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Franz Reetz * 1883

Vierländer Damm Ecke Lindleystraße (Hamburg-Mitte, Rothenburgsort)

HIER WOHNTE
FRANZ REETZ
JG. 1883
VERHAFTET 1935
’HOCHVERRAT’
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
1936 SACHSENHAUSEN
1943 KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ERMORDET 23.4.1945
NEUENGAMME

further stumbling stones in Vierländer Damm Ecke Lindleystraße:
Friedel Franke, Amandus Hartung, Anni Schwarz, Chaim Max Schwarz

Franz Reetz, b. 3.23.1883 in Bärenbusch/Ostprignitz, murdered on 4.23.1945 in the Neuengamme concentration camp

Billhorner Röhrendamm/corner of Lindleystraße (Billhorner Röhrendamm 20)

Upon his entry into Kola-Fu on 18 July 1935, the 52-year old machinist Franz Reetz was described as a slim, 5’10” man with an oval face, gray eyes, and blonde hair, who wore his beard trimmed, giving him an apparently cultivated appearance. The Hanseatic Superior Court had five days earlier, on 13 June 1935, sentenced him to two years in prison on grounds of "preparation to commit high treason.” Taking into consideration the time served while being interrogated, his sentence ended on 6 June 1936 "at 11:28.” Thereupon, he was handed over to the Gestapo. He was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He returned to Hamburg from there in 1937.

Franz was born on 23 March 1883 in Bärenbusch near Ruppin in the Ostprignitz region of Brandenburg. All that is known about his background is that he was a machinist and spent a little time as a bargeman. He married Anna Schulz and had five children with her. Their two sons Karl Willi Franz and Walter Karl were born in 1910 and 1914, respectively, in Havelberg in the Westprignitz region. The older of the two became a worker, the younger went into the police. In the summer of 1938, Karl Willi Franz and Elvira Büchner married; out of this marriage came a daughter, Christa.

The members of the Reetz family belonged to no church. When Franz Reetz joined the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and what offense he was accused of by the National Socialist state are not known. Together with comrades who were released from Sachsenhausen between 1937 and 1940, he attempted to gather resistance fighters. He worked in the Stülcken dockyard and built with others, among them Ernst Fiering, an illegal cell; it continued to operate even after the arrest of the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen group in 1942. Franz Reetz was the contact person for a few prisoners awaiting trial; after the destruction of Hamburg at the end of July and beginning of August 1943, the state prosecutor had granted them two-month furloughs from prison. They used this opportunity to go underground. The goal was to continue the illegal work. Later almost all of them were once again seized.

Franz Reetz’s sons took part in the Second World War, Karl Willi Franz as a rifleman in the 502nd Infantry Regiment and Walter Karl as an SS-man in the Death’s Head Pioneer Battalion. Both were killed, the older in the French campaign on 5 June 1940 at Courson on the Oise-Aisne Canal, the younger on 12 December 1942 in the Ukraine at Cherchuzy. In the "firestorm” bombing of July 1943, Franz Reetz lost his granddaughter Christa.

When Franz Reetz was again arrested and jailed in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp is not known. He was not given a new trial. In the spring of 1945, in anticipation of the approaching end of the Nazi regime, 71 persons – 12 women and 59 men – were given over to be murdered in the Neuengamme concentration camp. Among them was Franz Reetz. He was hanged on 23 April 1945.


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

Stand: October 2018
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: VAN-Totenliste 1968; Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu; StaH 242-1 II, Abl. 13; 332-5 Standesämter, 1131+500/1940; 1159+595/1942; 1127-108/1944; Hochmuth, Ursel/Gertrud Meyer, Streiflichter; Puls, Ursula, Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe.