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Hans Westermann, ca. 1927
© StaH

Hans Westermann * 1890

Dammtorstraße 20 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
HANS WESTERMANN
JG. 1890
MEHRMALS VERHAFTET
1935 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ERSCHLAGEN 16.3.1935

Hans Westermann MdHB (Member of the Hamburg City Parliament)

The political vita of Hans Westermann, a member of the Hamburg city parliament who changed from Social Democracy to the German Communist Party (KPD), is marked by the controversies that his political pragmatism triggered at the end of the 1920s within the radicalized and dogmatized KPD. His eventually failed attempt to bring the KPD closer to Social Democracy reflects the entire tragedy that emerged from the division of the workers’ parties for the fate of the workers’ movement, for its leading representatives, but ultimately also for the Weimar state as a whole. Westermann’s fight against the party leadership’s dogmatic lack of reality spoke to the manifestation of political haphazardness, which could only be concealed with difficulty behind the veil of the cult of personality pursued by the German Communist Party, too.

Hans Westermann was born in Hamburg on 17 July 1890. There, he attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) and subsequently learned the tailoring trade. His political career began in 1910 when he joined the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Westermann, who held various honorary party positions in the following years, was a member of the left wing of the Hamburg Social Democrats.

At the beginning of the war in Aug. 1914, Westermann was drafted into the Imperial Navy. He was deployed in the mine clearance flotilla, which sent him to the Kiel Sailors’ Council (Marinerat) in November 1918. Westermann supported the goal of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – USPD) and the Spartacists to establish a council system based on the Russian model in Germany after the fall of the monarchy. Disappointed by the attitude of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – MSPD), which rejected the anti-parliamentary concept of the Left Socialists and finally made possible the transition to the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic in cooperation with the old elites of the Kaiserreich, Hans Westermann joined the KPD in 1919.

As early as 1921, he became full-time party secretary of the Hamburg KPD. He was responsible for the trade union work of his party and coordinated the so-called "works council movement” in this function. He did not take an active part in the KPD-backed uprisings of 1921 and 1923. After the death of Friedrich Ebert in 1925, Hans Westermann saw the opportunity and necessity to put his party’s relationship with Social Democracy on a new footing. In view of Hindenburg’s nomination for the second round of the presidential elections as a candidate of the political Right united in the "Reich Bloc” ("Reichsblock”), Westermann and a significant minority of his fellow party members favored the nomination of a joint candidate of the workers parties. To this end, they were prepared to dispense with Ernst Thälmann’s token candidacy. On this score, Westermann came into sharp conflict with the party leadership, which removed him from all party offices and excluded him from the party because of "deviation to the right.” Only after the Executive Committee of the Communist International’s (ECCI) "Open Letter” in Aug. 1925 had clearly rejected the ultra-left in the party and called on the German Communists to unite internally, was Westermann reinstated into the party without, however, regaining his offices.

In the following years, Westermann remained an exponent of a group that did not wish to have contact to the SPD break off, hoping to influence the political development of the Weimar state along the lines of the working class in a common approach of both workers parties – they were later called the "conciliator faction” ("Versöhnler”). Westermann was supported above all by his life companion Käthe Latzke, who came to the KPD in 1924 via the "Young Communist League.” From 1926 until her expulsion from the party in 1930, she worked as an employee in the "Red Aid” ("Rote Hilfe”) office in Hamburg.

In 1927, Hans Westermann was reinstated into the KPD district leadership and in the same year elected to the Hamburg City Parliament as one of 27 KPD deputies. Among other things, he was a member of the joint "Committee for the Fixing of Rents” ("Ausschuss zur Festsetzung der Mieten”) and for the preparation of development plans as well as the "Grievance Committee for the Housing Department” ("Beschwerdeausschuss für das Wohnungsamt”).

Only a few weeks after Thälmann had set the German Communists, at the "II Reich Party Conference,” on an "ultra-left,” i.e., a radical course renouncing pragmatic positions and radically combating the state structure and especially the parties and trade unions, Westermann harshly criticized the party chairman at a Hamburg district workers’ conference at the end of Nov. 1928. In his main presentation, Thälmann himself had also explained and supported the resolutions of the "VIth ECCI World Congress” before the district workers’ conference. This prompted Westermann to call for a partial amendment of the resolution supporting the ECCI decisions presented by the Hamburg district management. According to a police report, the "great unrest” that resulted could only be remedied with difficulty by the chairman of the meeting, the "pole conductor” ("Polleiter”) at the time, Grube. The district leadership then countered and accused Westermann of dishonesty and opportunism. This was successful, because the party leader, who was severely battered after the "Wittorf Affair” and was therefore intent on a unanimous vote, received an overwhelming majority for his resolution corresponding to the ECCI line, despite the objections raised by Westermann. Nevertheless, the resolutions of the VIth ECCI World Congress were to result in serious disputes among the membership in several districts, in the course of which around 50 functionaries were excluded from the party in the "Wasserkante” District and around 120 lost their party functions.

Westermann’s refusal to support the Stalinization that began in 1928 and the associated intensification of the struggle of the "Revolutionary Union Opposition” ("Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition” – RGO) against the "free trade unions,” now also defamed as "social Fascists,” led to his renewed exclusion from the party in 1930. In Feb. 1930, he resigned his seat as a member of the Hamburg City Parliament.

Also after 1930, Westermann was active in the "conciliators’ group” ("Versöhnlergruppe”), with the "rightist deviationists ("Rechtsabweichler”), excluded from the Hamburg KPD, coming together in the so-called "Westermann Group” ("Westermann-Gruppe”) named after its leader. Ideologically, this group continued to follow the line of the 1925 "Open Letter,” in which the ECCI had called for the formation of company cells and cooperation in the "free trade unions.” Apparently, the group had some sympathy among workers, because at the KPD district party conference in 1932, the district leadership felt compelled to warn explicitly against the "carryings-on of the renegade Westermann.” Just how hardened the fronts were in the final phase of the Weimar Republic is shown by the fact that the party leadership still expressed these warnings even after the KPD’s ban.

Hans Westermann was arrested for the first time in June 1933 and kept in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) for seven months. Faced with persecution, he and parts of his group rejoined the KPD organization, by then operating illegally, and took part in the underground work. On the night of 5/6 Mar. 1935, numerous members of the "Westermann Group,” including Westermann himself, were arrested. Only a few days later, Hans Westermann was murdered by Nazis in Fuhlsbüttel on 16 Mar. 1935. His wife Käthe Latzke died on 31 Mar. 1945 in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Author(s)/copyright: Text courtesy of the City Parliament of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (ed.), taken from: Jörn Lindner/Frank Müller: Mitglieder der Bürgerschaft – Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung, 3rd revised and expanded edition, Hamburg 2012.

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

Stand: May 2019
© Text mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg (Hrsg.) entnommen aus: Jörn Lindner/Frank Müller: "Mitglieder der Bürgerschaft – Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung", 3., überarbeitete und ergänzte Auflage, Hamburg 2012

Hans Westermann, b. 7.17.1890 in Hamburg, imprisoned 1933 and 1935, murdered on 3.16.1935 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp

Dammtorstraße 20
Rathausmarkt 1 (in front of and to the left of City Hall)

Hans Heinrich Emil Theodor Westermann was born at Grossen Drehbahn 31, in Hamburg, the son of the lathe operator Johann Heinrich Friedrich Westermann (b. 2.8.1863) and his wife Marie Conradine Adolphe, née Foesten (b. 11.28.1865). His parents had married on 22 October 1888. After finishing primary school, Hans Westermann learned the tailoring trade and had joined, at age 20, the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Right after the start of the First World War, he was drafted into the navy; in 1916 at Pillau, the home port of the minesweeper on which he was stationed, he met his later life-partner, the then 17-year old shorthand typist, Käthe Latzke. Later, she was to follow him to Hamburg.

Hans Westermann sympathized with the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). During the November Revolution of 1918, which began as a naval mutiny and ended with the abdication of Wilhelm II, he was a member of the Sailors’ Council of Kiel. In 1919, he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and became its main office party secretary for trade union work. He was a member of the General German Trade Union League (ADGB) and took part in the general strike of 1920 against the Kapp Putsch, a right-wing coup attempt against the Weimar Republic. The German historian Ursel Hochmuth, in Niemand und nichts wird vergessen (No One and Nothing Will Be Forgotten) published a report by Gertrud Rast concerning Hans Westermann that allows insight into his personality. In it, she says: "Hans Westermann worked as a tailor at the famous clothier Ladage & Oelke, at Neuen Wall 11. Once, when he was waiting on an upscale customer, he appeared - to the horror of his boss - in an off-the-rack suit. Out of his explanation that he had not had time to sew himself a tailor-made suit, it transpired that, during his work time, he tailored one for himself. Hans was loved among his co-workers and recognized as a constant representative of their interests. However, it often happened that because of his vigorous political activity, he was often absent from work. However, the directors of the firm did not fire him, on the one hand because of his ability, and on the other because of his strong backing within the workforce. A young company secretary who did not know about his standing, gave Hans his dismissal papers, after a three-week absence. Thereupon, in the workroom, which predominantly employed Social Democrats at that time, all work stopped. After twenty minutes, he was reinstated.”

Hans Westermann became a member of the Wasserkante district directorate of the Communist Party and was then elected to the Hamburg Parliament in 1927. In inner-party conflicts he sided with the "Compromisers,” who called for closer cooperation with the SPD and criticized the "ultra-left” course of the KPD after 1929. After his criticism led to his expulsion from the KPD, and he resigned his mandate for the Hamburg Parliament in 1930. There formed around him the "Westermann Group,” which, following the coming to power of the Nazis, organized resistance in the harbor area.

