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Hermann Kath in Uniform, hält seine Tochter auf dem Arm
© Privatbesitz

Hermann Amandus Kath * 1908

Classenweg 8 (Wandsbek, Wellingsbüttel)

verhaftet 1945
Kriegsgericht
erschossen 20.04.1945
Rahlstedt-Höltigbaum

Hermann Kath, born 9 Nov. 1908 in Hamburg, shot and killed 20 Apr. 1945 in Rahlstedt-Höltigbaum

Classenweg 8 und Hammer Steindamm 130

Soccer fans regarded Hermann Kath as a hugely talented Hamburg goalkeeper. In the 1920s he purportedly played for SC Concordia and transferred in 1928 to the higher league SV St. Georg. There he became known as the goalkeeper of the top division soccer team SV St. Georg of 1895 e. V. (Hamm/Horn). He was called "the cat" due to his jumping ability. In 1931, the sports club newspaper of SV St. Georg wrote about him: "Of all of our players, Kath’s performance has already been mentioned. After this game he has ‘definitively entered public life’ and in the future is bound to be crowned with glory many times. Now it is crucial that he stays the same person who worked his way up to this summit, so that his game will continue to go uphill!" This reminder not to lose contact with the ground and not to attract negative attention through non-athletic escapades was not made by accident, for Kath was considered prone to such activity. His behavior could be described, delicately expressed, as nonconformist. From 1931 to 1935 he successfully completed eighteen games for the Hamburg soccer team. He allegedly was also in the running for the A-team of the German national team, but, according to the archive of the German Soccer Association, he never played.

We don’t know anything about Hermann Kath’s childhood or youth (born 9 Nov. 1908) or about his sister Elisabeth "Lissy" Kath (born in 1902 or 1904). His grandfather and godfather Hermann Kath (born in 1848), crane operator/crane foreman, had gained Hamburg citizenship in 1897. Hermann Kath junior’s parents were Heinrich (1882-1963) and Bertha Kath née Rau (1879-1948). In April 1909, Hermann Kath was baptized in Hamburg-Eilbek at the Friedenskirche Church. From 1912 the family lived in Hamm at Marienthaler Straße 129. The move from nearby Friedenstraße 39 (Eilbek) coincided with Heinrich Kath’s promotion from clerk to authorized representative. In 1923 the family moved to Marienthaler Straße 154. The street directory of the 1943 address book lists "H. Kath, auth. rep." on the ground floor of the four-storey residential building. (The building was bombed out in the summer of 1943. Bertha Kath was assigned a room in the single-family dwelling at Buchtstraße 8, today Classenweg 8, in the district Wellingsbüttel, which she moved into on 27 Oct. 1943.)

From 1925 at least until May 1940, Heinrich Kath had been employed as authorized representative of the ship brokerage company R. Ludolphs (business offices in "Ballinhaus", renamed "Meßberghof" in 1938), founded in 1894; the company had a business telephone installed in his private home. He belonged neither to the NSDAP nor to its divisions or associated organizations. Prior to 1933 he was a member of the "Association of Managers in Trade and Industry" (VELA) founded at the end of 1919 in Hamburg. From June 1940 he was drafted for labor service at the Foreign Telegram Inspection Authority; his monthly salary of 380 RM was transferred from then on by the Wehrmacht garrison command in Wandsbek. From 18 July 1940, he conducted this work in German-occupied Copenhagen.

In 1934 Hermann Kath married Martha Tiefmeier, with whom he had a daughter. The 1937 address book shows their address as Sievekingsallee 37 (Hamm-Nord). He worked as a commercial clerk and became unemployed in June 1936. In Nov. 1936 the couple divorced. Their daughter remained with her mother and Hermann Kath moved back in with his parents at Marienthaler Straße 154. When he married a second time, Hermann Kath had already been drafted by the Wehrmacht: On 9 Mar. 1941, he married the Austrian Olga Berauer (born in 1916 in Bischofshofen) in Mittersill. Presumably the couple divorced two years later. In 1943 Olga Kath moved back to Austria.

On 10 July 1940 Hermann Kath was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He served in the Railway Pioneer Battalion, was temporarily assigned to the Railway Pioneer School in Rehagen (Western Pomerania) and was promoted to Chief Pioneer in April 1941. The precise location of his assignment and duties are not known. As a Railway Pioneer he will likely have worked in railroad construction, operation, bridge construction and barrier construction and removal.

