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Richard Tennigkeit, 1930er Jahre
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Richard Tennigkeit * 1900

Moschlauer Kamp 24 (Wandsbek, Farmsen-Berne)

HIER WOHNTE
RICHARD TENNIGKEIT
JG. 1900
IM WIDERSTAND
VERHAFTET 24.2.1944
GEFÄNGNIS FUHLSBÜTTEL
KZ NEUENGAMME
ERMORDET 12.12.1944

further stumbling stones in Moschlauer Kamp 24:
Käthe Tennigkeit

Käthe Tennigkeit, née Schlichting, born 2 Apr. 1903 in Hamburg, died 20 Apr. 1944 at Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison
Richard Tennigkeit, born 5 Sept. 1900 in Stettin-Bredow, died 12 Dec. 1944 at Neuengamme concentration camp

Moschlauer Kamp 24

The parents of Richard Tennigkeit settled in Stettin before 1895 where his father Christoph Tennigkeit (born in 1871 in Tilsit District) found work at the Vulkan Shipyard as a blacksmith. Originally their family name was Tenekait, indicating the family’s East Prussian and Baltic roots. Richard Tennigkeit’s mother Anne, née Schwentorus (1871–1937) still spoke the Latvian language. In 1911, Christoph Tennigkeit moved to what was then Prussian Wilhelmsburg (Köhlbrandstraße 7), where he also worked for the Vulkan Shipyard. His political orientation is not known but was likely close to the Social-Democratic Party. The family of five came to Wilhelmsburg in stages. They appear to have lived in Eimsbüttel in the beginning. Richard Tennigkeit first attended the elementary school at Bismarckstraße 83 from Aug. 1914 to Mar. 1915. He probably moved to Wilhelmsburg too after completing the nine years of elementary school. He and his younger brother Bruno (born in 1903) learned the metal trade and became lathe operators. In Mar. 1920, Richard Tennigkeit joined the metal workers’ union.

At that time, the cooperative garden city estate Berne was founded on the grounds of the former Berne Manor. It attracted many organized workers from the port, including the Tennigkeit Family. Here the families could, to a certain extent, be self-sufficient and provide for their families by growing fruit trees, planting vegetables and keeping small animals. The majority of the residents were social democrats. As of Sept. 1926, the families of Christoph and Anna Tennigkeit (no. 24) and Bernhard and Luise Pürwitz, related by marriage, lived wall to wall on both sides of the duplex at Moschlauer Kamp 22 and 24, respectively. Anna Tennigkeit and Luise Pürwitz were sisters who had also lived next to one another in Stettin and Wilhelmsburg.

Richard Tennigkeit, who loved the mountains, had given the local authorities notice of his departure for Lüneburg in Apr. 1922 to become a traveling craftsman. From July 1922 to May 1923 he lived in Darmstadt. Via Stuttgart, he moved on to Austria and the Balkans. We can infer from the stamps in his passport that he stayed two months in Salzburg and two months in Serbia. From Mar. 1924 to Oct. 1926, he again lived in Austria (in Klagenfurt among other places) and joined the local metal workers union.

In Oct. 1926 he returned to northern Germany via Thuringia and settled in the tranquil garden city estate in the northeast of Hamburg. A lively cultural and political life had flourished there. Richard’s brother Bruno, a lathe operator at Kampnagel, played mandolin and sang in the local choir, the "Berner Volkschor e. V.", which had been founded in 1924 and practiced since 1925 in the club room of the confectionary Konditorei Palm. With around 80 singers, the choir belonged to the umbrella organization of the "Arbeitersängerbundes" and performed at May Day celebrations, at consecration and youth initiation ceremonies, and at school and neighborhood fairs. It disbanded in 1939. Around 1930, the Bern sports club, the Freie Turn- und Sportverein Berne (FTSV), the Communist Party of Germany and the Reichsbanner each had their own marching bands. After the Iron Front was founded in late 1931 as a social-democratically dominated paramilitary organization, the FTSV Berne also had a shooting practice group.

