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Hans-Heinrich Hornberger
© FZH

Hans-Heinrich Hornberger * 1907

Kleiner Schäferkamp 48 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

KZ Neuengamme
gehenkt 14.02.1944

Hans-Heinrich Hornberger, born on 12 July 1907 in Bayreuth; hanged on 14 Feb. 1944 in the main camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp

Kleiner Schäferkamp 48

Hans-Heinrich Hornberger’s mother was the waitress Christiana Müller. Since his birth was illegitimate, he received her last name, so that his name was Hans-Heinrich Müller. The mother later moved to Ludwigshafen, getting married there – and transferring her new last name to her son. After attending the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), he trained as a machine fitter, subsequently going off on his travels as a journeyman for a year and a half. Settling in Hamburg in 1928, he indicated in the Hamburg directory, which listed him with changing addresses, mechanic and machine fitter as his occupation, in one case machine builder. On 17 Nov. 1931, he and Margarete Kummerow or Kummrow (born on 1 Nov. 1910 in Flemendorf in the Franzburg District/Pomerania) were married; on 1 Jan. 1932, their daughter Gerda was born (Heidi Margret, the second daughter, on 12 June 1944). In the records of the police authorities, Hornberger was registered as not belonging to any religious denomination. Hornberger was among the group of qualified skilled workers in the metal industry very much in demand on the labor market and particularly in the companies of the armament industry. As early as 1928, he worked on the Blohm & Voss shipyard. In the summer of 1928 or 1929, he had joined the German Communist Party (KPD), and that same year he became leader of agitation and propaganda of the KPD company cell at Blohm & Voss. In 1930, he became unemployed, though keeping his post in the company cell (the period of his unemployment lasted until 1935). He was recruited into the KPD’s Wasserkante District leadership, and – after having worked in the Communist "Revolutionary Union Opposition” ("Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts-Opposition” – RGO) in late 1930/early 1931 – he was deployed as party secretary and full-time paid subdistrict leader in the Lüneburg Subdistrict. Afterward, he worked in Hamburg at the district level as a paid party instructor. The political police suspected him of "preparation to high treason” ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat"), as a result of which he was arrested in May 1932 and placed in pretrial detention until Christmas of that year, though being released due to the December amnesty of 1932.

After his release, he recommenced his work as a party instructor in KPD’s Wasserkante District – and was entangled in court proceedings in 1933/34 initiated against the KPD’s Hamburg organizational leaders Saefkow and Klann. As they were accused of training neighborhood instructors of the party in connection with the KPD’s transition into illegality, Hans-Heinrich Hornberger was precisely among these selected instructors; in the portrait of his life that Margarete Hornberger drew of Hans-Heinrich Hornberger, she speaks about the fact that "he [was] arrested several times but released again every time.” Possibly this was also the context of Hornberger’s arrest on 15 Jan. 1936. He was in the pretrial detention center for half a year, though being released again without any legal proceedings on 14 June 1936.

That same year, he was re-hired by the Blohm & Voss shipyard company as a skilled worker – one may assume that his previous KPD activities were known. While working there, he became involved in building up illegal communications structures among opposition-oriented staff members; in the same way, he was active in his residential neighborhood. Recent historical research regards the maintenance of an independent "communications structure,” as became partly established on the company and residential area level after the informal "forcible coordination” (Gleichschaltung) in the "Third Reich,” as a crucial means of potential opinion forming at the time and as a result of political resistance. The argument goes that only via communications relations, the exchange and the processing of information taking place in this framework, was it possible to sort out new experiences and to incorporate them into existing forms of resistance – and to do so including such differing groups and individuals as Social Democratic, Communist, and other, non-organized, opponents of Hitler.