Hans Westermann’s first arrest by the State Police because of his political activity followed in June 1933. In early 1934, because of a lack of evidence, he was released from "protective custody.” In November 1934, while abroad, he undertook negotiations with representatives of the Central Committee of the KPD, which presumably led to his resumption of activities with his group in the illegal KPD. He returned to Hamburg in January 1935. Betrayed by an informant, Hans Westermann and Käthe Latzke were arrested on 6 March 1935 in the apartment of Hilde Schottländer at Kosterallee 31.

Hilde Schottländer, née Stern (b. 4.7.1900, d. 9.8.1961), was acquainted with Hans Westermann and Käthe Latzke. According to the indictment by the Hanseatic Superior District Court of 19 August 1935, she had come to know Westermann during a meeting of the "Society of Friends of the New Russia.” After his release from protective custody, she had taken him in from July to September 1934. From October, Käthe Latzke also lived with her. As a Jew, Schottländer had been let go from an office clerk position in the Labor Employment Office, in accordance with the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” Later she found work with the "Jewish Career Counseling Service.” Because she made her apartment available to the "Westermann Group” for their political work, she was sentenced to two years in prison. Following her release, she emigrated to her children in the USA.

Initially, Hilde and Käthe were put in interrogation detention. Hans Westermann, who was imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, died their ten days later, the result of severe torture. In a commemorative article on Hans Westermann’s death, the Hamburger Volkszeitung wrote on 19 March 1947: "The autopsy of the corpse showed that the ribs of the prisoner had been pushed into his lungs. Even the camp doctor refused to put "lung inflammation” as the cause of death on the record; an SS-doctor was expressly ordered to do this.” Hans Westermann was cremated and buried on the Ohlsdorf Cemetery on 20 March 1935. In the early 1950s, his urn was moved to another resting place, the Grove of Honor for Hamburg Resistance Fighters.

His life partner, Käthe Latzke, born on 8 May 1899 in Königsberg, joined the Communist Youth Organization of Germany (KJVD) in 1918. She joined the KPD and the Central Union of Office Employees (ZdA) in 1924. Between 1926 and 1930, she worked in the office of the "Red Aid” in Hamburg. As a result of her expulsion from the party she became jobless. Following her arrest in October 1933, she, too, was set free, for a lack of evidence, by the Hanseatic Superior District Court in August 1934.

Following her second arrest on 6 March 1935, the trial proceedings ran a different course. On grounds of "preparation for high treason,” she was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary, which she served at the Lauerhof Women’s Prison in Lübeck. Described in her indictment as "a wholly convinced and exceptionally dangerous Communist,” she declared at her hearing, "I am still today a Communist and will also always remain a Communist.”

After serving her prison sentence, she was taken into "protective custody” on 8 March 1937. On 1 July 1937, she went to the Moringen concentration camp and from there, on 15 December 1937, was on the first transport to the Lichtenburg concentration camp, where she received the prisoner number 11. After her release, she lived in Stralsund, because she had been banned from staying in Hamburg. On the initiative of the Hamburg Gestapo, she was in 1944 again taken into custody, allegedly because of her contacts in Hamburg to the members of the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Group. Without charges and judicial proceedings, Käthe Latzke went to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on 26 April 1944, where she was Prisoner no. 37313. She died there of typhus on 31 March 1945.

Concerning Käthe Latzke’s death, a fellow-prisoner in Ravensbrück, Erika Buchmann, reported: "She had edema in both legs, which were swollen out of shape, camp fever [typhus], and heart attacks. She had suffered so terribly that we were all glad when deliverance finally came and Käthe died.”

In 1996, in Hamburg-Bergedorf, Käthe-Latzke-Weg was named after her.

Translator: Richard Levy
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: June 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 332-5 Standesämter 2229 u 3037/1890; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 9867 u 57/1935; StaH 121-3 I Bürgerschaft A 17; Anklageschrift des Hanseatischen Oberlandesgerichts vom 19.8.1935, zur Verfügung gestellt von der Ernst Tählmann Gedenkstätte; Auskunft von Sven Langhammer Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, E-Mail vom 11.10.2013; Wamser/Weinke (Hrsg.): Jüdisches Leben, S. 279; Diercks: Freiheit, S. 32; Hochmuth: Niemand, S. 141–143; Müller: Mitglieder der Bürgerschaft, S. 61; Diercks: Friedhof Ohlsdorf, S. 34–38; Bake: Wer steckt dahinter? (Käthe-Latzke-Weg); Bruhns/Preuschoft/Skrentny: "erwachte", S. 66.