Richard Tennigkeit and Käthe Schlichting met early in the 1930s at union classes. Richard was a member of the non-party-related metal workers union, Käthe was in the transport workers union. She came from a family with social-democratic leanings. Her father, the professional painter Heinrich Schlichting, came from Lübeck, her mother Anna Auguste, née Casper (died 1962), from Kappeln on the Schlei. Her family lived, among other places, at Barmbeker Markt 8, house 3 in 1903. Käthe attended elementary school at Barmbekerstraße 30 in Winterhude district from 1909 to 1917. When they were young, she and her sister Martha joined the Socialist Youth Workers (Arbeiterjugend, SAJ, today known as Die Falken). Their brother Friedrich Schlichting died after the end of World War I from the delayed effects of an injury he had sustained as a soldier.

Käthe Schlichting was interested in the ideas of the USPD, a political party that had split off from the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Apr. 1917. A good many of the members of the USPD district association of Hamburg-Altona were highly qualified workers from the metal and shipbuilding industries. The Vukan Shipyard in particular was a center for the USPD. Within the metal workers union, hefty discussions took place between a majority supporting the trade union and USPD members.

It is not known exactly when Käthe Schlichting joined the Communist Party of Germany which was founded in Dec. 1918. She attended business school, worked as an office clerk, moved to Nuremberg with a girlfriend for two to three years around 1925, and in the early 1930s she worked for the bakers’ trade union, part of the General German Trade Union Association (Allgemeinen Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund – ADGB), where she organized the women’s work. She also worked part-time as a fitness instructor, including for PRO (Konsumgenossenschaft Produktion) in Hamburg-Berne which offered athletic leisure activities, among other things. To qualify, she had taken a test to become a gymnastics and swimming instructor in Apr. 1929, and in Sept. 1930 she attained the additional "Qualification as Instructor of Preventative and Compensatory Physical Exercises”.

By that time Richard Tennigkeit had also become a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Around 1930 he represented the KPD in the Farmsen-Berne Town Council which was dominated by the SPD. Jonny Birckholtz (1877–1937) of the SPD presided over the council as the chairman and Jonny Schacht (SPD) was a councilor. During elections, the SPD won about 70 percent of the vote in Berne, the KPD 15 to 20 percent.

Richard Tennigkeit co-founded the "Rotsport" sports club of Fichte Eppendorf in 1929 where he played field handball on the men’s team. Immediately after the NSDAP seized power on 30 Jan. 1933, Richard Tennigkeit and his two brothers, the carpenter Otto Tennigkeit (1905–1980) and the lathe operator Bruno Tennigkeit (1903–1981), were arrested by a riot squad comprised of police and SA, however they were soon released. No concrete charges were brought against them. In 1933 the KPD and SPD were banned and the sports clubs Fichte Eppendorf and FTSV Berne were disbanded. The SPD daily newspaper Hamburger Echo was also banned. The "red papers" were only printed illegally in Eilbek in 1933-34 under extreme threat of persecution.

The trade union buildings were occupied by the SA and SS on 2 May 1933, and the trade union’s assets were seized. The Gaubetriebszellenleiter and official representative of the N.S.B.O. Rudolf Habedank, director of operations to occupy the Hamburg Trade Union and Public Welfare Building and responsible for disbanding the trade unions, wrote Käthe Schlichting on 16 May 1933: "Considering the necessary changes in the administration of the trade unions, I am terminating your employment as a matter of precaution at the soonest possible date". Habedank (born in 1893 in Mecklenburg), previously a self-employed master electrician, had joined the Eppendorf NSDAP chapter in 1929 and as of 1931 was employed full time as the Director of the National Socialist Business Organization (N.S.B.O.) in Hamburg.

From 1933, he was a member of the staff of National Socialist (NS) Gauleiter (regional director) Karl Kaufmann. In that role he was able to pocket part of the assets stolen from unwanted organizations. After 1933 Rudolf Habedank’s income rose to two and a half times the amount of his previous earnings. Within just a few months, the old structures of the NS opposition were demolished. A provisional police station was set up in the house of Berne’s voluntary fire fighters, and an SS motorcycle school was stationed in a former manor house at the edge of the Berne garden city estate in 1934.

Richard Tennigkeit and Käthe Schlichting wed in June 1933. In 1935, their son was born. "Both my father and my mother instilled in me a joy of learning and encouraged my studiousness by routinely praising me for my good grades. They taught me academic knowledge far beyond helping me with homework, by doing reading, writing and arithmetic with me. They wanted to make it possible for me to go on to higher education. My parents always told me that only an intelligent person was protected from succumbing to the false doctrines of a Hitler (…)", their son recalled about 20 years later. His parents had thought he might become a teacher, a profession which, under National Socialism, had to assume responsibility for indoctrinating school children into the National-Socialist ideology. The fact that they imagined their son as a future teacher in the opposition says a great deal about the Tennigkeits’ convictions.

