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Rudolf Harms
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Rudolf Harms * 1905

Gärtnerstraße 90 (Eimsbüttel, Hoheluft-West)

HIER WOHNTE
RUDOLF HARMS
JG. 1905
VERHAFTET 1933 UND 34
’HOCHVERRAT’
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ERMORDET 29.10.1934

Rudolf Harms, born 1 Dec. 1905 in Altona, imprisoned from 9 Aug.1933 to 9 Mar.1934, first in the Wittmoor concentration camp and then, after its closure, in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, arrested again on 14 Oct. 1934 and held in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, died on 29 Oct. 1934

Gärtnerstraße 90

"On 29 Oct. 1934 I was informed that my husband had died (allegedly hanged himself). This I believe least of all, because it would have been out of character for my husband, as he was much too young and in love with life and attached to his little Ingrid.” These words were written by the widow of Rudolf Harms, Helene Betkierowicz, in Nov. 1945 to the Committee of Former Political Prisoners (Komitee ehemaliger politischer Gefangener) / Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes, VVN). At that time, she had made an affidavit concerning the persecution of her husband by the National Socialist regime. "Little Ingrid” was the daughter of Helene and Rudolf Harms. Born in 1932, she was a two-year-old child when she lost her father. Helene Harms had remarried in 1944 and taken the name of her second husband, Betkie¬rowicz.

Rudolf Harms came from Altona, which at the time of his birth in 1905 still belonged to the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein. His mother, Frieda, was not married when he was born, and he had three siblings, including a sister, Erika. He trained as a carpenter and, on 26 July 1930, married Emilie Helene Hölzle, the daughter of the waiter Johann Karl Hölzle and his wife Emilie Katharine Elise, née Albrecht. Helene too was a native of Altona, where she had been born on 27 July 1907. The ceremony of marriage was evidently so thrilling for her that the marriage registrar noted in the central marriage register, "The bride, owing to her great excitement, could write no further.” He was referring to the final signing of the marriage certificate by the husband and wife and their witnesses: the document lacked the signature of Helene Harms.

On her wedding day, Helene Harms was in the late stages of pregnancy. Around one week later, on 2 Aug. 1930, in the home she shared with her husband at Wiesenstraße 49 in Eimsbüttel, she gave birth to her daughter Ingeborg Emma Marie. The little girl died only seven months later, however, on 12 Mar. 1931, in what was then the Association Hospital (Vereinshospital), am Schlump 85. Almost precisely one year later, on 11 Mar. 1932, Ingrid, the second daughter of Helene and Rudolf Harms, was born in the Eppendorf General Hospital (Allgemeines Krankenhaus Eppendorf). In those days, Rudolf Harms had already been politically active for quite some time. He was one of the leaders of Red Aid of Germany (Rote Hilfe Deutschlands), an aid organization for political prisoners that was affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In addition, he was a member of the KPD and, according to his political comrade Otto Meikert, was arrested several times by the National Socialists because of his political convictions, even before the banning of the KPD in 1933. Documents attest to a jail term in Lüneburg in 1926, as well as a 15-day confinement from 8 to 23 Feb. 1930 in Fuhlsbüttel, on both occasions on a charge of bodily harm. After the takeover of power by the National Socialists, he was placed in the Wittmoor concentration camp in Glashütte (today part of Norderstedt) on 9 Aug. 1933. One of the early concentration camps, it was in existence from Apr. to Oct.1933. His sentence of detention lasted until 9 Mar. 1934. After the Wittmoor concentration camp was closed, he, like the other prisoners, was transferred to Fuhlsbüttel. Seven months later, on 14 Oct. 1934, the Gestapo arrested him again, according to Helene Harms, at noon in the Harvestehude Park adjoining the Alster. Two weeks later, on 29 Oct., she received the telephone call about his alleged suicide. According to the police department’s report to the bureau of vital statistics, Rudolf Harms had been "found dead” early in the morning, at 8:10.

"At the funeral, I asked to see my husband one last time,” Helene Betkierowicz stated later. "Unfortunately my request was denied; all they said was, ‘Your husband will be cremated now.’ I was under the watch of the Gestapo and police, so that I could not act as I would have liked.” After the death of her husband, she too had to suffer from the brutality of the Gestapo. Gestapo men took her from her home to be interrogated, not without first having taken the place completely apart. They "broke the phonograph records in two on my head, because they were KPD records, of course,” Helene Betkierowicz wrote, "[and] my money that I had put back for the rent, because my husband drew benefits, was confiscated by them because they thought it was money collected from Red Aid, and they kept doing this for a whole year. Whenever I came with some request, no matter what it might be, it all was denied, even Winter Relief, just because my husband had died for political reasons.”

Helene Betkierowicz did not live to a ripe old age. She died on 17 Nov. 1946 in her home in Wilhelmsburg of acute cardiac arrest, due to a heart valve defect.

Her daughter Ingrid had gone to fetch a doctor, but when she returned, her mother was dead. Ingrid, at the age of 14, was thus an orphan and on her own. As she said, none of her relatives looked after her; there was only a legal guardian. At the end of 1947, the Silesian Steamship Company – Berlin Lloyd Corp. (Schlesische Dampfer-Compagnie – Berliner Lloyd AG), headquartered in Hamburg, offered the young girl training in business management. In addition, the firm sponsored her and provided her with financial support.

At the age of 18, in Nov. 1950, Ingrid Harms married a worker who was three years older, Florian Gerstmayer of Augsburg, in the Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg civil registry office. She was already pregnant, and their daughter, Sonja, was born on 30 Mar. 1951. Two years later, she gave birth to a son, but he died during or immediately after birth, of a heart defect. In a second marriage, she had three more children: Thomas (1955), Martina (1959), and Melanie (1972). Because of her difficult personal circumstances, Ingrid Eggert, as she was known after 1955, did not apply until 1964 for compensation for the harm she herself had suffered as a result of her father’s imprisonment. The application deadline, however, had expired in 1958. Her objection that she had known nothing about the opportunity to apply for compensation was dismissed, because she supposedly had not done "everything deemed reasonable” in order to "enlighten herself.”

The Stumbling Stone for Rudolf Harms can be found in front of the building at Gärtnerstraße 90; the complete address listed in the entry in the register of deaths was Gärtnerstraße 90, Bldg. 8. The houses at the rear of Gärtnerstraße 90, however, had the address Düppelstraße 8/12; a street of this name no longer exists in this location today.

Translator: Kathleen Luft

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Frauke Steinhäuser

Quellen: StaH 213-9 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht – Strafsachen, bisher unverzeichnetes Verfahrensregister OJs aus 1935, Verfahren OJs 108/35-39; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13294 u. 432/1930; ebd., 9867 u. 152/1934; ebd., 12184 u. 523/1946; ebd., 81 u. 133/1931; StaH 351-11 50018, Eggert, Ingrid, geb. Harms; Telefon- und E-Mail-Kontakt mit Sonja Pöhland, geb. Gerstmayer, sowie mit Marina Kolb, geb. Eggert, im Juli 2012; Diercks, Gedenkbuch "Kola-Fu"; Komitee ehemaliger politischer Gefangener/Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (VVN), Akte zu Ingrid Harms, Auszüge daraus per E-Mail am 23.5.2012 von Herbert Diercks, KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter; Drobisch/Wieland, NS-Konzentrationslager.