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Peter Jürs nach seiner Verhaftung 1940
© StaH

Peter Jürs * 1895

Martin-Luther-Straße 20 (vormals Nr. 12) (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
PETER JÜRS
JG. 1895
VERHAFTET 29.6.1940
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1941 ZUCHTHAUS
BREMEN-OSLEBSHAUSEN
ERTRUNKEN 3.5.1945
MS CAP ARCONA

Peter Julius Jürs, born on 26 Apr. 1895 in Hamburg, imprisoned on 10 June 1940, perished on 3 May 1945 during the sinking of the "Cap Arcona” in the Bay of Lübeck

Martin-Luther-Strasse, in the bend (Martin-Luther-Strasse 22)

"Your dear boy has shown a very special courage and decisiveness, may God protect and keep for you this splendid boy in his joyful enthusiasm.” In 1914, a captain wrote these words, rather strange from today’s perspective, to the father of the soldier Peter Jürs.

The 19-year-old Peter Jürs had volunteered for military service and had returned from the First World War in 1918 as a highly decorated NCO, but also seriously injured. Influenced by his frontal experiences and the death of three brothers (another died later in 1930 as a result of his war injury), Peter Jürs became a declared pacifist "because he knew the harshness of war,” as his wife Karla Jürs explained in her application for restitution. Her husband did not keep his opinion on the war under wraps, although it earned him some reprimands from his later superiors.

Peter Jürs was born as the youngest son of the innkeeper Bernhard Jürs (born on 24 July 1859, died on 27 Apr. 1942) and Rebecka Maria, née Koch (born on 11 Jan. 1864), at Alsterdamm 3 (today Ballindamm). His father subsequently ran a restaurant at Holstenplatz 12-13 from 1906 to 1919 and by that time lived with his family at Poolstrasse 18. Peter Jürs grew up with five brothers and four sisters. After his school years, he learned the trade of a typesetter, which he could no longer pursue because of the war injury to his left hand suffered on the Eastern Front. After the end of the war, he was employed in the security service of the police until 1919. In Feb. 1920, he found employment as an assistant clerk in the main war victims’ pension office (Hauptversorgungsamt) in Altona. After several years as a commercial employee and following a short period of unemployment, he was employed again on 1 June 1937 as a civilian employee at the military district office (Wehrbezirksamt), probably because of his war disability.

Peter Jürs was described as very sociable and popular. He liked to play skat and, as a member of FC St. Pauli, was an enthusiastic sports and soccer fan. On 26 Apr. 1930, he married Karla Stelling (born on 6 Mar. 1906), with whom he had three children: Hans-Peter (born on 16 Apr. 1931), Günter (born on 3 July 1933), and Karin (born on 19 Mar. 1936).

Peter Jürs was involved in the physical exams of conscripts at the military district office and later, as a deputy "motor vehicle technician,” was also responsible for the drafting of "unskilled” motorists. In this capacity, he is said to have given conscripts born between 1904 and 1905 advice on how to obtain exemption from military service. On 10 June 1940, Peter Jürs was arrested at his workplace on Bundesstrasse and accused of "deliberately falsifying soldiers’ military records, hiding them, and independently extending applications for exemption, and thus of making false entries on the file cards.”

After investigations by the Gestapo and one year in pretrial detention, the senior public prosecutor demanded the death penalty for Peter Jürs at the main trial on 7 Jan. 1941 before the Hanseatic Special Court (Hanseatisches Sondergericht) for continued "undermining of military strength” ("Wehrkraftzersetzung”). A plea for clemency by his family on 29 Jan. resulted in the conversion of the sentence into a 15-year prison term, which Peter Jürs served first in Bremen-Oslebshausen and, starting on 30 Apr. 1943, in the Neuengamme concentration camp.

When the Neuengamme concentration camp was evacuated on 19 Apr. 1945 because of the advancing Allied units, some of the prisoners came to the Bay of Lübeck on an evacuation transport. At the site, the "Cap Arcona,” a former passenger ship with engine damage, and the cargo ships "Thielbek” and "Athen” were at anchor. The latter was anchored in Neustadt harbor. The prisoners were taken aboard the ships and locked below deck.

On 3 May 1945, around 3 p.m., British fighter planes, which suspected troop transporters in the ships, fired at the prisoner ships. The "Thielbek” sank, the "Cap Arcona” tilted to the starboard side. Of the 4,300 to 6,000 prisoners (the figures vary) who were on the capsizing "Cap Arcona,” only 350 were able to save themselves. The rest burned on board, drowned in the cold Baltic water, or were shot while trying to swim ashore. Peter Jürs was not among the survivors.

After the arrest of her husband, Karla Jürs had tried to make a living for herself and her three children as an office clerk. The pension for war-damaged persons had been cancelled for her. In the summer of 1943, during the series of heavy air raid on Hamburg, she was bombed out at Martin-Luther-Strasse 22. She fled to Gotenhafen (today Gdynia in Poland), to her sister-in-law in Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland), and in the following year, to another sister of her husband in West Prussian Neustadt (today Wejherowo in Poland). There she was interned by Polish militias and then returned to Hamburg after a four-and-a-half-week journey on foot.

After the war, Karla Jürs filed an application for restitution. However, neither the testimony of a former neighbor nor that of a former fellow prisoner of her husband could convince the official in charge of the case that Peter Jürs had not acted out of criminal motives, since he had been accused of accepting donations from some "deferred” persons. The official refused to see a pacifist in Peter Jürs. Restitution was refused.

The Stolperstein that commemorates Peter Jürs was laid in the bend of Martin-Luther-Strasse.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafsachen 5126/41 Bd. 1 und Bd. 2; StaH 351-11 AfW 31032 (Jürs, Karla); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2675 u 421/1885; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2364 u 1110/1895; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13434 u 279/1930; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 7263 u 804/1942; Goguel: "Cap Arcona".