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; "Magda und Paul Thürey")
© Gedenkstätte Ernst Thälmann
Magda Thürey (née Bär) * 1899
Emilienstraße 30 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)
Verhaftet Herbst 1943 KZ Fuhlsbüttel
Verstorben an Haftfolgen 17.07.1945
further stumbling stones in Emilienstraße 30:
Paul Thürey
Magda Thürey, née Bär, born 4 Mar. 1899 in Hamburg, died 17 July 1945 as a result of persecution
Emilienstraße 30 and Bundesstraße 78 (Gymnasium Emilie-Wüstenfeld)
Paul Thürey, born 16 July 1903, arrested several times in 1943-44 for preparing high treason, sentenced to death 3 May 1944 by the People’s Court, executed 26 June. 1944
Emilienstraße 30
The couple Magda and Paul Thürey were among the few citizens of Hamburg who actively fought against the National-Socialist regime and who paid for their courage with their lives. The Thüreys belonged to the communist resistance group of Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen which formed around 1940 and took its name from its leading activists, Bernhard Bästlein, Franz Jacob and Robert Abshagen.
Magda Thürey was born as Augusta Luise Magda Bär at Grindelberg 33 in Hamburg in 1899. Her brother Curt was born two years later. The children’s mother’s name was Bertha Elise Martha Bär, née Walsen, their father was the helmsman Hermann Karl Bär. Magda’s parents were Protestant. Her mother came from a merchant family, her father from a working-class family. He advanced to ship’s officer, but died before the outbreak of World War I.
Magda attended Emilie-Wüstenfeld Lyceum and by 1919 she had completed teacher training at Hohe Weide Teaching Seminar in Eimsbüttel. Already in her early years she took up with like-minded people who share her reformed-oriented, politically leftwing views. She was influenced by the Wandervogel movement of German youth groups and got involved in the youth group Freideutsche Jugend. In 1925 Magda Thürey joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and shortly before 1933 she was a temporary member of the Hamburg Parliament for the party where she was a specialist for education issues.
Paul Carl Ludwig Thürey, which was his full name, was somewhat younger than his wife. His parents were Auguste Malwine Johanna Thürey, née Struve, and Jonny Karl Friedrich Thürey. Paul was the youngest of four children. At the time of his birth, the address book lists a John Thürey with the job title typesetter at the address Rosenstraße 2. Paul Thürey spent his childhood and youth there. After finishing elementary school in 1918, he started an apprenticeship to become a metal worker and machine builder at the electric motor factory Conz Power Company Ltd. in Bahrenfeld. During his apprenticeship he joined the radical workers movement and became a member of the KPD in 1920. In 1922 he lost his job and dedicated himself more fervently to party activities. He sometimes found work for short periods at different companies. In the late 1920s he met the teacher Magda Bär.
She taught in Eimsbüttel from 1919, first at the school at Lutterothstraße 80 then at the school at Methfesselstraße 28 from 1930. She became a member of the "Society of the Friends of the National Schooling and Education System". When she was dismissed from teaching in July 1933, she was already living with Paul Thürey at Alsterdorferstraße 192. Their apartment was searched in Nov. 1932 and Apr. 1933. The reason given for her expulsion from the teaching profession was based on the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service", Paragraph 2 of which allowed for dismissal due to membership in the KPD.
After their professional existence was ruined, Magda Bär and Paul Thürey wed on 27 Dec. 1933. Paul Thürey was also out of work. To provide for themselves, the couple purchased a soap shop at Osterstraße 100 which later was moved to Emilienstraße 30. The shop was called Waschbär – a play on Magda’s maiden name, meaning "wash bear”, the German word for raccoon. From the start the store served as a meeting place for the banned KPD. After the start of World War II, the shop was an important contact point for the communist Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group. Flyers and illegal printed matter were hidden in soap boxes. Magda’s brother Curt, who had likewise been dismissed from teaching in 1933, also tried to earn a living with a soap store. His shop was located in Barmbek-South at the then Diederichstraße 21.
