party organization the armed uprising. Fiete Schulze commanded the operations in Schiffbek. He mustered his men, who took their weapons out of hiding. They took both police stations in Schiffbek and arrested the police officers. The Communists also occupied the post office and switched off all long-distance phone lines. Censorship was imposed on the Schiffbek newspaper. Fiete Schulze had his men rip up the arterial road, thus cutting the route to Berlin. Part of the people supported the uprising, but they were unable to withstand the superior government forces for long. The uprising collapsed on October 25th, and most of the insurgents were arrested. With the approval of the party, Fiete Schulze fled abroad.

His daughter Wilma was nine years old at the time. She only saw her father again at the end of 1925. He had signed on as a seaman on the South America Line’s tall ship Flora to Chile, where he found work as a stevedore and miner. Wilma repeatedly came to realize how intensely the police was after her father. Once, a policeman approached her and promised her a bar of chocolate if she told him where her father was. Wilma later loved to tell how she always withstood such temptations and kept silent. When Fiete Schulze came home, Wilma didn’t see him for long, because he went to the Soviet Union, where he had the chance to study social sciences. After completing his studies, he stayed in Moscow as a teacher at the university as well as at the party academy. During this time, he was active in the Soviet Communist Party as well as in the German Workers’ Club. In 1932, he returned to Hamburg, where provocations and brawls between Nazis and Communists were now daily routine. In spite of the fact that he was living in Hamburg illegally, he often made public speeches. On behalf of the district chapter of the KPD, he organized a self-defense force, urging his men to avoid brawls with Nazi storm troopers if possible. Schulze disapproved of individual terror and "bludgeon politics”: "Do you think a guy is already an enemy of the working class because he’s wearing a storm trooper uniform? No, comrades, he’s only been lured astray: But you know better: lead him back to the right path! That is what heroism is! Shooting is not.”

Fiete Schulze was betrayed, arrested in his hideout, interrogated at Gestapo headquarters and taken to the remand jail. No one was allowed to visit him until August, but he was allowed to write. The letters to his daughter sharpened her perception of the political conditions. In spite of his isolation in solitary confinement, Fiete Schulze took keen interest of the political changes in the country. When Wilma Schulze later was allowed to visit her father, she learned of the torture he had endured and of the attempts to bribe him.

On February 13th, 1935, the Hamburg Supreme Court opened the proceedings against Fiete Schulz for "preparation of high treason” and breach of the public peace. Wilma and 80 to 90 other observers were always present at the sessions of the trial that lasted five weeks. The public was often excluded, as Fiete Schulze refused to be intimidated and voiced his opinion without flinching. His posture encouraged people. And they showed that they stood by him. One morning, all street signs Around the Supreme Court building were pasted over with Fiete-Schulze-Platz.

On March 8th, 1935, the court sentenced Fiete Schulze to three times death penalty plus 260 years at hard labor. In his plea, prosecutor Stegemann declared: "There is no objective justice. Criminal law today is the law of the battle!” and closed his statement with the words: "It would be a flagrant injustice if this man was to get away with his life. His tongue is more dangerous than bullets!” International protests in Paris, Amsterdam and other European cities had no effect on the verdict. Without getting the chance to say farewell to his family, Fiete Schulze was executed with the hand ax at 6:00 a.m. on June 6th, 1935 in the courtyard of the Hamburg remand jail. His daughter Wilma left Germany with her husband and her daughter. Rudolf Krooss (s. p. 34) died as a soldier of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Wilma and Rita Krooss remained in the Soviet Union until the end of the war.

In February 1981, the prosecution at the Hamburg Supreme Court annulled the death sentence against Fiete Schulze – an achievement of his daughter and many of his supporters in their struggle for justice.


Translation by Peter Hubschmid 2018
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: January 2019
© Christiane Chodinski

Quellen: VAN-Liste 1968; StaH, 351-11 AfW, 020214; Hamburger Anzeiger, Nr. 56, 7.3.1933; Schulze, Briefe; Hochmuth, Fiete Schulze; dies., Niemand und nichts wird vergessen; S. 114ff.; dies./Meyer, Streiflichter; Günther Schwarberg: Justizmord Freispruch nach der Hinrichtung, Stern-Artikel vom 4.6. 1981; Geschichtsgruppe des Stadtteilprojekts Sonnenland, Billstedt’s "vergessene" Geschichte; o.J.; Voß/Büttner/Weber, Hamburger Aufstand; Karl Hipler, Meine letz­te Begegnung mit Fiete Schulze, Ge­denkstätte Ernst Thälmann, Ham­burg; mündliche Mitteilungen von Angehörigen.