From 1942 onward, Hornberger is ranked among the resistance group around Bernhard Bästlein and others. After the clarification of political questions and the exclusion of Robert Abshagen from a three-person executive body (Bernhard Bästlein, Oskar Reincke, and Franz Jacob), the structure of this resistance organization, created on the initiative of Communists in Hamburg in 1941, consisted of three-person leadership bodies in the individual branches of industry (e.g., shipyards, metalwork, chemical industry, transportation, and construction), which were subordinate to the executive body. Within these industrial branches, new company cells arose, whose leadership was to be comprised of a three-person group as well – provided the company cell had reached a certain size. Hornberger, recruited by Oskar Reincke for collaboration as the leader of a company cell, joined Jonny Stüve and Walter Reber in forming the leadership of the Blohm & Voss company cell since spring of 1942. He did political work there together with about a dozen co-workers, whereas the company cell – as compared to a workforce numbering 12,000 – was made up of 60 to 80 men overall –.

For the Blohm & Voss company cell, specific resistance assignments consisted of counter-education regarding the course of the war, campaigns for slow and low-quality work, calling in sick, refusal of overtime, advancing wage demands, implementing acts of sabotage on tools and materials. For instance, members succeeded in sinking difficult to replace tools, such as welding equipment in the Elbe River during work on the floating docks; in other cases, they caused short-circuits on electrical facilities or damaged transmissions of ship’s engines through contaminations or thrust-loaded bearings by sand strewn in. Regarding questions of collective bargaining, the company cell used word of mouth in building on a campaign already initiated in early 1939 by the KPD in exile (Copenhagen). At the time, leaflets were distributed among the staff of Blohm & Voss that took a stance on the working situation on the shipyards with slogans such as "Eight hours – enough drudgery!”, "As the wage – so the performance!”, and "Work more slowly!” The demands regarding pay and collective bargaining were particularly important because they provided opportunities to take up workers’ needs directly – since they had to experience how even the basic provisions for the population constantly went up in price while decreasing in quality, and how they were forced to work overtime by compulsory measures within companies while being cheated out of parts of their earnings due to compulsory dues when it came to the wage payments.

Another resistance activity was deemed to be support of foreign forced laborers. For instance, at Blohm & Voss, Hornberger had worked together with a larger group of Polish prisoners of war (headed by Michal Pozywilek) and Soviet prisoners of war (headed by Wasil Zygun). The issue in this connection was both alleviating the forced laborers’ plight through food supplies (above all, by collecting food ration cards and coupons of food ration cards) and the possibility of workplace sabotage.

"Generally, the great dismay about National Socialist violent crime constituted a main motive for resistance emerging from the labor movement during the war. And it was precisely in this respect that the humanist basic attitudes of these resistance fighters manifested itself – including those of the Communists,” as Klaus Bästlein put in his treatise on the Bästlein organization.

The resistance activities related to the company were supplemented by actions in which the residential quarter formed the social foundation: "Hornberger’s apartment [located on Paulinenallee] was turned into a meeting place; there, one had a chance to talk to each other undisturbed, read illegal writings, or listen to Radio Moscow as well.” It was also Hornberger who maintained contact of the Bästlein organization to a resistance group acting autonomously on the neighboring Stülcken shipyard (around Paul Zinke and others). Moreover, he also managed one of the contacts the Bästlein organization established to the former youth group around Ernst Hampel. The latter constituted a connecting link within the oppositional communications network developed after 1939 during the war years and extended all the way into the so-called "Fight Fascism” ("Kampf dem Faschismus” – KdF) group.

After the Hamburg Bästlein organization established contact with the Berlin group around Schulze-Boysen/Harnack in 1942 (the Gestapo called the group the "Red Orchestra” ["Rote Kapelle”]), the Hamburg resistance group also made efforts to pass on information from the armament industry as well as military intelligence. This included supporting two German exiles from the Soviet Union parachuted from planes over Germany, who had made their way to Hamburg to commence their underground activities. In this connection, it was Hornberger, among others, who collected monetary donations and food supplies at the Blohm & Voss shipyard for "comrades living illegally.” However, by way of exposing the Schulze-Boysen/ Harnack organization in Berlin, the Gestapo managed to penetrate the Hamburg Bästlein organization as well. Starting in Oct. 1942, its members were arrested one after the other. The wave of arrests began with the detention of Bästlein. "Based on the statements by Bästlein,” reads an "Introductory Report on the High Treason Matter of ‘Bästlein et al.’,” "it was subsequently possible to execute the arrest of the leading member Oskar Reincke.” After the Gestapo had extorted statements by force from the latter, the wave of arrests continued all the way down to the grass roots level of the resistance group. In the end, 61 persons had been arrested in Hamburg – Hornberger on the Blohm & Voss shipyard on 19 Oct. 1942. From 21 Oct. 1942 until 24 Mar. 1943, he was in "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison and was then transferred to the Hamburg-Stadt pretrial detention facility at Holstenglacis; the authorities prepared an indictment against him on charges of "preparation to high treason” ("Partners in crime: Bästlein and others”).

