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Alfred Wehrmaker im Dienst des "B999" in Griechenland, Insel Limnos, Mai 1944
© Privatbesitz

Alfred Wehrmaker * 1905

Elsässer Straße 11 (Hamburg-Nord, Dulsberg)

HIER WOHNTE
ALFRED WEHRMAKER
JG. 1905
VERHAFTET
’VORBEREITUNG ZUM
HOCHVERRAT’
STRAFBATAILLON 999
TOT 15.1.1945

Alfred Gustav Walther Wehrmaker, b. 10.3.1905 in Hamburg, killed in "Penal Battalion 999" on 1.15.1945 in Vlasenica, Yugoslavia

Elsässer Straße 11

Alfred Wehrmaker was born in Hamburg, the son of Henriette Borscheit; his biological father is not known. According to the information on his death certificate from 1947, he was adopted by the married couple Joachim and Auguste Wehrmaker, née Höpfner. His adoptive father worked as a lamp lighter.

Alfred learned the cabinet maker’s trade, which, before his military service, he practiced at the Hermann Forth firm on Hassebrookstrasse in Eilbek. Since the end of the 1920s, he was married to Marie Kühn (b. 1906). with whom he had a son, named Alfred Heinrich (b. 1929).

Alfred Wehrmaker was politically engaged with the SPD and continued this engagement even after the Nazi takeover of power in an illegal district group in Eilbek. At this time he lived with his wife and child at Elsässer Strasse 11 in Dulsberg. According to the testimony of his son after the war, he was taken into "protective custody” probably by the Gestapo on 23 October 1935. On 16 January 1936, he was in detention; on 7 March 1936 he was convicted of "preparation for high treason” and sentenced to two years and nine months in the penitentiary, with three years loss of civil rights. He served most of his sentence up to his release on 30 July 1938 at Kola-Fu. Whether he was again active in the political resistance is not known.

He was not mobilized in the regular military service at the beginning of the war because, in the eyes of the Nazi regime, he was deemed "militarily unworthy” in light of his previous resistance activity. Only in February 1943 was he called up into the so-called "Penal Battalion 999,” in the service of which in January 1945, he was killed in Vlasenica, Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina).


Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2019
© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW, Abl. 2008/1; StaH 241-1 I Justizverwaltung I, 2911; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 13 und 16; Auskunft der Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte, Ham­burg; AB 1937–1943; VAN (Hrsg.), Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter 1933–1945, Hamburg 1968.