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Oswald Laue
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Oswald Laue * 1898

Döhnerstraße 44 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

HIER WOHNTE
OSWALD LAUE
JG. 1898
VERHAFTET 1933 UND 1944
HINGERICHTET 15.1.1945
ZUCHTHAUS
BRANDENBURG-GÖHRDEN

Oswald Laue, born 18.7.1898 in Kelbra/Thuringia, executed on 15.1.1945 in Brandenburg-Görden

Döhnerstraße 44

From the verdict of the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof) of December 7, 1944 on Oswald Laue: "The fact that he did his work diligently and eagerly does not change the fact that, although emphatically warned by a relevant sentence - he has once again exposed himself as a dangerous enemy of the state, who has stabbed the fighting front in the back by his underhanded, subversive (!) propaganda. As a notorious opponent of National Socialist order and German will to victory, he has placed himself outside the German national community and pronounced his own judgment. Because of the dishonorable attitude revealed in his deed, he loses at the same time forever the honorary rights of a German national comrade." gez. Duve, Volksgerichtsrat

This hard-working but "dishonorable" opponent of the Nazi regime, Oswald Laue, came from what is now the district of Mansfeld-Südharz in Saxony-Anhalt, which was under several changes of rule. His parents Otto Laue, a harness maker and horse driver by trade, and Minna Pauline Hulda, née Hippe, lived in Sittendorf near Sangerhausen, which was incorporated into Kelbra.

The first of the five children born in Sittendorf was Ottilie (1887), followed by the progenitor Otto (8/30/1888), Hermann (12/14/1890), Minna (8/17/1892), and Moritz (8/5/1894). Kelbra is given as the birthplace of Emma (9/26/1896) and Oswald (7/18/1898).

Soon after Oswald Laue's birth the family moved to Bochum, where the father apparently worked in mining. As early as the beginning of March 1901, thirteen-year-old Ottilie fell victim to a typhus epidemic. Five days later, Otto Laue died of pneumonia at the age of 34. He left behind his pregnant wife and six underage children. Seven weeks after his father's death, his son Paul (May 8, 1901) was born. Minna Laue supported the family as a laundress.

The four older children completed their elementary schooling in Bochum and then began their vocational training. Otto and Moritz became bricklayers, Hermann plasterer, Minna clerk.

Otto and Hermann Laue arrived in Hamburg as journeymen and registered with the police, Otto in 1907, Hermann a year later. Otto Laue, who had just come of age, joined his mother and siblings in 1909. The family grew. The oldest daughter, Minna Laue, gave birth to a son, Erwin (12/26/1909), at the end of the year. Only about ten years younger than Oswald and Paul Laue, he later participated with them in political actions.

The widow Minna Laue settled with her family in the working-class district of Hamburg-Hamm. Her first verifiable address in Hamburg was Wichernweg 6, from where she moved to Diagonalstraße 39, the place of residence for the next ten years for her children and grandson Erwin. Minna Laue and Hamm remained the center of the family until the destruction of the district in the firestorm of July 27/28, 1943.

Oswald Laue finished elementary school in 1912 and became an ironworker. Like his mother, he and his brothers Otto and Hermann joined the trade union and the SPD.

Hermann Laue completed infantry training in Celle from 1912 to 1914. Just before the start of World War I, on June 30, 1914, the army discharged him as unfit for service, but he was later drafted again. He moved to Bremen and there, on October 24, 1914, married Mathilde Wolter from Otterndorf, Hadeln County, both living at the same address.

All brothers participated in the First World War and survived it. As early as September 2, 1914, Otto Laue was drafted into army service and became a prisoner of war in the same month. In 1918 he returned to Germany and to his former profession as a bricklayer and ironworker.

Oswald Laue was drafted in 1916. Assigned to a pioneer park on the Western Front, he became involved in the war of position. After not returning to the front from a leave in 1917, he was sentenced by a court-martial to 12 years' imprisonment in a fortress in Spandau for desertion. Thanks to the November Revolution, his imprisonment ended as early as 1918. After returning to Hamburg, he joined the Workers' and Soldiers' Council (Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat).

