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Familie Lieber: Hans, Sophie, Ingeburg und der ältere Bruder (v.l.n.r.)
© Privatbesitz

Hans Lieber * 1890

Eilbektal Ecke Friedrichsberger Straße (Wandsbek, Eilbek)

HIER WOHNTE
HANS LIEBER
JG. 1890
VERHAFTET 1943
’WEHRKRAFTZERSETZUNG’
1944 BERLIN-PLÖTZENSEE
TOT 20.2.1945
ZUCHTHAUS CELLE

Hans Lieber, born 04/29/1890, died 02/20/1945 at Celle prison

Von-Essen-Strasse 82 (former elementary school)

The son of an employee came from petty bourgeois circumstances. After finishing elementary school, he entered the teachers’ seminar In 1911, Hans Lieber became an assistant teacher, four years later he got a permanent position at the elementary school in Von-Essen-Strasse.

In the same year that he was appointed as teacher, Hans Lieber became a soldier in World War I. He was wounded and discharged from the army as disabled. Hans Lieber returned to his job at the elementary school in Barmbek, where he taught English, biology and chemistry. Besides these subjects, he tried to instill his enthusiasm for sports, especially hiking, in his pupils.

During the Weimar Republic, Hans Lieber was a member of the teachers’ union "Gesellschaft der Freunde”, whose members were mainly Social Democrats. Nonetheless, many colleagues joined the Nazi NS-Lehrerbund in 1933, and so did Hans Lieber.

World War II also affected Hans Lieber’s work. In 1941, he and his class were evacuated to safe Upper Bavaria, where he continued to teach his pupils. In the meantime, the school building was used by militarily relevant institutions. During the air raids in the summer of 1943, Barmbek suffered heavy destruction. The school building in Von-Essen-Strasse as well as Lieber’s Apartment at Eilbektal 24 burned down.

After his return from Bavaria, Hans Lieber was deployed as counseling teacher for juvenile air force helpers in Harburg County south of the Elbe River. His Pupils operated anti-aircraft guns, a fact that thrust Lieber into a deep inner conflict and raised doubts about the sense of the war. And those doubts in the end led to the statement that ultimately cost him his life.

In the winter of 1943/44, Hans Lieber expressed his doubts regarding the National Socialists’ final victory in the war to his pupils; this, in turn, created a moral conflict for his pupils. One of the boys reported the statement to a lieutenant of the anti-aircraft battery; Hans Lieber was denounced, and the incident became an issue for the Gestapo in Harburg.

Hans Lieber was now considered a defeatist and "underminer of military morale” and was detained at the Fuhlsbüttel police prison before he was taken to Berlin-Plötzensee for trial. The "People’s Court” sentenced him to five years in prison, that he was to serve in Celle.

In August, 1944, Hans Lieber in his resume to the prison authorities asserted that he had never been politically active. "I have never been politically engaged before 1933, I belonged to no party and to no lodge. In 1933, I joined the NS-Lehrerbund and the NS-Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (a sports organization), I have been a volunteer of the NS Community ‘Kraft durch Freude’ since 1936, and in May, 1937, I joined the NSDAP.”

On February 20th, 1945, five days after his arrival at the Celle Prison, Hans Lieber died of an insufficiently treated case of exhaustion. He was only 54 years old, weighed only 58 kilos and was classified as "unfit for the moors”, but "fit for a commando” After his death, his clothes were burned. Hans Lieber’s wife and daughter received a short notice that he had died. In 1946, the urn with Hans Lieber’s ashes was buried at Hamburg’s central cemetery in Ohlsdorf. At the funeral, the principal of the elementary school at Von-Essen-Strasse made a short speech for his former colleague.


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

Stand: March 2017
© Carmen Smiatacz

siehe auch: Adresse Eilbektal/Ecke Friedrichsberger Straße

Quellen: Hamburger Lehrerzeitung 11/83; Hochmuth/de Lorent: Hamburg: Schule unterm Hakenkreuz, S. 256ff.

Hans Lieber, born on 29.4.1890 in Hamburg, imprisoned from 16.12.1943 in Hamburg remand prison, from 7.4.1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee penitentiary, from 25.8.1944 in Celle penitentiary, died there on 20.2.1945.