The family took hikes on the weekend, where Richard Tennigkeit brought along his violin, and vacations in nature as a central part of their recreation and interaction. Richard Tennigkeit’s standard apparel for hiking and excursions were his three-quarter-length knickerbockers. They also maintained contact with former members of the now banned Friends of Nature, a club that many of the residents of the garden city estate were actively involved in. The Tennigkeits also took trips in their collapsible boat, in harmony with nature and very popular at the time ("river hiking"), and they camped at the Baltic Sea. Occasionally they rode their bicycles to Rahlstedt where they bought vegetarian food at Reformhaus Friedrich Bein since Berne’s PRO store did not carry those kinds of products.

The Tennigkeits worked for the communist resistance and helped with the KPD’s collection drives, the "red aid", supported by illegal dissidents. The National Socialists tried to create an atmosphere of fear and passivity, especially in the blue-collar neighborhoods, through deterrent operations, also in Berne. It was there that the critically ill Jonny Birckholtz (SPD) was picked up on a stretcher and taken in for questioning in 1933. His home was searched by the Gestapo. In Nov. 1933, Ernst Ehrenpfordt’s (SPD) house in the neighborhood was surrounded by SA men during a nighttime operation. His door was kicked in and his house searched by several police officers. In Nov. 1934, the 20-year-old Gertrud Eke was arrested. She had lived in the garden city estate since 1926, became a member of the SAJ in 1928 and leaned towards the communist party. She was detained for six weeks and repeatedly interrogated. Since she gave a fictive person as her contact and held steadfast to her statements, she was then released. She also had contact with Richard Tennigkeit who loaned her political books and newspapers. In Mar. 1935, nine SPD members were arrested in the Berne garden city estate (two of whom lived on Moschlauer Kamp) and sentenced to several years in prison for "preparations for high treason".

In May 1935, the illegal SPD group in Farmsen was discovered and broken up. The Tennigkeits hid imperiled individuals like Max Heyckendorf and Adolf Kummernuß, most likely in a closet or storage space in the attic of their house on Moschlauer Kamp. Adolf Kummernuß (1895–1979), a member of the SPD and the Transport Workers’ Union until 1933, was the intermediary between the now illegal workers’ parties, the SPD and KPD. He was arrested and tortured in town hall, the headquarters of the Hamburg Gestapo, in June 1935. Afterwards he was taken to Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp where he was again tortured and held in solitary confinement for about a year.

Gustav Bruhn (1889–1944), a functionary of the KPD district management Wasserkante, also found temporary refuge at the Tennigkeits. Like Richard and Käthe Tennigkeit and Max Heyckendorf, he was a member of the Jacob-Bästlein-Abshagen Group, formed in Nov. 1941, in which he was responsible for the shipyard. He was handed over to the Gestapo in late 1943 by the informant Alfons Pannek and hung at Neuengamme concentration camp on 14 Feb. 1944. There was also contact with Gertrud Meyer (member of the SAJ and later of the KPD) who was arrested in early 1944. In June 1942, the group distributed several hundred copies of the "Leaflet for Construction Workers" to workers conscripted into Organization Todt.

After the start of World War II Richard Tennigkeit was not drafted into the Wehrmacht because as a lathe operator at Hamburg’s port he was working in manufacturing essential for the war and as such regarded as "indispensable". As of Aug. 1936 he worked for Spillingwerk (Werftstraße 5 near Reiherstieg), a company that repaired steam engines and reversing transmissions. The resistance activities of the Jacob-Bästlein-Abshagen Group mainly concentrated on enterprises in the shipbuilding and metal working industries. Since early 1942, they had built up an "operation cell organization" with a network of supporters. Their goal was the political education and enlightenment of dissidents and the sabotage of some of the enterprises essential to the war effort. They had contacts at Blohm & Voss (the carpenter Jonny Stüve, among others, see his entry), at the Howaldt Works, the Stülcken Shipyard, the German Shipyard, at the tool manufacturing works Heidenreich & Harbeck in Barmbek (Helmut Heins and Hans Stender, among others), the engineering works Gall & Seitz (Max Heyckendorf) at the port, very close to Richard Tennigkeit’s enterprise, Kampnagel AG in Winterhude, the Wandsbek construction company Arthur Crone & Co. (Karl Eke, Robert Abshagen, Hein Brettschneider 1904–1944, Hans Christoffers 1905–1942), the Holsatia Furniture Factory in Altona-Ottensen, and at Valvo (Gertrud Meyer, among others).

