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Bruno Nehmert * 1897

Oesterleystraße 27 (vor Schule) (Altona, Blankenese)

HIER LEHRTE
DR. BRUNO NEHMERT
JG. 1897
VERHAFTET 1944
’STAATSFEINDLICHE BETÄTIGUNG’
ZUCHTHAUS FUHLSBÜTTEL
1945 KZ NEUENGAMME
TODESMARSCH BERGEN-BELSEN
TOT 14.4.1945

Dr. Bruno Nehmert, born 09/06/1897, arrested 11/08/1944, imprisoned a t the Neuengamme concentration until 04/14/1945, perished in the confusion following the evacuation of the Neuengamme camp, probably on the death march to Bergen-Belsen.

Bruno Adolf Nehmert was born in Flensburg on September 6th, 1897 as the son of the fine carpenter Hermann Nehmert. He attended school in Flensburg and in 1916 graduated from high school. The same year, he was drafted into the army and returned home from the war having lost his left lower leg; continuous pains and inflammations of the stump tormented him for the rest of his life.

In October, 1917, Bruno Nehmert began studying to become a high school teacher in Kiel with the subjects German, French and English, but soon switched to the University of Marburg in Central Hesse, where he finished the first stage of his training with distinction. For his practical year, Bruno Nehmert returned to the high school in Flensburg. Besides his teaching activity "in the Higher School Service of Prussia”, he absolved postgraduate studies, which he completed in Mai, 1923 as a doctor of philosophy. In April, 1926, he got his first permanent job as Studienrat, i.e. a teacher in the position of a state official in Neumünster. In 1927, Nehmert switched to Altona, where he first taught at the upper high school in Allee. In 1932, he was transferred to the Blankenese high school for boys in Oesterleystrasse. In Hamburg, he met his future wife Ilse, daughter of Reinhold Zindler, a school principal. Ilse Zindler, born 1900, worked as a confidential clerk. The couple married on August 11th, 1932. After the birth of their first child, Norman, the Nehmerts moved to Altona. In 1934/35, they lived at Jürgensallee 25 in Nienstedten, in 1936/37 in Von-Werder-Strasse 23 in Blankenese, 1938/39 at Kastanienweg 32 in Blankenese, and from 1940 at Blankeneser Landstrasse 58. Their daughter Elke was born on March 19th, 1935.

In 1942, Bruno Nehmert applied for a job with the German school service abroad. In his application, he stated that he "wanted to work in the interest of the cultural policies of the Third Reich.” His marriage failed, and in the fall of 1942, the Nehmerts were divorced. Getting started again was tough for Bruno Nehmert. His application for a position at the Paris branch of the Deutsche Akademie in Munich was rejected, as was his appeal to the Reich ministry of education of December 21st, 1942. After Senior School Inspector Behne had consulted the court records of the divorce, the inspector in his appraisal of February 25th, 1943 came to the conclusion that "Dr. Nehmert seems to be no longer suitable for working as a teacher in the state school service.” The school administration assigned Bruno Nehmert to the Schleeschule in Altona, a high school for boys at Hinrich-Lohse-Strasse 151 (before the Nazi era and now again Königstrasse), where he taught until his arrest by the Gestapo in November of 1944.

The chronicle of the Blankenese high school for boys records that "Dr. Nehmert taught at various other schools after leaving us, but eventually we lost sight of him.” In July and August of 1943, allied air raids devastated the city of Hamburg. Bruno Nehmert, too, lost his home in the bombing. It became more and more apparent that Germany was going to lose the war. The authorities ruthlessly persecuted "any attempt to degrade the German people’s determination and enduring will to fight.” Anybody who expressed doubts about the final victory or the legitimacy of the war was to be arrested immediately. This course of action had already been defined in a memorandum from the Reich Ministry of Justice in 1940, which stated that the duty of the judiciary was "the elimination of heretically and criminally oriented elements who might attempt to stab the fighting front in the back.” Between 1939 an 1941, the Nazi judiciary reacted by creating a number of new criminal provisions pursuant to which individuals could be persecuted for listening to enemy radio stations, for expressing doubts or criticism about the course of the war or making contact with prisoners of war.