In addition to other parts of the city, the Hamburg-Stadt pretrial facility was also caught in the saturation bombing by Allied air forces in July/Aug. 1943. Due to the large-scale devastation in the city – among other things, the water supply to the city center as well as the sewer system were interrupted – the public prosecutor’s office in charge decided to give the prisoners quartered there the opportunity to help their relatives in the plight arisen by the air raid on the city by granting them a six- to eight-week prison leave; at the same time, it shirked responsibility of having to provide for the detained persons.

The decision of the inmates temporarily released as to whether or not to report for continuation of their prison terms turned out differently. The Communist Hornberger, released from pretrial detention for prison leave on 4 Aug. 1943, decided together with other released persons not to report for continuation of his detention after the set period of eight weeks. He went underground after having visited his family one more time, who had managed to reach safety from the air raids in the Pomeranian Ribnitz-Damgarten, the native district of Margarete Hornberger (the last residential address documented for him prior to his arrest – for Margarete Hornberger afterward as well – was Paulinenallee 19/third floor); as Margarete Hornberger related later, she had never been aware of her husband’s political activities (on the one hand, this may have been a lie to cover herself; on the other hand, in political illegality, the principle of not exchanging information about clandestine activities was to be observed between married partners as well):
"Back then I did not know yet that a number of known Hamburg anti-Fascists had formed a large-scale resistance organization against Hitler and the war, in whose illegal battle Hans played a decisive role on the Blohm & Voss shipyard,” she wrote later. "I was not arrested, though I was frequently summoned for questioning to the Stadthaus [the headquarters Gestapo in Hamburg]. Two to three times a week, the Gestapo called in my company, ordering me to interrogation. In particular, they wanted to know details about the food collections for the prisoners of war.”

When he went underground, Hans-Heinrich Hornberger used as hiding places, among others, his mother-in-law’s garden cottage and apartments of political friends in the city, for instance, in Falkenried. However, the Hamburg Gestapo was not idle. It had specifically set up a "special unit for combating Communism” in order to cope with the resistance organization and tried by means of police informers to establish contact again with the last remaining groups of the Bästlein organization. To this end, the Gestapo Kriminalsekretär [a rank equivalent to detective sergeant or master sergeant] in charge, Henry Helms, deployed his highly active agent Alfons Pannek, who managed to get in touch with Hans-Heinrich Hornberger.

It is known that during his period underground, Hans Hornberger occasionally behaved rashly. In this regard, historical researchers assume a social conduct particularly among younger KPD functionaries that may have been characterized by openness to "a certain degree of a happy-go-lucky attitude.” For instance, Hornberger apparently "[boasted] in a relatively careless way about his resistance activities at the contact address for the illegal members of the Bästlein group, a soap shop in Eimsbüttel,” not even shrinking from showing his pistol – the actual owner of the store and contact person for the Communists active in the resistance, Magda Thürey, had already been arrested since 30 Oct. 1943, and the store staffed by the Gestapo with an informant working for the secret police, Anneliese Polze. As well, the store premises were bugged to listen in on conversations taking place there. As Magda Thürey’s brother Kurt Bär, who back then – in distance to the KPD – was active in a resistance group of the International Socialist Combat League (Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund – ISK) reported after 1945 that in a personal meeting with this informant lasting several hours, "Hornberger let out all sorts of things, […] for instance, among other things, quite a few names and an illegal company cell on the Deutsche Werft shipyard.”

