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Erich Heins * 1907

Zeughausstraße 42 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)


HIER WOHNTE
ERICH HEINS
JG. 1907
IM WIDERSTAND
VERHAFTET 1933/1942
HINGERICHTET
26.6.1944
UG HOLSTENGLACIS

see:

Erich Heins, born on 1 Nov. 1907 in Hamburg, arrested in 1933, detained in 1942 in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp, executed on 26 June 1944 in the Hamburg-Stadt pretrial detention facility at Holstenglacis 3

Zeughausstrasse 42

Erich Heins was born as the son of the helmsman and launch pilot Johannes Dietrich Heinrich Heins (born on 29 Jan. 1871, died on 10 Dec. 1953), who came from the rural community of Klein Flottbek, Pinneberg District. His mother, Wilhelmine Katharine, née Pahl (born on 25 Feb. 1884, died on 24 Nov. 1951), was a native of Hoopte, District of Winsen/Luhe. The parents, who had married in Klein Flottbek on 2 Feb. 1903, had at least one more son, Werner (born on 12 Oct. 1906, died on 6 Apr. 1949). The family later resided in Hamburg-Wandsbek at Ostpreussenplatz 3.

Erich Heins began a four-year apprenticeship as a building fitter in 1922 after finishing the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule) and subsequently worked as a journeyman at various companies. At the age of 22, he married Gertrud Havemann (born on 12 Apr. 1906) from Hamburg on 7 Sept. 1929. Their son Egon had been born on 2 August. In 1929, Erich Heins became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). According to a later indictment, he assumed the function of an organizational leader in the party.

At the end of 1933, Erich Heins was placed in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) for three months. At that time, he lived at Schumannstrasse 10a in Hamburg-Uhlenhorst and is said to have made his apartment available to leading members of the forbidden Communist Alliance of Red Front Fighters (Roter Frontkämpferbund – RFB) for a meeting. After his dismissal in Mar. 1934, he found employment as a fitter again at the Blohm & Voss shipyard.

Gertrud and Erich Heins divorced on 21 Sept. 1936. In his second marriage, he married the streetcar conductor Anna Walburga Klappstein, née Schmitt, on 18 Oct. 1941. She was born on 11 Aug. 1900 in Volkach/Lower Franconia.

In 1941/1942, Communist resistance fighters and opponents of the Nazi regime organized themselves into so-called illegal company cells in armament plants essential to the war effort. The company group in the Blohm & Voss fitters’ shop also played an important role. It maintained close contact with the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group, which, among other things, conducted political education, organized sabotage operations, collected food ration cards for victims of political persecution, and supported forced laborers and prisoners of war employed at the shipyard. On 22 Oct. 1942, Erich Heins was arrested by the Gestapo at his workplace on the shipyard grounds. In the Stadthaus, the Hamburg headquarters of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), he was subjected to "intensified interrogations,” i.e., he was severely mistreated and tortured. The historian Ursel Hochmuth wrote about Erich Heins that the Hamburg Reich Governor (Reichsstatthalter) Karl Kaufmann had been present at one of these interrogations and had asked him whether he regretted his illegal work. He is said to have replied, "I am a Communist and will continue the work as long as I live.”

On 24 Mar. 1943, Erich Heins was transferred from the Fuhlsbüttel police prison to the Holstenglacis pretrial detention center. He remained there even after the heavy air raids on Hamburg in July/August 1943 ("Operation Gomorrah”), when other members of the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen Group imprisoned there were given eight weeks’ leave, which most of them used to go underground (see Bruno Endrejat on Walter Bohne). On 17 Apr. 1943, the proceedings designated as "Bästlein u. Andere” ("Bästlein et al.”) involving several defendants were transferred to the Senior Reich Prosecutor (Oberreichsanwalt) at the "People’s Court” ("Volksgerichtshof”) in Berlin, which sat in Hamburg on this occasion. Erich Heins and his comrades and shipyard colleagues Walter Reber (born on 25 Mar. 1891) and Kurt Vorpahl (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg Billstedt-Horn-Borgfelde) were sentenced to death in Hamburg on 4 May 1944 for "aiding of the enemy in coincidence with preparation to high treason” ("Feindbegünstigung in Tateinheit mit Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat”), with the trial presided over by associate judge at the People’s Court Löhmann. On 26 June 1944, they were beheaded in the Holstenglacis pretrial detention center. On that day, seven more death sentences were carried out.

Their mortal remains were handed over to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Kiel. After the war, on 14 Sept. 1947, the urns were buried in the Memorial Grove for Hamburg Resistance Fighters (Ehrenhain der Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer) in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery.

Kurt Vorpahl is commemorated by a Stolperstein in Hamburg-Horn at Snitgerstieg 3.

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

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 351-11 AfW 23287 (Heins, Walburga); StaH 351-11 AfW 1900 (Heins, Johannes); StaH 351-11 AfW 49475 (Heins, Egon); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 5687 u 2/1903; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13040 u 494/1929; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1203 u 502/1944; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 10008 u 683/1949; StaH: 331-1II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 15 Band 3; 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 1998/1; Puls: Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe; Hochmuth: Niemand, S. 64.

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