The number of people in jail increased drastically. Bruno Nehmert was one of them. He had listened to enemy broadcasts and made no secret of what he thought of the regime. What sort of person was Bruno Nehmert? He repeatedly said that the destructive experiences of World War I had injured him not only physically. "In Flanders, I had to bury bodies all the time. That destroyed me mentally.” People who knew him described Nehmert as "a philosophical type, keen on continuous scientific education, who tried to mentally handle the phenomena of the age; and he was receptive for the culture of the neighboring nations, whom he had repeatedly visited on his educational journeys.” This image persisted in his family. "Bruno Nehmert disapproved of the first and second world wars”, his daughter-in-law Ivanka Nehmert stated. "To his children, he always said, ‘this is madness. We‘re going to lose this war.’ All that I heard about my father-in-law was that he was a very cultured and curious man. He loved discussions and always said what he thought, even though he had been told ‘shut up and be careful, that’s dangerous.’”

Ivanka Nehmert also described her father-in-law as a man who enjoyed life. "He loved good wine and spices he ordered from Hungary.” In 1937, Bruno Nehmert had joined the Nazi party, as his son Norman stated in 1947 in the questionnaire for the application for a pass identifying him as a surviving dependent of a person persecuted by the Nazi regime for political, racial or religious reasons. Norman Nehmert answered the question whether his father had been active for the NSDAP, its formations or affiliated organizations, with "no.” It remains unclear what had motivated his father to join the party. The same year, Norman Nehmert made friends with the Hamburg attorney Max Finck, who had been imprisoned at the Neuengamme concentration camp. He met him at the Hamburger Weltwirtschaftsarchiv (World Economics Archive), a meeting-place popular with opponents of the Nazis.

Bruno Nehmert’s reasons for joining the NSDAP remain unclear. In the compensation proceedings after the war, he was recognized as a persecutee o the Nazi regime – it was ruled that his membership in the party was compensated by the persecution he suffered. What characterized Bruno Nehmert’s personality as a teacher? His personnel file contains a review by the principal of the Schleeschule of January 26th, 1943: "He not only has a command of his school subjects, he keeps working on them continuously and conscientiously prepares his lessons. His scope of interest reaches far beyond his school subjects [...] Thus, his classes capture the pupils [...] who not only learn their lessons, but also get orientation and prolific stimulations. This especially applies to the voluntary workshop about [the philosopher Friedrich] Nietzsche he is currently running for the eighth-graders. [...] Surely, he is not an easy teacher, but makes strict demands on his pupils.” Such an attitude may also have been inconvenient for the teachers’ body. Former colleagues also gave less favorable opinions about Bruno Nehmert, complaining about his "ironic manner, his inclination to mockery” and noted that "he had a lot of trouble with kids and parents.” He liked to associate with younger people, student teachers, whereas, by his manner, he kept elder colleagues at a distance.

In the night of November 8th to 9th, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Bruno Nehmert at his home in Theaterstrasse 1, where he lived as the subtenant of Hertha Rink, a good friend, and took him to the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. The reasons given in a letter to the school administration of November 16th were: "Subversive activities and listening to enemy broadcasting stations.” In addition, "perverted pornography” had been found at his home. "For the time being, his release is not to be expected.” He was not to be brought to court, but taken to a camp. In addition, School Inspector Behne was asked to "submit a detailed assessment of the person named.”

