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Wilhelm Heidsiek * 1888

Rathausmarkt 1 (links vor dem Rathaus) (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamburg-Altstadt)

WILHELM HEIDSIEK
MDHB 1933 SPD
JG. 1888
VERHAFTET 1944
"AKTION GEWITTER"
NEUENGAMME
TOT 7.11.1944

further stumbling stones in Rathausmarkt 1 (links vor dem Rathaus):
Kurt Adams, Etkar Josef André, Bernhard Bästlein, Adolf Biedermann, Gustav Brandt, Valentin Ernst Burchard, Max Eichholz, Hugo Eickhoff, Theodor Haubach, Ernst Henning, Hermann Hoefer, Franz Jacob, Friedrich Lux, Fritz Simon Reich, August Schmidt, Otto Schumann, Theodor Skorzisko, Ernst Thälmann, Hans Westermann

Wilhelm Heidsiek MdHB

Wilhelm Heidsiek MdHB (Member of the Hamburg City Parliament)

Wilhelm Heidsiek was born on 4 Jan. 1888 in Preussisch-Oldendorf (Westphalia) as the seventh child of a cabinetmaker. In his hometown, he attended the eight-grade elementary school (Volksschule), before doing an apprenticeship as a typographer and mechanical typesetter in nearby Bad Essen.

After completing his years of training, Wilhelm Heidsiek initially felt drawn to the Ruhr Area, where he worked in, among other places, Essen and Herford. An added element of his biography, already at this stage, was a further training career that left a mark on his subsequent life. What began in 1909 with evening classes at the Essen specialist trade and arts college (Fach- und Kunstgewerbeschule), he would continue later on intensively in Hamburg in connection with the "workers’ education program” ("Arbeiterbildungswesen”).

Initially, however, in May 1910 the young typographer came, via a short stop in Gelsenkirchen, to Cuxhaven, then still part of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The fact that the city on the mouth of the Elbe River became his second home and, very importantly, the main center of his political activities after the First World War was also the result of numerous contacts he was able to establish in his early Cuxhaven years working as a mechanical typesetter for the Cuxhavener Volksblatt. There, Heidsiek found his way via the trade union movement to Social Democracy, whose history in Cuxhaven in the 1920s is closely tied to his name.

Cuxhaven though remained only an intermediate stop for the time being: In 1912, he moved to Hamburg where above all he used the means of further education available in the big city.

From 1914 until 1918, Heidsiek fought as a soldier in World War I. Decorated with the Iron Cross First and Second Class, following the end of the war he returned to Hamburg, where he found a job with the Hamburger Fremdenblatt. In 1919, he returned, engaged by then, to Cuxhaven in order to build up a Social Democratic newspaper there, with political and financial support by the Hamburg regional association of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD).

After the proclamation of the "Socialist Republic of Cuxhaven” in Jan. 1919, indications were favorable toward reaching a broad readership. However, the revolution ended on 1 Aug. 1919, with the reinstatement of office administrator Friedrich Sthamer by the Hamburg Senate.

In Oct. 1919, Wilhelm Heidsiek was elected editor and board member of the newspaper enterprise still to be established, actually serving as editor, typesetter, and printer in one. The newspaper, called Alte Liebe ("Old Love”) after Cuxhaven’s landmark [in the harbor] and featuring as a subtitle "Cuxhavener Volksblatt für das hamburgische Amt Ritzebüttel und Umgegend,” appeared for the first time on 1 Dec. 1919.

Heidsiek achieved the breakthrough toward publishing a medium popular beyond Social Democratic party lines during the Kapp Putsch: Despite the general strike and matrices from the Hamburger Echo failing to arrive, the Alte Liebe was able, in contrast to other newspapers, to continue publication.

Taking over its own printing company on 1 Jan. 1921, the Alte Liebe reached a circulation of 3,000 copies until its ban on 15 Mar. 1933. Parallel to the establishment of the Alte Liebe, Heidsiek’s rise unfolded in the governing bodies of the SPD’s city association, then numbering approx. 1,400 members. Until 1933, he belonged to the party executive of the Cuxhaven Social Democrats, first as a deputy chairman, then, starting in 1929, as the first chairman.

Also in 1929, he became the parliamentary party leader of the SPD in the city council, then numbering 13 persons, and he took over the leadership of the local branch of the "Black, Red, and Gold Banner of the Reich” ("Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold”), which he had cofounded five years earlier. Heidsiek’s interests were not limited exclusively to politics: His cultural and social involvement in and for Cuxhaven manifested itself in numerous honorary posts; he was a member of, among others, the church district, served in the parochial church council, and worked on the board of the Cuxhaven municipal theater.