The resistance group emerged from the conspiratorial work of KPD comrades who were persecuted and arrested in 1933, then released in the late 1930s – at a time when the National-Socialist regime was at the height of its power and acceptance. In autumn 1943 the Gestapo learned through the informant Alfons Pannek of the soap shop Waschbär as a contact point for members of the Bästlein organization living illegally in the underground. On 30 Oct. 1943 the infamous Gestapo officer Henry Helms took Magda Thürey into "protective custody" and had her delivered to Fuhlsbüttel Prison. She had to sign a document in which she transferred all rights and obligations to her business to a certain Gertrud Pfälzer – an alias. From then on, the Gestapo used the Waschbär shop as a trap – Gertrud Pfälzer pretended to be Magda Thürey’s friend. The Gestapo unmasked the resistance group and other members were arrested too.
Magda Thürey was sick. She had suffered from multiple sclerosis since she was 31, a disease which worsened rapidly under prison conditions. In 1944, already unable to move, she was taken to the neurological ward at Langenhorn Hospital where she still did not receive the medical care she needed. Curt Bär, like Magda Thürey, survived the end of the war and was able to bring his sister home in 1945 where she, however, died on 17 July 1945 at the age of 46 from the effects of imprisonment. Multiple sclerosis and decubitus (bed sores) were noted as the cause of death.
In 1939, Paul Thürey had again found work at the electric motor factory Conz Power Company Ltd. where he initially trained which was now an arms factory. The company was located in Bahrenfeld, on Gasstraße. Factory groups played an important role in the illegal work of the KPD. Paul Thürey was a shop steward at Conz. In 1942 the Gestapo arrested Paul Thürey. In the autumn of 1944, he was sentenced to death over the course of the so-called Hamburg communist trials which had begun in May of that year, and on 26 June 1944 the forty-one year old was beheaded at Hamburg Remand Prison, located at Holstenglacis 3. Judgement was passed on forty-seven members of the Bästlein organization during the course of the trials in twelve hearings, each having taken place half at the People’s Court adjourning in Hamburg and the other half at the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court. In May 1944 alone the 2nd Senate of the People’s Court imposed the death penalty in 14 instances. Paul Thürey was one of ten convicts executed on 26 June. Altogether more than 70 members of that northwest German resistance organization became victims of National Socialism.
Magda Thürey’s funeral shortly after the end of the war was the first and only large, unified demonstration of the leftwing workers parties in Hamburg. Karl Meitmann of the SPD and Friedrich (Fiete) Dettmann of the KPD shook hands symbolically over her grave and promised never to allow in-fighting to divide them again.
Magda and Paul Thürey are buried at the Geschwister Scholl Foundation’s field of honor in Ohlsdorf Cemetery. The Thüreystraße in Niendorf was named in their memory in 1981. A memorial stands on Kurt-Schill-Weg: a table with 12 chairs, created in 1987 by the Düsseldorf artist Thomas Schütte to commemorate the resistance. The backs of the chairs bear the names of Hamburg’s resistance fighters, including that of Paul Thürey. Curt Bär was also honored by naming a street after him in the new district Allermöhe.
Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.
Stand: March 2019
© Susanne Lohmeyer
Quellen: StaH 131-10I, 1933Ja13c; StaH 331-1 II Polizeibehörde, Abl. 15 vom 18.9.1984; StaH 332-5 Standesämter, 1203 + 571/1944; StaH 332-5, 9959 + 1478/1945; StaH 332-5, 13086 + 473/1899; StaH 351-11 AfW, 27282; HAB II 1904, 1935, 1937; Edith Burgard, Magda Thürey; Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter; Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Bd. IV, S. 765ff.; Klaus Bästlein, "Hitlers Niederlage"; Ingo Böhle, www.hamburg.de/clp/frauenbiografien;de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Thürey Zugriff am 30.4.2012; Auskunft Archiv Neuengamme vom 3.5.2012; Gymnasium Ohmoor, "GEDENKEN HEISST: NICHT SCHWEIGEN", Hamburg 1984.