Regarding the arrest of the institution’s former teacher, the chronicle of Blankenese high school remarks: "Dr. Nehmert was always a great mocker who, you might say, ironized almost everything and everybody. He was always careless about what he said and totally unrestrained. And so, one day what we all had been afraid of happened. In November, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo.” Perhaps one may assume that Nehmert disquieted and taught those the meaning of fear who were primarily concerned about avoiding trouble and sought to smoothly and understandingly cooperate with the people in the key positions of school life and the general public in line with the Nazis. Documents from the years 1942 to 1945 are missing from the school archive. They have disappeared, just as the records of the teachers’ meetings from those years, so that much remains in the dark. A teacher from the school later reported that anyone who even mentioned the case of Bruno Nehmert was sanctioned: "the subject was completely hushed up. The chronicle reports: "Nehmert’s disappearance was in no way discussed.” The teachers’ body stayed conformist after his arrest. The school chronicle records: "There was no trouble whatsoever in the teachers’ body. It continued to function smoothly and understandingly. And there were no disputes with the heads of the local chapter of the [Nazi] party.[…] Thus, the school and its regular operation were spared from jolting, mainly thanks to the cautious reserve of the members of the teachers’ body and the subtle, diplomatic manner of our principal.”

In the Nazi era, the school curriculum not only in Altona was characterized by Nazi and anti-Semitic ideology; flag musters and the Hitler salute were daily routines, Jewish pupils were ostracized and attacked, later expelled. Criticism was suppressed. In custody, Bruno Nehmert received a copy of the application Regierungsrat (administrative officer) Artur Carlsson had promptly filed with the school administration, which in turn had relayed it to the Reichsstatthalter (governor): the initiation of disciplinary proceedings, preliminary suspension from office, and appointment of Regierungsrat Carlsson as head of the investigation, and the withholding of half of his salary. At the end of March, 1945, School Senator Karl Witt received detailed information about the measures against Bruno Nehmert. A letter from Gauinspektor (area inspector) Helmuth Becker literally quoted a statement Nehmert allegedly made: "Just wait a while. The verdict on the people who rule us has already been returned. The death sentence will soon be pronounced. It won’t be long that our men will be sitting in the offices.”

These fatal words triggered the order from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt to arrest Bruno Nehmert and admit him to a concentration camp. They document the attitude of a man who "had always been an outsider and just couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He always had to give his opinion. He was clearly 100 percent against the regime.” This is how Nehmert’s daughter Elke described her father. She was nine years old when she lost him, and how she remembers him mainly from the conversations in the family. But who had reported Bruno Nehmert to the Nazi prosecutors? ” Already at the end of May, 1945, the Hamburg Free Teachers’ Union had requested the Hamburg school administration to investigate the fate of the teacher Bruno Nehmert and to "give the name of the teacher who filed the complaint against Dr. Bruno Nehmert”, and mentioning the dispute Nehmert had had with Senior School Inspector Behne the day before his arrest. It is not known if such an investigation was actually made. Thus, it remains unclear if Nehmert had been denounced by a colleague from the teachers’ body or if it had been a pupil from his class who reported him. According to Elke Nehmert, her father’s former wife had later suspected this.

Ilse Nehmert after the war had initially believed that Bruno Nehmert had spoken his ominous words at the office of his doctor, who was subsequently pressured by another patient to give Nehmert’s name, whereupon that person had denounced Nehmert to the Gestapo. After the war, Ilse Nehmert had asked the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime for support. Her prime interest was to clarify the fate of Dr. Bruno Nehmert. On May 15th, 1946, she wrote to the Search and Report Service of the Committee of Former Political Prisoners, asking to check whether her former husband might "no longer be alive in the committee’s opinion.” He had been transported from Fuhlsbüttel to Neuengamme on March 25th, 1945, and from there on to Bergen-Belsen. She named a witness, Rudi Mauermann, who had been together with her husband at Neuengamme, according to whom Bruno Nehmert had not arrived at Belsen, but perished on the transport. She had not heard from him for more than a year.