As a local branch leader of the "Banner of the Reich,” Heidsiek was exposed to hostilities and provocations on the part of the National Socialists time after time. In particular, after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, there were repeatedly violent clashes between the [paramilitary] party formations. For the most part provoked by SA units, this "street terror” furnished the basis of administrative intervention against the members of the "Banner of the Reich,” who were not protected by the state. In an article published in the Alte Liebe on 20 Feb. 1933, Heidsiek, however, called the guilty persons by their names, arguing with a view to the SPD followers: "Anyone who proclaims annihilation to the ideology of 12 million Germans, anyone who on top of that also ostracizes all parts of the German people who today do not follow the ‘national authoritarian’ government is escalating the conflict all the way to the boiling point. […] Anyone who preaches hatred, […] so that there are no longer political opponents but merely bitter enemies should not be surprised if a spark anywhere is enough to produce explosions.” Wilhelm Heidsiek was a member of the Hamburg City Parliament only for a short time, not even getting an opportunity to assume his seat as a representative of the people.

The Hamburg City Parliament constituted on 5 Apr. 1933, which Heidsiek entered as one of 35 SPD members, no longer was a democratically legitimized parliament. No free elections had taken place anymore after the forced dissolution by the "Provisional Law for the Forcible Coordination of the States with the Reich” ("Vorläufiges Gesetz zur Gleichschaltung der Länder mit dem Reich”) dated 31 Mar. 1933; instead, the city parliament had been reshuffled according to the results of the Reichstag elections in Hamburg on 5 Mar. 1933. When this "forcibly coordinated” ("gleichgeschaltet”) city parliament assembled for the first time on 10 May 1933, the seats of the German Communist Party (KPD) had already been taken away by senate decree on 5 April. However, Heidsiek, too, was not present, as the speaker of parliament by seniority, Henningsen of the Wirtschaftsbund ("economic league”), announced in his opening speech that he was not shedding "any tears” over Hamburg’s last democratic city parliament. In protest against the confiscation of its party assets and property ordered that same day, but also in fear of being exposed to provocations and persecutions, the SPD had not shown up for the opening session. At the same time, however, it emphasized in writing via its parliamentary party leader, Podeyn, its willingness for "positive, fact-oriented cooperation” in the new city parliament. Only six weeks later, on 23 June 1933, the SPD members, including Wilhelm Heidsiek, were excluded from the city parliament by senate decree.

After the SPD was banned on 22 June 1933, the illegal party leadership effected, for safety reasons, the dismissal and replacement of important party functionaries, including Wilhelm Heidsiek, by less well-known party members in Cuxhaven, too. Nevertheless, after the ban Heidsiek was taken into "protective custody” ("Schutzhaft”) several times. In June 1933, a court sentenced him for participation in an unauthorized demonstration leading up to the Reichstag elections on 5 Mar. to a prison term of ten weeks overall, which he served from 2 Oct. to 16 Dec. 1933 in the Otterndorf prison. According to oral evidence, he was detained for another seven months in Fuhlsbüttel later on.

The ban of the Social Democratic press was tantamount to an occupational ban for Wilhelm Heidsiek. The Alte Liebe appeared for the last time on 15 Mar. 1933; the assets of the "Cuxhavener Volksblatt GmbH” were confiscated by the Nazis on 10 May in the course of an operation across the Reich directed against newspapers and offices of the SPD.

From 1 Aug. 1933 onward, the National Socialist Cuxhavener Tageblatt was published in the newspaper-publishing house at Kaemmererplatz, completed in mid-1932, where the Heidsieks lived as well. Wilhelm Heidsiek was able to earn a modest living for himself and his family by trading in soaps and laundry detergents as well as by working as a tax consultant. At the same time, his traveling activities associated with this work also gave him an opportunity to maintain contact to illegal party circles in Northern Germany and groups of exiles in Scandinavia.

Within his closest circle of friends, he passed on writings of the illegal party organization, made available either to him or to his close friend, the Social Democrat August Lück.

After the failed attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944, Wilhelm Heidsiek was arrested. From August to October, he was detained in the Cuxhaven prison, though he was not released but instead taken to the Neuengamme concentration camp. He died there on 7 Nov. 1944 in circumstances as yet unexplained.

In Cuxhaven, a street bears Wilhelm Heidsiek’s name today. A publishing house named after him prints and distributes writings by the "Förderverein zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Stadt und Landkreis Cuxhaven” ("Society for the Promotion of the History of the Working Class in the City and Rural District of Cuxhaven”).

Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2016
© Text mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Bürgerschaft der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg (Hrsg.) entnommen aus: Jörn Lindner/Frank Müller: "Mitglieder der Bürgerschaft – Opfer totalitärer Verfolgung", 3., überarbeitete und ergänzte Auflage, Hamburg 2012