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Auguste und Johannes Horlebusch, 1928 bei ihrer Hochzeit
© Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme

Johannes Horlebusch * 1906

Vorsetzen 19 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
JOHANNES HORLEBUSCH
JG. 1906
IM WIDERSTAND
VERHAFTET 1933
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
8.2.1939

Johannes Friedrich Horlebusch, born on 27 Sept. 1906 in Hamburg, imprisoned 1933, died on 8 Feb. 1939 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp

Vorsetzen, in front of the Gruner & Jahr publishing house (Wetkenstrasse 3)

When Johannes Horlebusch was born, his parents, the driller Friedrich Wilhelm Horlebusch (born on 6 Dec. 1869, died on 18 June 1941) and Henriette Ernestine Mathilde, née Ahrlung (born on 22 Feb. 1875, died on 1 Jan. 1928), lived in the former "Gängeviertel” of Hamburg-Neustadt, at Grosser Trampgang 21. His family, which also included the older brother Otto (born on 22 Oct. 1896) and the two sisters Erna Tiedemann (born on 18 Oct. 1894) and Frieda Knabe (born on 12 Nov. 1898), both later married, probably belonged to a freethinkers’ society, since Johannes Horlebusch received non-denominational instruction up to his youth ceremony (Jugendweihe). His parents did not let him be baptized or confirmed. After finishing the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) at Holstenwall 15, he began an apprenticeship as a shipbuilder at the Vereinigte Elbe- und Norderwerft, a shipyard on Steinwärder (now Steinwerder), which he quit after one and a half years to support his parents financially. Johannes Horlebusch changed as a technician to the Stacher & Olms barometer factory, located at Margarethenstrasse 6 in Hamburg-Wandsbek, where he remained employed until his later arrest.

In 1925, Johannes Horlebusch met 17-year-old Emilie Auguste Hirsch, born on 11 Apr. 1907. Her father was a pianist and came from a Jewish family. Her mother was a dressmaker. The Hirsch family lived in Michaelisstrasse 2. After their wedding on 7 Apr. 1928, Auguste Horlebusch gave up her training as a dancer at the Volksoper. The children Hans and Margot were born on 5 June 1929 and 23 Sept. 1931.

Johannes Horlebusch had been a trade union member since 1923. In 1927, through the facilitation of his brother Otto, he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and became Political Director of the 8th unit of the Red Front Fighters (Roter Frontkämpferbund – RFB), the paramilitary organization of the KPD.

On 31 Jan. 1933, Johannes Horlebusch was caught in a police check at half past six in the morning near the Steinbrücke (rock bridge) on the Stadtgraben (city moat) in Hamburg’s ramparts, and he was allegedly in possession of a firearm. Shortly before, dockworkers and sailors had protested on Heiligengeistfeld against Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor, leading to an armed conflict between police and demonstrators. What followed were three court trials, which, according to Auguste Horlebusch in her subsequent application for restitution, were built around extorted confessions of others and fabricated circumstantial evidence. Subject of these proceedings were three criminal cases related to the RFB’s attacks on Nazis. The first trial took place on 2 June 1933, the charges being "offense against the Firearms Act”; another one on 29 June 1934 for "jointly attempted political murder.” At the last trial on 28 Nov. 1934, Johannes Horlebusch was sentenced to a total of 15 years in a penitentiary, with the two previous convictions included in the verdict.

If one follows the information in the indictment, the Hanseatic Special Court (Hanseatisches Sondergericht) considered it established that Johannes Horlebusch, as a functionary of the RFB, had participated in the planning of two raids, which, however, were not carried out. An alleged "armed attack” was to be carried out on 21 Mar. 1933 on the torchlight procession of SA Standard 31 in Altona. A "bomb attack” was allegedly planned for 1 Apr. 1933 on an SA meeting place at Marktstrasse 119. Furthermore, on 3 Apr. 1933, RFB members were alleged to have attempted a robbery of a ready-to-wear clothing store at Caffamacherreihe 29.

Johannes Horlebusch spent almost six years in solitary confinement in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp. His requests for transfer to a communal cell were repeatedly rejected.