In Oct. 1942, the Hamburg Gestapo succeeded in apprehending Abshagen, Bästlein and about 90 other members of the resistance group in a large-scale arrest operation. At first the Tennigkeits escaped. From the group of roughly 200 members, about 150 were arrested, and of those approximately 100 were executed or killed. With the aid of an undercover agent, the Hamburg Gestapo succeeded in identifying a majority of the group.

A befriended electrician who lived on the same street in Berne helped install an over-sized "lightening rod" on the roof of the house at Moschlauer Kamp 24 which, by means of a switch, could be used as an antenna to receive foreign radio stations. Thus the Tennigkeits were able to supply their political friends with alternative information on the state of the war.

Possibly due to a denunciation, the Gestapo conducted a search of the Tennigkeits’ home at Moschlauer Kamp 24 on 24 Feb. 1944. Two men in black leather coats in a black Wanderer car stopped in front of the house, which was unusual at the time in the rural Berne garden city estate. After a short period of time, their son, who had been playing soccer in the street, was called inside by his mother. Inside, books and papers had been piled up on the table in the living room. A radio, clothing, linens and jewelry were also confiscated. The Gestapo asked their son as to the whereabouts of Max Heyckendorff, but he noticed the threatening voice and only replied to the question with "I don’t know". The son was sent to the neighbors. His mother had to get into the car with the two Gestapo men.

There is no documentation indicating whether the Criminal Secretary of the Gestapo, Henry Helms, was involved with their arrest. However, he is mentioned in the file at the Restitution Office. Richard Tennigkeit was arrested at his place of work at the Hamburg port. Both were taken to Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison. The Gestapo wanted to extort statements, for instance the hiding place of Max Heyckendorf. They threatened to have their son admitted to a home.

Two months later, on 20 Apr. 1944, Käthe Tennigkeit was found hanging in her cell at Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison. Suicide was given as the official cause of death, but "pushed to death" would be closer to the truth. Yet it is also possible that she suffered a violent death as the result of an "interrogation" posed as suicide. Her sister Martha Schlichting and her parents were allowed to see the dead body of Käthe Tennigkeit at the port hospital. An obituary about her death ran in the "Hamburger Anzeiger", a newspaper under National-Socialist control. Her burial was attended by her family members as well as work colleagues of RichardTennigkeit from the Spillingwerk. The condolence book also shows the names Heyckendorff and Dahrendorff.

The "camp regulations" at Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison only allowed prisoners to write and receive two letters a month. The mail was censored and destroyed if it contained unauthorized topics or hard-to-read handwriting. On 20 May 1944 Richard Tennigkeit wrote a letter from "II hall 6 Fuhlsbüttel" to his parents-in-law: "Finally I can write you again. Since being moved to a hall, I can write on the 20th of each month. I was grateful to receive your letters. I am gradually regaining my balance, but I still cannot imagine life without Käte." Hall II was originally filled with 48 beds, but in 1942-1943 it was constantly overcrowded, forcing prisoners to sleep on the floor or on benches.

In early June 1944, after about three and a half months at Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison, Richard Tennigkeit was moved to Neuengamme concentration camp where he received the prisoner number 35943. On 13 Aug. 1944, he asked his parents-in-law for stamps, "for I now am allowed to write more often. Please note my new number." Two weeks later, a letter to his parents-in-law read: "I am now a prisoner in protective custody and confined here most likely until the end of the war. Until then I also will not get a trial. My health is good, I am now working here as a lathe operator …"

He may have worked as a concentration camp prisoner for the armaments manufacturer Mauser-Werke AG. His letter from 20 Nov. 1944 gives the first indications of his poor health: "Don’t send me any black bread, I have trouble digesting it", he wrote to his parents-in-law. At that point in time he likely suffered from a digestive tract disorder. On 12 Dec. 1944 Richard Tennigkeit died after half a year at Neuengamme concentration camp. His official cause of death was given as typhoid. The report by the local SS physician on the sickness levels at Neuengamme concentration camp for the period from 26 Dec. 1944 to 25 Mar. 1945 does not expressly mention typhoid, likely caused by contaminated food stuffs. Instead, the report generally describes "stomach and intestinal disorders".