Moritz Laue returned from the war badly wounded and applied for the war pension to which he was entitled, but it was a long time coming. This may have contributed to his repeated criminal activity. He and his brother Hermann were arrested during a robbery extortion in 1919, but were forcibly released from custody after a short time. While Hermann regained his footing in civilian life, Moritz was imprisoned again in 1922 and released from prison in 1927 after serving his sentence.

Although injured by poison gas, Hermann Laue managed to return to working life. He moved with his wife Mathilde and their daughter Ingeborg, born on October 4, 1917, to Hammerdeich 157 and worked again as a plasterer. An honorarium from the military supply office supplemented his income. Since his return from the war, he was psychiatrically examined several times without a final diagnosis being made. His mental frailty required guardianships according to the law of the time and resulted in frequent and long hospital stays. Unlike his brothers, he did not actively participate in the political debates of his time, nor did he join any political party.

Paul Laue married in Hamburg on February 22, 1921. He worked as a bricklayer and construction manager and lived for a long time with his family at Wendenstraße 51.

The latter was also true for Otto Laue. He sympathized with the KPD, but did not become a member of the illegal KPD group there until 1939, three years after his escape to Copenhagen.

At the end of the inflationary period, right-wing political forces threatened the republic, which communists opposed and in turn planned an uprising. Assuming that workers would join them en masse, as they had done six years earlier in Russia, Hamburg communists undertook an uprising on October 23, 1923. Police stations, including the one on Mittelstraße (today: Carl-Petersen-Straße) in Hamm, were occupied. After two days, the uprising was put down, and Oswald Laue went into hiding. No details are known about his involvement.

In 1924 Hermann Laue took over the tavern Bundsensweg 9, combined with a store for fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish. At the same time, Minna Laue moved to Süderstraße 306, her second long-term residence, in 1924. There she initially took in her son Hermann after his divorce on July 10, 1934.

Until his marriage on September 17, 1927, Oswald Laue lived with his mother. His wife, Johanne Uekermann from Elbdeich in the district of Kedingen, who was two years older, lived at the nearby Diagonalstraße 25. Witnesses to the marriage were her father and the worker Carl Decker from Kentzlersweg 5, another place the family went to and apparently Emma Laue's husband at the time. Their marriage remained childless, while Johanne and Oswald Laue had a daughter on Jan. 8, 1928, whom they named Lieselotte. She was born in the Finkenau Clinic.

Oswald and Johanne Laue moved to Dobbelersweg 20, and Oswald became active as a KPD functionary in Hamm. From 1927 to 1933 he held the post of sub-cashier of the KPD in Hamm. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, he organized the distribution of the "Hamburger Volkszeitung" and other illegal KPD publications in District III - Hamm, Horn, Hammerbrook, St. Georg - and other parts of the city. Together with his brother Paul, he was arrested for "preparation for high treason" and sentenced in 1934 by the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court to three years in prison. He was therefore unable to personally attend the enrollment of his daughter Lieselotte in the Osterbrook elementary school.

Since Paul Laue could not be proven guilty, he was released from prosecution after six months in pre-trial detention. He remained associated with the KPD and the Red Aid and supported himself and his family of five by working as an iron weaver and earning money from his rented garden.

Minna Laue's eldest daughter Minna, by then married Helka, was invalidated by a heart valve defect as early as 1929 at the age of 37. Her son Erwin was sent to Czechoslovakia by the KPD. After receiving a message from him in the fall of 1934, she contacted him. This earned her house searches and imprisonment, each of which was short-lived because of her health. The charges were that she had helped her son to escape and that she had visited anti-state organizations during her visits to Czechoslovakia. She should have also made derogatory remarks about the war and Hitler. This was considered preparation for high treason, but none of the proceedings against her resulted in any of the usual long prison sentences. During these years, her sister Emma stood by her side.