In the scope of the efforts by the Search and Report Service, and also by the family and friends, very diverse leads were followed. Max Finck did everything he could to clarify the fate of his friend and to represent the family’s cause in court. Already on October 10th, 1945, Finck gave the VVN transcripts of his interviews with men who had testified they had known Bruno Nehmert and given an account of his death. But in this decisive point, the witnesses’ testimony differed substantially. Heinrich Hoffmann, arrested for subversive activities and listening to enemy radio stations, reported Nehmert had not arrived at Bergen-Belsen, having been "rejected as unable to march and shot on May 2nd or 3rd in Sandbostel.” Paul Nowak, who had been a writer and editor of the [Social Democratic daily newspaper] "Forwards” before his arrest in 1933 and continuously imprisoned in concentration camps until the end of the war, declared Nehmert had been taken from Sandbostel to Stade and from there to Flensburg aboard a steamer, where he arrived on April 29th, 1945. From Flensburg, the ill and those unable to march, Bruno Nehmert among them, had been taken over by the Red Cross and transported northwards. Paul Mora claimed to have "definite news about him”, giving his opinion that Nehmert was still alive; but was being detained by the British and not allowed to communicate. Peter Diekmann, a former concentration camp prisoner who later worked as a nurse at [liberated] Neuengamme, reported that Bruno Nehmert had only arrived at Neuengamme on March 25th or 26th, and then sent to Bergen-Belsen on April 8th, 1945 on a transport of 2.018 prisoners. At Belsen, however, they had refused to accept those prisoners because the British army was already very near. On an odyssey via Neuengamme, Bremervörde, Sandbostel, Stade and again Bremervörde the prisoners, who had been forced to go most of these distances on foot, the prisoners on April 21st had finally boarded a boat that was supposed to bring them Flensburg via the Kiel Canal. Bruno Nehmert was completely devitalized and dependent on support by his comrades. In Flensburg, the captain had refused to continue the trip, so that the prisoners, after a further selection, had been taken to Lübeck on board another boat and from there to Sweden; since then, there had been no further contact with that transport.

Already ten days after receiving Ilse Nehmert’s letter, the VVN replied: the search conducted from June, 1945 on had revealed that Brno Nehmert had been at the Neuengamme hospital in April, 1945. On April 14th, a transport of "over 2,000 sick and invalid prisoners” had been put together, among them Bruno Nehmert. Same day, the transport was sent off to Bergen-Belsen, but never made it to there. After ten days of erring around under the worst possible circumstances, the prisoners reached Sandbostel, a reception camp for POWs and concentration camp inmates. The survivors were decimated by typhoid fever and other diseases.

The report ends with the statement: "As the dead were not registered and the search for Bruno Nehmert produced no result, it must be assumed that Dr. Nehmert is among the victims of that transport.” The exact circumstances of his death remain obscure. The declaration of death issued by the Hamburg District Court on October 29th, 1946, declaring him dead "effective April 14th, 1945”, made a connection between his arrest and his alleged involvement in the futile attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20th, 1944. In fact, Bruno Nehmert’s closest friend, the Hamburg attorney Max Finck, had been arrested, accused of assistance to high treason and sentenced. A Stumbling Stone for Bruno Nehmert lies before the Blankenese High School; whose pupils had participated in a historical research project concerning the former teacher. A further Stumbling Stone for Nehmert lies at Rothenbaumchaussee 157, where he lived after his divorce.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: April 2018
© Bärbel Rose

Quellen: StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 19467 (Nehmert, Bruno); http://bbf.dipf.de/kataloge/archivdatenbank, BBF/DIPF/Archiv, Gutachterstelle des BIL – Personalkartei der Lehrer höherer Schulen Preußens, Personalbogen Bruno Nehmert, Zugriff 25.3.2014; KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, Auskunft zu Bruno Nehmert, 14.4.2014; VVN-BdA Hamburg, Archiv, Aktenbestand des Komitees ehemaliger politischer Gefangener, Komitee-Akte Bruno Nehmert; Hoch, Bruno Nehmert, S. 267–271; Dr. Bruno Nehmert – Ein Leben, ein Skandal. Beitrag von SchülerInnen des Gymnasiums Blankenese zum Geschichtswettbewerb des Bundespräsidenten 2009/10, in: Körberstiftung (Hrsg.), Skandale in der Geschichte, darin: Auszug aus der Schulchronik des Gymnasiums Blankenese von 1982; Korrespondenz mit Ivanka Nehmert, Schwiegertochter, April 2014; Gespräch mit Elke Nehmert, Tochter, April 2014.