Their eight-year-old son was able to stay with the tenants of his house in the Berne garden city estate for six months after his parents’ arrest. After that he moved in with his uncle and aunt in Rahlstedt; his uncle also assumed his guardianship. The council of the garden city cooperative, responsible for housing assignments and whose board members had to be replaced in 1933 by members of the NSDAP, approved the continued right for the son of Richard and Käthe Tennigkeit to live in the estate house.

A placard mounted on the house in the late 1940s bears witness to Käthe and Richard Tennigkeit. It was donated by the VVN. In 1985, the street Tennigkeitsweg in Poppenbüttel was named after the Berne resistance fighters. In 2006, a Stumbling Stone was laid in front of the former residential building in Berne.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: StaH 221-11 (Entnazifizierung), Z 8005 (Rudolf Habedank); StaH 332-5 (Standesamt), 4480 u. 4/104 (Sterberegister 1935); StaH 332-5 (Standesamt), 4514 u. We 307 (Sterberegister 1946); StaH 332-8 (Meldebücher- u. Karteien Wilhelmsburg, 1892-1927), Bruno, Richard und Christof Tennigkeit; StaH 332-8 (Hausmeldekartei), Film 2549 (Moschlauer Kamp); StaH 351-11 (AfW), 050900; StaH 351-11 (AfW), 061035; Hamburger Anzeiger 26.4.1944 (Mikrofilm im StaH 741-4, Sign. S 12611); AB 1903, 1920 (Heinrich Schlichting); FZH /WdE 99 (Gertrud Eke); Stadtarchiv Darmstadt, Melderegisterblatt (1922/23); Herbert Diercks, Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu, Hamburg 1987, S. 12, 40 (m. Abb.), 41; Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Berne damals, Hamburg 1994, S. 110, 111, 116, 118, 120-121 (m. Abb.); Ursel Hochmuth/Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter aus dem Hamburger Widerstand 1933–1945, Frankfurt/Main 1969, S. 107, 351 (Fußnote 20), 353 (Flugblatt), 359f, 371f (Bruhn), 374–375 (Helms, Gestapo), 384, 385, S. 386 (Heyckendorf); Ursel Hochmuth, Illegale KPD und Bewegung "Freies Deutschland" in Berlin und Brandenburg 1942-1945, Berlin 1998, S. 45–46, 52, 72; VVN/BdA Fuhlsbüttel-Langenhorn-Norderstedt, Gestapo-Gefängnis Fuhlsbüttel, Hamburg 1983, S. 46, 68; ötv Bezirksverwaltung Hamburg, Dokumentation Stadthaus in Hamburg, Hamburg 1981, S. 17–18 , 19–21; Werner Johe, Neuengamme – Zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager in Hamburg, Hrsg. Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg, Hamburg 1986, S. 76–80; Ulrike Sparr, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Winterhude. Biographische Spurensuche, 2008, S. 44–49, 116–121; Carmen Smiatacz, Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Barmbek und Hamburg-Uhlenhorst. Biographische Spurensuche, 2010, S. 46–48; Projektgruppe Arbeiterkultur Hamburg, Vorwärts – und nicht vergessen, Arbeiterkultur in Hamburg um 1930, Hamburg 1982, S. 192–193, S. 206; Klaus Bästlein, "Hitlers Niederlage ist nicht unsere Nie­derlage, sondern unser Sieg!" Die Bästlein-Organisation. Zum Widerstand aus der Arbeiterbewegung in Hamburg und Nordwestdeutschland während des Krieges (1939–1945), in: Beate Meyer/Joachim Szodrzynski (Hrsg.), Vom Zweifeln und Weitermachen. Fragmente der Hamburger KDP-Geschichte, Hamburg 1988, S. 44–101; Werner Skrentny (Hrsg.), Hamburg zu Fuß – 20 Stadtteilrundgänge durch Geschichte und Gegenwart, Hamburg 1987, S. 266/267; Volker Ullrich, Die USPD in Hamburg und im Bezirk Wasserkante 1917/18, in: Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, Band 79, Hamburg 1993, S.133–162; Karl Ditt, Sozialdemokraten im Widerstand, Hamburg in der Anfangsphase des Dritten Reiches, Hamburg 1984, S. 88; www.garten-der-frauen.de/frauen; Gespräche mit W. T., September 2009 und Juli 2010.