After an illegal stay in Hamburg from Easter to Whitsun 1937, Erwin Laue left for Copenhagen, where his uncle Otto had already gone in 1936. From there he joined the International Brigades in Spain and died there in September 1938. His uncle Moritz Laue had taken the same path.

Mother Minna Laue moved to Steinbeker Straße 37, where relatives in need again gathered.

Oswald Laue was regularly released from prison in 1937. In 1939 he received permanent employment again in his profession as an iron weaver as a column leader in the Franz Helmke company. His sister Emma entered into a second marriage at the end of January 1943. She married comrade Richard Sieverts, who brought a son into the marriage, and moved to Bergedorf. Richard Sieverts was drafted into the "Bewährungsbataillon” and died of his wounds on September 30, 1944, near Lyon, France.

Paul Laue, who had served in the Navy during World War I, joined the German Navy as a mate in 1941 and remained until the end of the war. After his discharge in July 1945, he returned to Hamburg.

In the firestorm of "Operation Gomorrha," the members of the Laue family still remaining in Hamm were bombed out. Mother Minna Laue was evacuated to Westprignitz, where, according to her son Paul, she was still alive in 1953. After that her trace is lost.

After the German troops invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940, Otto Laue was arrested by the Danish police at the instigation of the Gestapo in June and extradited to Germany. Because of his participation in the German Communist Party group in Denmark, he was sentenced to one and a half years in prison. After serving his sentence, he was first sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then on to Lublin, Auschwitz and Mauthausen concentration camps, where he was released on May 16, 1945.

Hermann Laue was charged in 1941 with violating the Treachery Act (Heimtücke) and sentenced to three years' imprisonment in September 1942. The family asked for a reprieve for him, an old man who had taken part in the First World War, was almost deaf and mentally frail. The request was successful, but in the turmoil of the following years he was finally transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp, where he died. He was declared dead on December 31, 1945.

After the bombing, Oswald Laue lost his apartment, but not his job. During break conversations with colleagues, he let slip critical remarks about Hitler, the course of the war, and the strength of the armies - news from foreign broadcasters that came from his comrade Walter Medau (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). Apparently he was denounced and arrested at Whitsun 1944 for undermining military morale and sentenced to death by the People's Court on December 7, 1944.

He applied for clemency, but this was rejected on January 14, 1945. He was still able to write a farewell letter to his wife and daughter, then he was beheaded the next day, January 15, 1945, in the new Brandenburg-Görden penitentiary. He was 46 years old.

The urn with his ashes was transferred to Hamburg in 1946 and buried in the Resistance fighters' grove of honor (Ehrenhain) at Ohlsdorf Cemetery on September 8.

While the female members of the Laue family lived to see the end of World War II, five of the seven male members had become victims of the Nazi regime. Except for Oswald Laue, no Stolpersteine commemorate them so far.

Otto Laue returned to Denmark with his wife Johanne, née Kaiser, where he died on September 17, 1965, at the age of 77.
Paul moved to the German Democratic Republic and entered into a second marriage there in February 1956.

It was not until 2002 that the court decision was overturned, thus restoring Oswald Laue's honor.

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: February 2023
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Hamburger Adressbücher; StaHH 213-11, 29246, 65988; 232-5 Vormundschaft, 948; 242-1 II Haftkartei, 741-4, A 476; 351-11, Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 10938, 10971, 14645, 18599, 18948, 21166, 21167, 25301, 42399, 48907; Staatsarchiv Bremen, (4,60/5 Br.-Gröpelingen Reg.-Nr. 95/1914); Stadtarchiv Bochum, Sterberegister Bochum-Mitte, 373/1901, 393/1901, Geburtsregister 1068/1901; Hochmuth, Ursel: Ehrenhaingedenkbuch;
https://geschichtsbuch.hamburg.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/255/2018/05/AB-SEK-II-Hamburger-Aufstand.pdf; https://www.gelsenkanal.de/Geschichte-1023394361.html;
Standesamt Goldene Aue, telefonische Mitteilungen am 9.8.2012; Stadtarchiv Perleberg, digitale Mitteilungen am 13.10.2021.