On 4 Jan. 1944, Hornberger was arrested again, this time in his secret hiding place, to which the Gestapo had managed to follow him unnoticed (according to different testimony, he was arrested in said shop at Emilienstrasse 30). Margarete Hornberger described the arrest in the charges she pressed in 1946 against the Gestapo men involved at the time:
"Henry Helms managed to arrest Hans Hornberger because he [Hornberger] called at the contact address, the store of Magda Thürey, at Emilienstrasse. He was not aware of Magda’s arrest and that Polze was instituted there as a "trustee.” As she did in other cases, to Hornberger she posed as a member of the Communist Party, telling the story that her husband had perished in the Oranienburg concentration camp. Hans Hornberger had a heart-to-heart talk with her and then came to see her again. She then had him arrested by Henry Helms in this store.”

Arrests of other members of the Bästlein organization followed. For instance, Gestapo Kriminalsekretär Helms even managed to kill a leading person of the organization, Walter Bohne, in an exchange of fire, when Bohne went to a meeting place Hornberger had carelessly let out, by proceeding to the location dressed in Hornberger’s clothes.

At this time, in Berlin, the Supreme Reich Prosecutor (Oberreichsanwalt) with the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) prepared the indictment against Hornberger and others; it was presented on 31 Jan. 1944. He charged Hornberger with "having prepared high treason in Hamburg in 1942 by collaborating in building up Communist company cells as well as by defeatist propaganda in armaments companies, having sought to undermine the German people’s will to win and thus aided the enemy, and also […] having listened to enemy radio stations.” According to this, it had been the aim of Hornberger’s illegal actions "that the ‘party’ would have to unite in order to prevent the assumption of power by the bourgeoisie at the right moment. The Reich was not able at all to win the war. The time would come when the Allies would become so powerful that Germany would be pushed from the offensive into the defensive. That’s when the point of the British and Americans invading the Reich had come, who intended to install a government to their liking. Since that government could only be one hostile to the working class, it was imperative to take up arms with the workers against the foreign invasion. With respect to this scenario, everything was to be prepared to such an extent that the Communist Party would be in a position to take over power immediately.”

Similarly, a report about the resistance cell at Blohm & Voss read, "Since through installment of a government agreeable to England one would have to reckon with deterioration of the workers’ situation one must do everything [possible] in order not to see this state materialize … and to be set up with a solid organization at that juncture.” Thus, the cell advocated a political position that had a majority appeal within the Bästlein organization. What mattered in its resistance against Nazi Germany was at the same time the propagation of a "Soviet Germany” and not the support of "bourgeois-democratic” conceptions or ideas of "popular front politics.”

A few days after Hornberger’s arrest, the Gestapo Kriminalsekretär in charge, Henry Helms, had suggested making an example of the four members of the Bästlein organization arrested in Hamburg most recently in Jan. 1944 (Hans Hornberger, Gustav and Lisbeth Bruhn, and Kurt Schill) – by executing them without court proceedings. He submitted an application for "special treatment” ("Sonderbehandlung”) for the four to the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Berlin, which the Reich Leader SS and Head of German Police, Himmler, approved by express letter. On 13 Jan. 1944, Helms tried once more by using his top agent Pannek to obtain information about the Bästlein organization from the four arrested persons – though unsuccessfully. On 14 Feb. 1944, a group of five persons was transferred from the Fuhlsbüttel police prison to the Neuengamme concentration camp. The register of deaths of the concentration camp, in which the condemned persons committed for execution were not entered, contains a note for 14 Feb. 1944 saying "five executions” – four of them were the members of the Bästlein organization mentioned; they were hanged there in the execution bunker that day.

