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Fritz Lindemann in Uniform auf dem Balkon seiner Wohnung, Mai 1942
Fritz Lindemann in Uniform auf dem Balkon seiner Wohnung, Mai 1942
© Privatbesitz

Fritz Lindemann * 1894

Maria-Louisen-Straße 57 (Hamburg-Nord, Winterhude)


HIER WOHNTE
FRITZ LINDEMANN
JG. 1894
VERHAFTET 1944
DURCH GESTAPO
SCHUSSVERLETZUNGEN
TOT 22.9.1944
BERLIN
POLIZEIKRANKENHAUS

see:

Fritz Lindemann, born 04/11/1894 in Berlin, died on 09/22/1944 of gunshot wounds

Born 1894 in Berlin-Charlottenburg as the son of the artillery officer Friedrich Lindemann, Fritz Lindemann passed his high school finishing exams in 1912 at the Victoria-Gymnasium in Potsdam as best of his class. From 1914 to 1918, he took part in the First World War, from 1916 on as lieutenant in the General Staff. In 1919, he fought against the Düsseldorf republic of the councils as a member of a free corps. He was transferred to the Reichswehr and served as an intermittent member of the German delegation to the Versailles peace negotiations. From 1923 to 1926, he absolved training for the General Staff in Berlin; in 1932, he studied economics at the University of Berlin, and from 1933 to 1936, he taught tactics and war history at the War Academy in Berlin.

In 1936, Lindemann was transferred the General Command of the Xth Army Corps in Hamburg (Sophienterrasse 14), and in 1937, he was promoted to a colonel. From 1937 on, Fritz Lindemann was listed in the Hamburg telephone book as a lieutenant colonel at the residential address Maria-Louisen-Strasse 57, living in a 7-room apartment on the fourth floor with his wife and three children. A so-called maid’s room for the housemaid Erika belonged to the flat.

Lindemann resigned from active service effective August 1st, 1938. He joined the NSDAP and entered journalism, initally as military political commentator for the "Kieler Neueste Nachrichten.” From May, 1939, he worked for the "Hamburger Fremdenblatt.” In the course of mobilization, he was reactivated in 1939 and took part in the attack on Poland (1939), in the western campaign against France and in the attack on the Soviet Union (1941–1942). In January, 1942, he was promoted to major general. In October, 1943, he was appointed leader of the artillery staff at the high command of the army in Berlin, where he first made contact to Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. In December, 1943, Fritz Lindemann was promoted to General of the Artillery.

He played an activate part in planning the assassination of Adolf Hitler with the inner circle of the members of the resistance of July 20th, 1944. Lindemann assumed the role of the emissary, making connections to officers critical of the Nazi regime. After the overthrow, he was supposed to become the speaker for the new government and read its first appeal to the people on the radio. In summer of 1944, Lindemann had talks with social democratic and communist opponents of the regime in Dresden.

After the failure of the assassination of July 20th, Fritz Lindemann first went into hiding at the home of his uncle in Dresden. Later, he fled to Berlin, where he found refuge with Erich and Elisabeth-Charlotte Gloeden. On August 20th, 1944, a description of the "deserter” Lindemann was published in the NSDAP’s "Völkischer Beobachter” and other newspapers, offering a reward of 500,000 RM. "Lindemann was involved in the preparations for the attempt to assassinate the Führer on July 20th. Any kind of information leading to the apprehension of the offender will be welcomed by all police bureaus. Anyone who supports the fugitive in any way or who has knowledge of his current sojourn and does not immediately report this to the police will be severely punished.”

His son Georg Lindemann, midshipman of the navy, was arrested on August 25th at the apartment in Maria-Louisen-Strasse. Fritz Lindemann was also betrayed and arrested by the Gestapo on September 3rd, 1944. He resisted arrest and suffered gunshot wounds in the abdomen and a thigh. After two operations and a series of interrogations, he died of his severe injuries on September 22nd, 1944.

The persons who had helped Fritz Lindemann flee or concealed him paid for their courage with their lives: Erich and Elisabeth-Charlotte Gloeden and her mother Mutter Elisabeth Kuznitzky were sentenced to death in November of 1944 and guillotined immediately. Carl Marks and Hans Sierks, who had helped Lindemann flee from Dresden to Berlin, were also sentenced to death and shot by the SS at the end of April, 1945, only a few days before German surrendered. His 72-year-old uncle was acquitted on account of his age; his wife Elsa committed suicide in jail in September, 1944; his cousin Hermann Lindemann was sentenced to ten years at hard labor.

Fritz Lindemann’s family was subject to kin punishment. His wife, who with her 10-year-old daughter was staying with relatives in Andernach on the Rhine, was arrested there and subsequently imprisoned at the concentration camps Ravensbrück, Stutthoff, Buchenwald and Dachau.

The Lindemanns’ daughter and the children of other resistance fighters were taken to a children’s home in Bad Sachsa in the Harz Mountains. Lindemann’s sons, aged 19 and 20, both soldiers, were sentenced to five, respectively seven years at hard labor. All family members survived kin punishment. After the war, Fritz Lindemann’s widow, her children and three grandchildren again lived at Maria-Louisen-Strasse 57 until 1959.

In 1964, a street in the new Hamburg-Lohbrügge housing estate was named for Fritz Lindemann; in 1987, the Lilo-Gloeden-Kehre in Hamburg-Bergedorf was named for Elisabeth Gloeden. The Elisabeth-Gloeden-Ring in Kiel also honors the woman who had concealed Fritz Lindemann from the Gestapo. And in Berlin, the Gloedenpfad commemorates Erich and Elisabeth-Charlotte Gloeden.


Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: March 2017
© Björn Eggert

Quellen: Ursel Hochmuth/Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter aus dem Hamburger Widerstand 1933–1945, Frankfurt/M. 1969, S. 445–447; www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/LindemannFritz/index.html (eingesehen 7.3.2007); www.dhm.de/lemo/forum/kollektives_gedaechtnis/213/index.html (eingesehen 10.9.2007); Wolfgang Welkerling, Ein Wehrmachtsgeneral auf dem Weg zum Antifaschisten. Zur Biographie des Generals der Artillerie Fritz Lindemann (1894–1944), in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (DDR), Heft 9/1989; Amtliches Fernsprechbuch Hamburg 1937–1943; Informationen der Enkelin A. M. H. (Hannover).

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