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Hans Wiese * 1908

Dithmarscher Straße 31 (Hamburg-Nord, Dulsberg)

HIER WOHNTE
HANS WIESE
JG. 1908
VERHAFTET 1937
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
TOT 3.5.1945
NEUENGAMME

Friedrich Wilhelm Gustav Hans Wiese, born on 18 Apr. 1908 in Hamburg, arrested several times in the 1930s, detained in 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, in 1941 in the Neuengamme concentration camp, died probably on 3 May 1945 in the sinking of the "Cap Arcona.”

Dithmarscher Strasse 31

Hans Wiese was born in Hamburg in 1908, the son of the printer Gustav Wiese and Dora, née Germen. He had a younger sister and a younger brother. The father was considered missing during World War I since 1916. Hans Wiese attended the seminary school on Wallstrasse in Hohenfelde until 1923, after which he completed a four-and-a-half-year apprenticeship as a toolmaker, but found a position as a journeyman only for a short time. From 1928 onward, his occupational life was marked by unemployment and minor jobs as a courier and usher until 1935, when he was employed in shipbuilding at Deutsche Werke.

At the end of the Weimar Republic, Hans Wiese, who described himself as a homosexual, already came into conflict with the law because of his disposition. In 1932, he was punished for the first time for "causing a public nuisance.” Sec. 183 [of the Reich Criminal Code] was mainly applied prior to the tightening of Sec. 175 by the Nazis in 1935, when caressing or sexual acts were observed in public. To investigate such "crimes,” police patrols were already lying in wait in the dark at relevant meeting points even in the Weimar Republic.

In Sept. 1934, Hans Wiese was sentenced to one month in prison by the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht). He later stated that he had been arrested again in Sept. 1936, and the record shows an entry dated 11 Dec. 1936 regarding his admission on charges of "unnatural sexual offenses” ("widernatürliche Unzucht”) to the Hamburg-Stadt pretrial detention facility. In Jan. 1937, the court of lay assessors (Schöffengericht) at the Hamburg District Court sentenced him to one year in prison under Sec. 175, which he served in the Fuhlsbüttel men’s prison until Dec. 1937.

The police interrogation of a sex partner in Apr. 1939 once again brought the criminal investigation department on the trail of Hans Wiese, who had made friends with a 22-year-old hairdresser’s assistant in the State Opera in May 1938. The result was a renewed arrest by the 24th Office of the Criminal Investigation Department (24. Kriminalkommissariat) responsible for homosexual offenses and, initially, imprisonment in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp from 13 to 22 May 1939. When he was transferred to regular pretrial detention, a note indicating "danger of suicide” was added to the file card. During the extensive interrogations conducted during this time, Wiese eventually confessed to nine contacts with men, including Karl Lüdemann of the same age, with whom he had a "proper relationship” and met "every eight to ten days,” as was emphasized in the verdict of the associate judge at the District Court (Amtsgerichtsrat), Julius Fedder, in June 1939.

"He kept the name of the L. secret until the end because he was his best friend.” Significant for his further fate were the pejorative attributions in the judgment according to which he "never seriously sought work, but lived for the moment.” For these reasons, he was then sentenced to two years in prison for "continuing violation of Sec. 175,” which he served in the Wolfenbüttel penitentiary from July 1939 to 12 May 1941. His clemency plea in Oct. 1940 for premature release and deployment on the war front was not approved, because "the purpose of punishment ...” would "not be fully achieved anyway.” Consequently, it is not surprising that he was taken into "police preventive detention” ("polizeiliche Vorbeugehaft”) for the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department after being released from regular prison on 12 May 1941. On 12 July 1941, his committal to the Neuengamme concentration camp as a temporary preventive detainee, "B.V. Homo” (for "homosexueller Berufsverbrecher,” i.e., "homosexual professional criminal”), with prisoner number 5,812, is on record. From Feb. 1942 to Jan. 1944, he was mentioned several times in the laboratory examination books archived at the Neuengamme Memorial. During the period from the summer to the autumn of 1944, Hans Wiese was listed as a "mechanic” on the file cards, prepared as punch cards, of the SS Economic Main Office.

Classifications made after the war, including on the "Death List of Hamburg Resistance Fighters and Persecutees 1933–1945” ("Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter 1933–1945”), place him on the "Cap Arcona,” with the reason for his persecution indicated as "preparation to high treason” ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat”) and the date of his death as 3 May 1945. Probably, only the latter is to be assumed as likely, since the Neuengamme survivor Heinz Dörmer also testified that Hans Wiese did not die before the evacuation in Apr. 1945.


Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2019
© Bernhard Rosenkranz(†)/Ulf Bollmann

Quellen: StaH, 213-8 (Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Verwaltung), Abl. 2, 451 a E 1, 1 d; StaH 242-1II (Gefängnisverwaltung II), Ablieferungen 13 und 16; StaH 213-11 (Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht –Strafsachen), 5116/39; Bundesarchiv, NS 3/1755; Bernhard Rosenkranz/Ulf Bollmann/Gottlieb Lorenz, Homosexuellen-Verfolgung in Hamburg 1919–1969, Hamburg 2009, S. 267; KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, Auskunft Dr. Reimer Möller, Dezember 2008.