On 8 Feb. 1939, at 6.30 a.m., according to the official version, Johannes Horlebusch was found in his cell, having hanged himself with a bed sheet tied to the window cross.

Auguste Horlebusch had been interrogated several times after the arrest of her husband in the Stadthaus, the Hamburg headquarters of the State Police (later Gestapo). She had to vacate her apartment in what was then Wetkenstrasse 3 and tried to feed her two children by working as a cleaning woman and doing newspaper deliveries; as a widow, her benefits were cut and withheld. Permission to enter into a second marriage had been denied to her as a Jewish "crossbreed of the first degree” ("Mischling ersten Grades”). She was even threatened with sterilization. In 1943, she was bombed out at Vorsetzen 10 and experienced the end of the war in Bavaria, where she had been evacuated.

Emilie Auguste Horlebusch, persecuted due to the arrest of her husband not only for political but also for "racial” reasons, married the father of her third child, Johann Nicolas Wilhelm Brecour, on 23 May 1945, and in the same year, she succeeded in having the Nazi verdict against her first husband Johannes Horlebusch overturned.

The Stolperstein for Johannes Horlebusch was laid on Vorsetzen in front of the staircase to the Gruner & Jahr publishing house. Wetkenstrasse, named after the founder of the school for the poor in Hamburg-Neustadt, no longer exists. It disappeared from the Hamburg cityscape in the course of the new construction of the publishing house. In 1988, the Horlebuschweg was named after Johannes Horlebusch in Harburg-Wilhelmsburg’s Rönneburg quarter.

Johannes Horlebusch’s brother Otto Gustav Emil Horlebusch mentioned earlier was a lighterman (Ewerführer, an Ewer being a type of small sailing boat), and as a Schauermann (a longshoreman, a port worker whose task was the loading and unloading of cargo ships), he worked in the "Einheit” stevedoring company. On 8 Dec. 1923, he had married Frieda Bertha Taraschinski (born on 11 Apr. 1898 in Lutzhorn) and lived with her and her two children in the St. Pauli quarter at Oelmühle 27. Otto Horlebusch was arrested on 14 Aug. 1933 and held responsible as Political Director of the RFB for the looting of two grocery stores. This operation was intended to distract the Uniformed Police (Schutzpolizei) from the simultaneous attack on the "SA-Marine-Sturmlokal” (an SA "marine storm tavern” of the SA) located in the "Adler-Hotel” at Schanzenstrasse 2-4 (see Otto Christoph Heitmann, Karl Schaafhirte, Albert Trieglaff, and Walter Wicke).

On 10 Dec. 1934, the Hanseatic Special Court sentenced him to five years in prison for "breach of the peace” and "forbidden continuation of political organizations.” Otto Horlebusch remained in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp after serving his prison sentence. His daughter reported in her application for restitution that her father had completely withdrawn from his environment after his release at the end of Nov. 1939. She attributed this behavior to the severe mistreatment he suffered in detention.

After only one year in freedom, Otto Horlebusch died of cancer on 20 Nov. 1940. The day before, his wife had taken her own life out of desperation.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW 32038 (Brecour, Auguste); StaH 351-11 AfW 43662 (Grünberg, Irmgard); StaH 242-1II Gefängnisverwaltung, Abl. 13, jüngere Kartei Strafhaft; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafsachen LOO21/37 Band 1; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafsachen LOO58/37; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht-Strafsachen LO123/36; StaHH 242-1II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 18, 4478 Horlebusch, Johannes; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde-Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1942/1258; StaH 331-5 Polizeibehörde-Unnatürliche Sterbefälle 3 Akte 1940/2070; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2812 u 421/1893; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2347 u 3794/1894; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2406 u 3618/1896; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2462 u 3973/1898; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 3575 u 208/1928; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9907 u 78/1939; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1121 u 719/1940; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1128 u 2617/1940; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9923 u 1003/1941; Diercks: Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu, S. 61; Bericht von Herbert Baumann, Rostock 1981 zur Verfügung gestellt von der Gedenkstätte Ernst Thälmann, Hamburg-Eppendorf Archiv; Auskünfte von Herbert Diercks, Archiv der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; Bake: Gedächnis, Band 1, S. 180.