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Albert Trieglaff * 1913

Venusberg gegenüber Haus Nr. 22 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ALBERT TRIEGLAFF
JG. 1913
IM WIDERSTAND / KPD
VERHAFTET 18.9.1933
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
SACHSENHAUSEN
NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF
DACHAU
ERMORDET 9.12.1944

Albert Willi Fritz Trieglaff, born on 12 Mar. 1913 in Stettin (today Szczecin in Poland), imprisoned in 1933, died in the Dachau concentration camp on 9 Dec. 1944

Venusberg opposite no. 22 (Venusberg 30)

The name Trieglaff (Triglaw) goes back to a Slavic deity and means "three-headed one.” It was depicted with three heads, blindfolded so that it did not have to behold the wickedness of the world. It was worshipped in Stettin and Wollin (today Wolin in Poland).

The family of Albert Willi Fritz Trieglaff also came from Stettin and Wollin. He had been born on 12 Mar. 1913 in Stettin. He received his first name Albert in memory of his grandfather (born on 12 Nov. 1859) who died in 1896. His grandmother Anna, née Laabs (born on 19 Oct. 1870, died on 22 Sept. 1922 in Stettin), came from Wollin. The grandparents had married on 3 Sept. 1887 in Stettin. Albert’s mother, the maid Hedwig Anna Flora Trieglaff (born on 4 Sept. 1892 in Stettin) had gone to Hamburg in Nov. 1911, presumably to "take up a position” there, i.e., to work as a maid. She returned to Stettin in Mar. 1912 and married Alexander Franz Krüger on 27 Mar. 1920. When their son Albert came to Hamburg is not known, nor who his father was.

The few details known about Albert Trieglaff so far derives from his aunt’s restitution file. His aunt Ella Bertha Elisabeth Trieglaff (born on 12 Nov. 1890 in Stettin) had left her hometown in 1912. Her first Hamburg address was at Eichholz 9, where the engineer Julius Trieglaff lived, probably a close relative. In Stettin, Ella Trieglaff had received training as a florist. In Hamburg, she first worked in a chocolate factory. Since 1926, she worked as a cleaner at the Allgemeine-Orts-Krankenkasse (AOK), the local statutory health insurance company, on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse and at the tax office on Rödingsmarkt. Ella Trieglaff then resided at Venusberg 12 and moved to Rothesoodstrasse 18 in 1924.

Albert Trieglaff went to sea as a light sailor after his schooldays. In 1930, he became unemployed and perhaps at this time, he joined the "Red Marine” [or Red Navy], a section of the Alliance of Red Front Fighters (Roter Frontkämpferbund – RFB), which had been banned in the Weimar Republic since May 1929.

On 18 Sept. 1933, Albert Trieglaff was arrested for his involvement in armed street fighting between Communists and Nazis. At that time, he was 20 years old, lived as a subtenant at Venusberg 30, and had a child with his fiancée Hertha Möller, who lived in Altona at Lindenstrasse 41, the five-month-old Karlheinz Alexander Möller (born on 17 Apr. 1933).

On 2 May 1934, the Hanseatic Special Court (Hanseatisches Sondergericht) conducted a large-scale trial against opponents of the Nazi state, which became known as the "Red Marine [or Navy] Trial.” It involved four criminal cases with 48 defendants. Albert Trieglaff was co-defendant in two of these trials. In the trial regarding the "raid on Admiralitätsstrasse on 2 Nov. 1932” – where members of the Nazi marine storm unit ("Marinesturm”) had been attacked while distributing leaflets – Albert Trieglaff’s involvement could not be established. The fourth criminal case concerned the raid on the SA’s marine storm tavern (SA-Marine-Sturmlokal), the "Adler-Hotel,” on the evening of 21 Feb. 1933.

That evening, a shoot-out between Communists and Nazis had taken place on Schanzenstrasse. Two uninvolved passers-by were killed by ricochets; one passer-by and one SA man were injured. (See Otto Christoph Heitmann, Johannes Horlebusch, Karl Schaafhirte, and Walter Wicke).

In the indictment, the public prosecutor’s office assumed in the case of the dead passers-by that the murder had been completed and in the case of the injured one that the attempted murder was a breach of the peace. "The plan was to trash the Adler Hotel and at the same time, to launch an armed attack on those SA men who were expected to leave the Adler Hotel immediately after the windows were smashed. It can be assumed that the shots, insofar as they hit bystanders, strayed off. They would have been meant for the SA members coming out. The defendants that had themselves assigned to this action and went to the Adler Hotel with weapons intending to use their firearms are guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.”

Albert Trieglaff was sentenced to five years in a penitentiary for "political murder and breach of the peace,” which he served until 28 Sept. 1938 in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. He was then handed over to the Gestapo, who continued to hold him in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”). Albert Trieglaff was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp and from there on 14 Mar. 1942 to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in occupied Alsace, 60 kilometers (some 37 miles) from Strasbourg, where the mainly political prisoners had to perform hard work in the quarry for "Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke,” an SS company dealing with soils and rocks. When the camp was evacuated in the face of advancing Allied troops, Albert Trieglaff was transferred to Dachau concentration camp on 6 Sept. 1944, as were most of the prisoners. A typhoid epidemic broke out there at the end of the year. Albert Trieglaff died in Dachau on 9 Dec. 1944 at the age of 31.

His aunt, Ella Trieglaff, was arrested by the Gestapo, charged with illegal activity as chief treasurer for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Jan. 1935. In February, she was temporarily released from "protective custody” to arrange the funeral of her fiancé Otto Fiebelkorn. The sailor Otto Fiebelkorn (born on 8 Dec. 1888 in Altwerp) had hanged himself in the Botanical Garden shortly after her arrest on 28 Jan. 1935. By order of the Gestapo, she had to abandon the shared apartment at Zeughausstrasse 34. She then registered as a subtenant at Lincolnstrasse 4. After an extended stay in the Harbor Hospital, Ella Trieglaff was sentenced on 20 Dec. 1935 to two years in prison for "aiding and abetting high treason,” which she served from 6 Jan. 1936 to 6 Jan. 1938 in the women’s prisons of Fuhlsbüttel, Lübeck-Lauerhof, and Vechta/Oldenburg. Ella Trieglaff survived Nazism, passing away in Hamburg in 1958.

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

Stand: July 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quelle: 351-11 AfW 12397 (Trieglaff, Ella); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1037 u 50/1935; StaH 351-11 AfW 13931 (Krüger, Hedwig); StaH 741-4 Fotoarchiv A 263; StaH 332-7 B VII b 1953/10274; StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Strafsachen 08413/47 Band 1 bis 4; http://stevemorse.org/dachau/dachau.html, (Zugriff 30.10.2014); http://www.struthof.fr/de/empfang/ (Zugriff 30.10.2014); http://www.sternin.de/trieglaff.htm (Zugriff 30.10.2014); www.ancestry.de (Geburtsregister Hedwig Anna Flora Trieglaff am 4.9.1892 in Stettin, Zugriff 18.9.2017); www.ancestry.de (Heiratsregister Hedwig Anna Flora Trieglaff und Alexander Franz Krüger am 27.3.1920 in Stettin, Zugriff 18.9.2017).