We know that Hermann Kath got into trouble with the Wehrmacht and was arrested because he was unconventional. It is conceivable that he refused to obey orders or something else that was treated as "degradation of military strength" (Wehrkraftzersetzung). On 11 June 1942 he was transferred from Glatz military prison (Silesia), roughly 70 km south of Wrocław, to Ludwigsdorf military prison. On 25 Jan. 1944 the Torgau/Elbe military prison noted his admission. After nearly eight months, he was assigned on 8 Sept. 1944 to the field prisoner division 5 in occupied Poland. There the Wehrmacht collected prisoners with "character defects" from military prisons in unarmed construction troop units for the eastern front. They had to undertake dangerous duties such as laying and clearing mines, constructing field fortifications, bunkers and streets, while receiving poor provisions. After three to nine months of "good behavior", the prisoner was to be transferred to a probation unit.

Already on 17 Oct. 1944, Hermann Kath was detailed to the 17th Armored Division (probably in northern Ukraine) and changed units once again during the succeeding months. Since at least Mar. 1945, he was deployed as a pioneer in Hamburg-Altona: In Aug. 1944 a defensive ring of antitank ditches and tank barriers had been erected around Hamburg along the arterial roads. Pioneer units were used for this work. Hermann Kath was possibly assigned to one of these units.

Hamburg was located in the region of the Army Group Northwest and since 14 Mar. 1945 was under the command of General Field Marshal Ernst Busch who, like Admiral Dönitz, had his headquarters in Plön. From 7 Apr. 1945 Major General Alwin Wolz was Hamburg’s Battle Commander who was to defend Hamburg against the enemy at all costs, a city which had been declared a stronghold. Hitler had ordered the demolition of bridges, docks and shipyards in Hamburg as well as ships in case the Allies should conquer Hamburg. Since Mar. 1945, a direct military threat loomed over Hamburg.

Toward the end of the war, the Gestapo and SS intensified their terror. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS, German Chief of Police, Reich Interior Minister and Commander of the Reserve Army all in one had visited the Hanseatic city on 1 Apr. and on 3 Apr. 1945 issued a decree that all males were to be shot and killed who did not report for duty in the "Volkssturm" national militia or from whose houses white cloths were hung. "Hamburg has been declared a defense sector", was announced on 8 Apr. 1945. On 12 April 1945, a further command ordered the all-out defense of German cities and threatened execution for noncompliance. Hermann Kath was allegedly arrested in Mar. 1945 by a military patrol.

It is not know whether the patrol was Wehrmacht field police (military police), watchdogs – so-called for their metal gorget – or an SS unit with the same function. The SS Battalion "Panzerteufel" was stationed in Hamburg-Langenhorn under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Heinemann, which was regarded as an elite unit. Both the field police and the SS checked individual soldiers who were on vacation or on their way to or from other units. On 15 Feb. 1945 "drumhead court martials" were set up "in Reich defense areas under enemy threat". On 15 Mar. the military tribunal was informed that Hermann Kath was guilty of "unlawful removal", meaning desertion. He was taken to the Wehrmacht’s Hamburg-Altona remand prison at the Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel penitentiary.

The "Wehrmacht Tribunal –Hamburg Command" (Harvestehuderweg 41) imposed the death sentence on 12 Apr. 1945, which was confirmed on 18 Apr. In the night from 19 to 20 Apr. 1945, the highest alert level was declared for Hamburg because English units had advanced in the south to the city limits.
36-year-old Hermann Kath was shot and killed on 20 Apr. 1945 at the firing range Höltigbaum (Hamburg-Rahlstedt), where dozens of deserters had been executed between 1942 and 1945. Besides him, the seamen Alwin Klank, Rolf Reh and Ernst Gennerich, Heizer Karl Tibbert and the twenty-year-old vehicle operator Herbert Walter were killed on the same day. Wehrmacht soldiers from the nearby Graf-Goltz Military Base formed the voluntary execution squad. The squad likely comprised 10 men who stood five paces in front of the delinquent and at the command "fire” shot Hermann Kath. A doctor from the reserve field hospital usually took part in the execution to officially determine death.
Was it coincidence or intentional that the "Führer’s birthday" was chosen for the execution – one last cynically brutal demonstration of the remaining terror potential of the NS in the face the lost world war? On that day, British Army units occupied Borstel on the Lower Elbe, and the Red Army began to storm the Reich Capital Berlin.
The "Wehrmacht Tribunal" generally specified: "Death announcements and obituaries in newspapers, magazines or other publications are forbidden." Hermann Kath’s death certificate issued by the Hamburg-Wandsbek Civil Registry Office on 20 Aug. 1945 stated the cause of death as "sudden cardiac death". His corpse was presumably taken to the reserve field hospital and from there handed over to the Ohlsdorf Cemetery. According to the death certificate, he was buried at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery (section 74, row 65, no. 27) beneath a wooden cross. (In 1960 his grave was moved to the Soldiers’ Honor Boulevard under a headstone at section 52, row 6, grave 26).

