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Franz Stobrawa * 1908

Stresowstraße 33 (Kehre) (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

HIER WOHNTE
FRANZ STOBRAWA
JG. 1908
VERHAFTET 1942
"FEINDSENDER" GEHÖRT
KZ NEUENGAMME
ERMORDET 12.2.1943

further stumbling stones in Stresowstraße 33 (Kehre):
Friedrich Thomas

Franz Stobrawa, b. 11.16.1908 in Hamburg, d. 2.12.1943 in Neuengamme concentration camp

Stresowstraße 33, at the bend on the footpath to Billhorner Röhrendamm (Hardenstraße 44)

In 1952, the Hamburg Police Department informed the Office of Reparations that: "According to an existing list of prisoners in the Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison, Stobrawa, Franz (b. 11.16.1908 in Hamburg) was delivered by the Gestapo on 2.24.1942 to Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison, and transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp on 28 May 1942. The grounds for the arrest cannot be determined here because the Gestapo completely destroyed all records when Allied troops arrived. The death is registered in the Neuengamme A registry office, under death record No. 771/43.”

The mother of the dead man, Hedwig Stobrawa, née Richter, was born on 3 June 1877 in Glogau, requested special rent help in December 1946 as "a surviving dependent, whose breadwinner was a victim of incarceration.” Her husband, the policeman Johann Stobrawa, died early at age 41 on 13 October 1919. They had been married on 2 June 1906 in Hamburg in the Catholic Church. Both came from the former Prussian Province of Silesia; Johann Stobrawa was born on 30 December 1877 in Lublinitz County, Upper Silesia; Hedwig Richter in the same year in Glogau, Lower Silesia.

Hedwig Stobrawa received a widow’s payment from the police department, from which she and her four children had to live. The children contributed to the upkeep from the end of their apprenticeships to their own marriages. The oldest son married in 1922; the middle son and the daughters married around 1930. Franz Stobrawa worked in various professions, at first as a vendor and decorator, later in construction and as a warehouseman; he supported his mother. Whether he completed his vocational training is not known. In 1933, he was unemployed; he went to East Prussia in search of work but found no steady job, committed petty crimes, and was punished leniently; he was released in an amnesty and considered as having served his entire sentence. "On grounds of attempting to spy out military secrets, that is, on grounds of treason,” he was condemned by the Criminal Division of the Higher Regional Court of Königsberg (E. Prussia). On 28 May 1934, all sentences were combined to six years and two months in the penitentiary and the loss of civil rights lasting eight years.

Hedwig Stobrawa moved in 1935 to Hardenstrasse 44, where she also registered Franz with the police. She took the position of house mistress, a sort of concierge, and lived in the front building.

After serving his sentence, Franz Stobrawa returned to his mother in November 1939 and worked as a warehouseman. On 20 February 1942, he was ordered to city hall by the Gestapo and then arrested. The grounds for the arrest are not known. Perhaps, he listened to foreign enemy broadcasts and repeated what he heard. Only four days later he was brought to Neuengamme concentration camp, where he registered as a Pole and was assigned prisoner number 7146. He wrote his mother postcards. According to the camp’s prisoner-death certificate list, he died on 12 February 1943 at age 34, apparently from pulmonary tuberculosis.


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

Stand: January 2019
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: VAN-Totenliste 1968; StaH, 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 3345; 332-5 Standesämter, 3061+540/1906.