Eilbektal/corner of Friedrichsberger Straße (Eilbektal 34)

Hans Lieber was the youngest of the eight children - six sons and two daughters - of the merchant Jacob Ignaz Lieber and his wife Maria Pauline Dorothea, née Zimmermann. Jacob Lieber came from Mainz and was Catholic, Pauline Lieber came from Ludwigslust and belonged to the Lutheran Church. Religion played no role in the lives of the later family. The day after their marriage on September 3, 1874, their first son, Jacob, was born.

When Hans Lieber was born on April 29, 1890, the second oldest brother, Friedrich, was just finishing elementary school. His father Jacob, who had worked as a clerk for many years, had shortly before gotten a job as a bookkeeper, which he kept until the end of his professional life. Around 1880, he moved with his family of five from Catharinenstraße in Hamburg's old town to Desenißstrasse in Barmbek, where he remained for the rest of his life. Here, at Bachstraße 2, Hans was born and grew up on Hamburger Straße. From 1897 to 1905 he attended elementary school and then the Hamburg Lehrerseminar, the training school for elementary school teachers at that time. In 1911, he joined the boys' school at 82 Von-Essen-Straße as an assistant teacher. He was also an enthusiastic gymnast and hiker.

When Jacob Lieber received the Hamburg Bürgerbrief in 1912, all of his children were grown and four of them were married.

1915 turned out to be an eventful and fateful year for Hans Lieber. Apart from a permanent position as a teacher entitled to a pension at his previous school, his enlistment as a grenadier on February 2, 1915, with the Guard Grenadier Regiment 4 "Augusta" represented a break in his life up to that point. Already in November of that year, a shot through the left arm, which was treated in the auxiliary hospital of the Barmbek General Hospital, rendered him "unfit for war service." There he met his future wife. Decorated with the Iron Cross II Class, the Hanseatic Cross, the Front Fighter Badge and the Wounded Badge in Black, he returned to civilian life.

On November 3, 1917, he married Sophie Jahnke, born in Hamburg on January 29, 1889, who, like him, came from a family with many children. She had worked as a saleswoman in Berlin and had come to the Barmbek General Hospital as an auxiliary nurse. When Hans and Sophie married, only their mothers were still alive. Hans Lieber's father had died two months earlier, on September 1, 1917. The Lieber family was represented at the wedding by their brother-in-law, the typesetter Heinrich Behnke, married to Alice Lieber.

The "Wwe Jacob Lieber," as it was called in the address book, i.e. Pauline Lieber, initially remained living at Hamburger Straße 90 after her husband's death. Although difficult to deal with, her children then took her in turn until she was finally admitted to the State Care Home Oberaltenallee, where she died on April 23, 1932. On September 2, 1932, Paul Lieber, her second youngest son, who had remained single, took his own life.

Sophie Lieber, Hans Lieber's wife, gave birth to their first child on July 27, 1918. Hans Lieber moved with his wife and son to Oberaltenallee 53, where their daughter Ingeburg was born on January 19, 1925.

Hans Lieber returned to teaching after his war injury. His main subjects were English, chemistry and biology, but he also inspired his students with sports and hiking. His interest in hiking was matched by the country school movement - teaching for a few days or weeks in homes away from the city in nature. He trained to teach English and chemistry. Thus, when the school at 82 Von-Essen-Straße received a new class for higher level (Aufbauzug), in which students could earn the medium maturity (Mittlere Reife), he was promoted to middle school teacher and assigned to the "Oberbau." This activity helped him to fully develop his pedagogical skills.

Hans Lieber was a member of the "Gesellschaft der Freunde des vaterländischen Schul- und Erziehungswesens" (Society of Friends of the National School and Education System), the forerunner of the trade union for education and science, but he did not exercise any function. He did not belong to a party until he joined the NSDAP in 1937, and even then he did not assume any function. Soon after the transfer of power to the National Socialists, he had joined the Nazi Teachers' Association and the Nazi Reichsbund für Leibesübungen and had volunteered as a hiking guide in the Nazi organization "Kraft durch Freude" (Strength through Joy). There are no known indications of ideological clashes with the Nazi regime, but there were heated arguments with his son, who was an enthusiastic HJ leader and volunteered to become a naval aviator.

In 1937, the Lieber family moved into a nice 4½-room apartment at Eilbektal 43.