The prison card file that had been prepared for Hans Heinrich Hornberger in the Hamburg-Stadt pretrial detention facility contains one last note, not longer entirely comprehensible today and featuring an illegible signature, dated "17/III.44” with the request "re-committal is to take place” – as if one link in the chain of the state persecution apparatus had not been informed about individual events taking place in those weeks and counted on Hornberger still being alive at that point. The Supreme Reich Prosecutor (Oberreichsanwalt) with the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) in Berlin, too, inquired in Hamburg on 5 Apr. 1944 whether Hornberger was still in pretrial detention. Chief Public Prosecutor Stegemann, who was in charge in Hamburg, answered the question in the negative and pointed to the execution carried out by the Gestapo – he hastened to stress that this did not jeopardize work on the criminal cases transferred to Hamburg related to Bästlein and others and the convictions of the persons involved. The court had set the trial scheduled originally, "Hans Hornberger from Hamburg and Others,” for 3 May 1944; the case was now tried against seven instead of eight defendants.

For Margarete Hornberger and the children, this period was marked not only by the fact that they were under Gestapo observation and Margarete Hornberger was summoned for interrogations. In addition, she also had to struggle for means of survival for herself and the children in the largely destroyed city – even in the months after the end of the war. In Sept. 1945, she described her situation to the "Association of Political Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der politisch Verfolgten des Naziregimes – VVN):
"Heide as well as myself are well off in terms of health. Gerda has been suffering from tuberculosis in the left hip joint, in combination with a shortening of 40 millimeters, since 1941. She is still in medical treatment for this. Gerda has repeatedly had the Fridmann [sic] injections since 1941. I live with the children and my mother in an allotment garden cottage consisting of one room and a kitchen. For a short while, an uncle and his wife have been living in these rooms as well, since he was released from captivity and has no place to stay either. Thus, three adults and two children sleep in one room. Mother sleeps in the kitchen. The cottage is not suitable for winter, however. Nothing has been repaired here for five years, since my father has been in the field as well. However, he may return to Hamburg any day now.

I received a license for management of the space from you on 10 June 1945. On 11 June, I turned there [to the corresponding authority] but this came to nothing. Senate councilor Sopok [?] put in a good word for us and believed he could arrange it for us but so far it has not come to anything. I would like to ask you to provide for some kind of accommodation for me and my children, as I have been moving with them from one place to the other for two years. No one really wanted to have us, with my husband in the concentration camp until I received the notification this year on 17 [May/June?] 1945 that he is dead.”

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Peter Offenborn

Quellen: StAH 213-9 Staatsanwaltschaft Oberlandesgericht OJs 1016/43g, Band 1-5; StAH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II, Abl. 1998/1 und Abl. 16; StAH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde II, Abl. 15, Band 2; Informationen der KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; FZH 12 D/Drescher (Personalakten); FZH 13-3-3-1 (Männer im Widerstand 1933–1945); FZH 13-3-2-2 (Widerstand in Hamburg 1933–1945; Prozesse/Hinrichtungen); Ab.; Sammlung VVN-BdA (Hamburg); Margarete Hornberger, Ein Hamburger Werftarbeiter, in: Die Tat vom 13.2.1965; Kurt Bär, Von Göttingen über Osleb nach Godesberg, S. 140f.; Ludwig Eiber, Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung, S. 330/331 und 442; Klaus Bästlein, ‚Hitlers Niederlage ist nicht unsere Niederlage, sondern unser Sieg!’, S. 57, 62–68, 73 und 80; Ursula Puls, Die Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe, S. 37–39, 50, 64, 126, 166/67; Herbert Diercks, Gedenkbuch Kolafu, S. 49; Albrecht Bald, Hans Hornberger (1907–1944) – ein in Bayreuth geborener kommunistischer Widerstandskämpfer der Hamburger Arbeiterbewegung. PC-Skript o. O., o. J. (ca. 2002), 9 S. [in: FZH 12 H/Hornberger (Personalakten)]; Ursel Hochmuth, Niemand und nichts wird vergessen, S. 45; Ursel Hochmuth/Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter aus dem Hamburger Widerstand, S. 158f. und 360/375; Hans Hornberger, in: Wikipedia (15.1.2010).