In the end, three more soldiers were shot 28 Apr. 1945 on the Höltigbaum grounds. On 3 May 1945 the British Army marched into Hamburg.
On 8 June 1945, his father Heinrich Kath returned from Copenhagen.
The judgment against Hermann Kath is no longer traceable. Since loss of the document due to effects of the war can be ruled out, it is conceivable that it was intentionally destroyed, but that remains speculation.

In May 2002 all Wehrmacht deserters were vindicated. Hermann Kath’s death sentence was automatically annulled as a consequence.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: Staatsarchiv Hamburg (StaH) 332-5 (Standesämter), 2013 u. 406/1882 (Geburtsregister 1882, Johann Heinrich Ludwig Kath); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 3105 u. 714/1908 (Heiratsregister 1908, Johann Heinrich Ludwig Kath u. Bertha Magdalena Rau); StaH 332-5 (Standesämter), 9996 u. 2156/1948 (Sterberegister 1948, Bertha Magdalena Kath geb. Rau); StaH 332-7 (Staatsangehörigkeitsaufsicht), Bürger-Register 1896–1898 A-K (Hermann Kath, Kranführer); StaH 332-8 (Alte Einwohnermeldekartei), Hermann Kath Senior; StaH 332-8 (Hauskartei), K 2524 (Classenweg 8); StaH 221-11, Misc. 10070 (Heinrich Kath); Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Strafsachenliste IV des Gerichts der Wehrmacht – Kommandantur Hamburg, 1945; Deutsche Dienststelle/WASt, Berlin; Bischofshofen (Österreich), Stadtamt (Angaben zur Geburt und Heirat von Olga Berauer); Stadtgemeinde Mittersill/Oberpinzgau (Österreich), Karteikarte des Melderegisters (1943–1944); Landgericht Hamburg, Scheidungsurteil 1936/ 1937; Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Friedenskirche-Osterkirche in Eilbek, Taufregister (4.4.1909 Hermann Emil Amandus Kath); Friedhof Ohlsdorf, Archiv; Adressbuch Hamburg 1910–1913, 1923, 1933–1938, 1943; Fernsprechbuch Hamburg (R.Ludophs) 1925, 1928, 1935; Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu, Hamburg 1987, S. 49; Jubiläumsschrift 90 Jahre SV St.Georg 1895–1985, Hamburg 1985, S. 31, 63; Jubiläumsschrift 100 Jahre SV St. Georg 1895–1995, Hamburg 1995, S. 53 (auf S. 52 Mannschaftsfoto); Kerstin Siebenborn, Der Volkssturm im Süden Hamburgs 1944/45, hrsg. vom Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, Band 35, Hamburg 1988, S. 14–33; Volker Ullrich, Den Mut haben davonzulaufen, in: Die Zeit/Magazin, Gehorsam bis zum Mord? – der verschwiegene Krieg der deutschen Wehrmacht, Hamburg 1995, S. 64–69; Manfred Asendorf, 1945 – Hamburg besiegt und befreit, hrsg. von der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, Hamburg 1995, S. 8–9, 21; Hartmut Hohlbein, Hamburg 1945. Kriegsende, Not und Neubeginn, Hamburg 1985, hrsg. von der Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Hamburg, S. 25–29; Michael Ahrens, Die Briten in Hamburg. Besatzerleben 1945–1958, München/Hamburg 2011, S. 34 ff.; Detlef Garbe/ Magnus Koch/ Lars Skowronski, Deserteure und andere Verfolgte der NS-Militärjustiz, Die Wehrmachtsgerichtsbarkeit in Hamburg, Hamburg 2013, S. 29, 36; www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/ Gliederungen/FeldstrafgefangenenAbt (eingesehen am 26.3.2009); Gespräch mit Peter Beckmann (SV St.Georg), Oktober 2008.