Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Wilhelm Tiedemann * 1910

Normannenweg 23 (Hamburg-Mitte, Borgfelde)

HIER WOHNTE
WILHELM TIEDEMANN
JG. 1910
VERHAFTET
’FAHNENFLUCHT’
ERSCHOSSEN 22.9.1944
KASERNE
RAHLSTEDT-HÖLTIGBAUM

Wilhelm Tiedemann, born 8 Mar. 1910 in Geesthacht, shot 22 Sept. 1944 in Hamburg-Höltigbaum

Normannenweg/Ecke Wikingerweg (Normannenweg 23)

"Sudden cardiac arrest" is Wilhelm Tiedemann’s cause of death according to the death registry. What first sounds innocuous soon becomes nightmarish when read in the context "by firing squad”. He died a thirty-four-year-old man on 22 Sept. 1944 at the shooting grounds "Am Höltigbaum" in Hamburg-Rahlstedt. Wilhelm Tiedemann served as a corporal in the Grenadier Replacement and Training Bataillon 76. In Sept. 1944 he belonged to the 1st Recovery Company and was a victim of the military justice system.

Wilhelm Tiedemann was born on 8 Mar. 1910 in Geesthacht, the son of the captain Friedrich Tiedemann and his wife Auguste, née Franck, the fourth of six children. His mother came from Vellahn in Mecklenburg, his father from Lauenburg where the family initially lived and the three older children were born. In 1908 Friedrich Tiedemann and his family moved from Lauenburg in Prussia to Geesthacht, part of Hamburg, where they lived at Hafenstraße 14. It was there that Wilhelm’s brother H. was born in 1914 and his sister E. in 1917.

The three children were baptized in Geesthacht at the Evangelical-Lutheran St. Salvatoris Church. Wilhelm Tiedemann’s godfather came from Sonderburg in Denmark. In 1919 Friedrich Tiedemann, still working as a ship’s captain, relocated with his family to Hamburg and moved to Danielstraße 56 in St. Georg at Klostertor where he lived until he was bombed out in July 1943, first as a skipper, then as a pensioner.

The Tiedemann Family was a mariner family. Their grandfather and great grandfather, both natives of Lauenburg, were also sailors. Friedrich Tiedemann was co-founder and secretary of the "Mariners’ Society of Geesthacht and Its Surroundings – registered association”, founded in Geesthacht in 1910. His elder son set out to sea as a ship’s mate, Wilhelm and his younger brother became bargemen. In 1934 they took an exam with five other young men at Hamburg Nautical College to "steer a passenger steamboat on the Elbe”, yet like three others they did not pass.

That same year, Wilhelm Tiedemann got married. The couple had one daughter. We were unable to discover why the marriage ended or what happened to his daughter. In 1938 Wilhelm Tiedemann married his second wife Erika Kommnick, born in Hamburg on 7 Dec. 1916. Her parents came from East Prussia. Her father served in World War I as a seaman for the imperial navy on the SMS Deutschland in Kiel and worked as a guard in Pillau in 1938.

The couple had one son and lived at Normannenweg 23 in Borgfelde. The house was destroyed during Operation Gomorrha in July/Aug. 1943, like Friedrich Tiedemann’s apartment. His wife and son survived, and they, along with her parents-in-law took shelter at her parents’ home in Pillau.

At the outbreak of war, Wilhelm Tiedemann was 29 years old. It is not known when he was drafted. We were unable to discover the reason for his prosecution before the court of Hamburg’s Wehrmacht Military Command. He was sentenced to death on 29 June 1944. The verdict was confirmed on 4 Sept. 1944 and carried out on 22 Sept. 1944. We were unable to find any reason to explain the relatively long period, compared to other cases, from conviction to confirmation and execution.

Wilhelm Tiedemann’s body was buried at the edge of Ohlsdorf Cemetery, like the mortal remains of other soldiers executed on the shooting grounds Am Höltigbaum in Rahlstedt. His death was reported to the Rahlstedt Registry Office three months after the end of the war by Military District Command X, Military District Information Office (Wehrkreiskommando X, Wehrkreisauskunftsstelle) in Hamburg. On 6 Aug. 1945 his widow received certification of her husband’s execution at her address in Gettorf, District of Eckernförde.

She died on 4 Dec. 1974 in Kiel. Nothing is known about the fate of her son. Wilhelm Tiedemann’s parents survived their son: Friedrich Tiedemann died on 24 Dec. 1946 in Boizenburg, Auguste Tiedemann on 16 Nov. 1953 in Hamburg.
Wilhelm Tiedemann was re-buried in the field for military personnel Z41, row 9, no. 31 at Ohlsdorfer Cemetery on 21 July 1960.


Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2019
© Signe Schuster

Quellen: Archiv der ev.-luth. Kirchengemeinde Geesthacht, Kirchenarchiv St. Salvatoris in Geesthacht, Geburts- und Taufregister A 3, Best.-Nr. 382; BA Militärarchiv, PERS. 15/7363; Stadtarchiv Lauenburg, Personenstandsakten, Heiraten 6/1896; StaH, 332-5 Standesämter, 7846+283/1890; 3276+75/1915; 4414+217/1945; 1327+1491/1953; 332-8 Meldewesen, 334, K 4937; 362-5/1 Seefahrtsschule Hamburg, 53 m; Deutsche Dienststelle, Schreiben vom 21.1. und 5.3.2010; Einwohnermeldeamt Geesthacht; AB 1919–1944; Friedhof Hamburg-Ohlsdorf, div. mündliche und elektronische Auskünfte; Standesamt Boizenburg, Sterbefälle 320/1946; Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., Schreiben vom 25.5.2010; Garbe, Höltigbaum, in: Arbeitskreis zur Erforschung der nationalsozialisten Zeit in Schleswig-Holstein, Bd. 12, S. 3–31.