The air raids on German cities prompted the Reich Youth Leader to order the sending of school children to air-safe areas, where teachers were to teach and the Hitler Youth were to organize the non-teaching time. In Hamburg, this "extended Kinderlandverschickung" was regarded by the organizer Heinrich Sahrhage as an extended stay in a country school and was also carried out in this sense by Hans Lieber with his pupils in Upper Bavaria. Sahrhage had pushed Lieber's assignment as camp director through against the Schutzpolizei, which wanted to train and use him as an experienced chemistry teacher in the investigation of warfare agents.

Hans Lieber returned to Hamburg at the end of 1941. His daughter Ingeburg completed her compulsory year on a small farm in Mecklenburg after graduating from the Oberbau in Amselstraße and returned to attend first the Frauenfachschule, then the Höhere Handelsschule, which ended as a result of the heavy Allied air raids in July/August 1943. At that time, Hans Lieber's school at Von-Essen-Strasse 82 and the family's apartment were also destroyed. Hans Lieber's sister Alice Behnke helped the family to find accommodation in a summerhouse in Bramfeld. Daughter Ingeburg found employment as a beginning bookkeeper.

The school authorities appointed Hans Lieber as a liaison teacher for flak helpers, 16- and 17-year-old students who received instruction in addition to their service at the flak guns. Two of them reported Hans Lieber's statements, which were interpreted as critical of the regime and as doubts about the final victory, to the Gestapo. As a result, he was arrested on December 16, 1943, and sent to the Hamburg remand prison. With his arrest, his party membership expired, as did his salary payments, leaving his wife penniless.

Hans Lieber was transferred to the Berlin-Plötzensee remand prison and brought to Potsdam for trial before the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof). The trial, scheduled for May 22, 1944, was adjourned until July 26. It ended with a sentence of four years in prison for "subversion of military strength" and four years' loss of honor. Sophie and Ingeburg Lieber attended the trial. It is not known whether the assassination attempt on Hitler six days earlier played a role in the sentencing, but the family suspects that it played a role in the refusal to reopen the case.

Hans Lieber was transported to the Celle penitentiary to serve his sentence. The end of the sentence was set for December 15, 1947, taking into account the time spent in pre-trial detention.

Sophie Lieber applied for a visit in order to talk to her husband about Ingeburg's engagement to one of his former students, but the request was rejected with reference to the possibility of contact by letter. Hans Lieber's last postcard testifies to a strong bond with his relatives and friends.

With the consolation of the manageable duration of the penal period, Sophie and Ingeburg Lieber sent themselves into the situation. As early as February 20, 1945, they received news of the death of Hans Lieber, who, mentally and physically exhausted, had died of circulatory failure. His wife could still see his emaciated body in the coffin and had him cremated. The urn was buried in Hamburg.

In front of the school at Von-Essen-Straße 82, another Stolperstein commemorates the work of Hans Lieber.

Hans Lieber's brother Kurt, married to the Jewish woman Johanna, née Aron, had been drafted to the Wehrmacht in October 1944. Johanna Lieber received a draft notice on February 2, 1945 for "labor duty in Theresienstadt," the deportation order), she suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to the Jewish Hospital for treatment, where she lived to see the end of the war.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: January 2022
© Hildegard Thevs

siehe auch: Adresse Von-Essen-Straße 82 (Schule)

Quellen: VAN-Totenliste 1968, S. 53; KZ Gedenkstätte Neuengamme, Archiv, VVN, Archiv, Akte Hans Lieber; StaH 332-3 Zivilstandsaufsicht A 185 Nr. 6414; 332-5 Standesämter 6312-795/1890, 6538-324/1917, 6963-1609/1917, 7133-392/1932, 9857-540/1932; 362-3 Volksschulen, 8 (Käthnerkamp 8), 23 (Schleidenstraße 9/11), 42 (Von-Essen-Straße 82); 332-8, K 6511; 351-11 11807; Hoch, Gerhard, HLZ 11/83; ders.: Hans Lieber: Schaudern vor der Gewalt der Herrenmenschen, in: Hochmuth/de Lorent, Hg.: Hamburg: Schule unterm Hakenkreuz, S. 256ff; ders.: Handreichung der Hamburger Schulbehörde 1988; Gerhard Hoch, mündliche Mitteilungen; Smiatacz, Carmen, Hans Lieber in: Stolpersteine in Hamburg- Barmbek und Hamburg-Uhlenhorst; Persönliche Mitteilungen und Material von Ingeburg Hansen, geb. Lieber.