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Arthur Schmidt * 1908

Zeughausstraße / Ecke Rothesoodstraße (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ARTHUR SCHMIDT
JG. 1908
IM WIDERSTAND / KPD
VERHAFTET 29.3.1933
"VORBEREITUNG HOCHVERRAT"
HINGERICHTET 19.5.1934
GEFÄNGNIS HOLSTENGLACIS

Arthur Wilhelm Schmidt, born on 24 Jan. 1908 in Hamburg, executed on 19 May 1934 in the pretrial detention facility at Holstenglacis 3

Zeughausstrasse / intersection of Rothesoodstrasse (formerly Zeughausstrasse 37)

Arthur Wilhelm Schmidt was born in Hamburg on 24 Jan. 1908. He had learned the carpenter’s trade. On 16 Feb. 1929, he married the worker Henny Auguste Jante (born on 1 Dec. 1908). At the time of their wedding, both lived at Marienstrasse 47 (from 1940 onward, Jan-Valkenburg-Strasse). Arthur Schmidt was politically organized; he had joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the KPD’s protection and defense organization, the Alliance of Red Front Fighters (Roter Frontkämpferbund – RFB), founded in 1924.
The RFB secured polling stations and KPD rallies during the Weimar Republic and was involved in various street fights with members of the Nazi party (NSDAP) and SA, even when the RFB was banned after "Bloody May” ("Blutmai”) in 1929.

According to his wife Henny, Arthur Schmidt was one of the most active fighters in the Alliance and was arrested on 29 Mar. 1933 after a demonstration. He was accused of participating in raids by the "Rote-Marine-Neustadt” (Hamburg-Neustadt "Red Marine” or Red Navy) on NSDAP associations.

On 15 Mar. 1934, the Hanseatic special court (Hanseatisches Sondergericht) sentenced him to eight years in prison for "breach of the peace.” The trial was about the 26 Feb. 1933 attack on the Nazi meeting place ("NS-Verkehrslokal”) on Brodschrangen, during which three passers-by and a policeman were injured.
A second trial was about street fighting between the "Rote-Marine-Neustadt” and associations of the NSDAP. On 19 May 1932, they had clashed on the intersection of Herrengraben and Pulverthurmbrücke; an SA man was fatally injured by knife wounds, as well as others on 26 June 1932, on Helgoländer Allee and on 2 Nov. 1932, on Admiralitätsstrasse. The fourth case was the attack on the SA’s marine storm meeting place (SA-Marine-Sturmlokal), the "Adler-Hotel,” on Schanzenstrasse on the evening of 21 Feb. 1933. Two uninvolved passers-by had been killed.
Arthur Schmidt and the co-defendants Jonny Dettmer, Hermann Fischer, Alfred Wehrenberg, Robert Richartz, Walter Dröse, Franz Ruhnow, and Klaus Stockfleth were sentenced to death on 2 May 1934 for "aggravated breach of the peace in combination with conspiracy to commit murder” (the death sentence of the latter four was commuted to life imprisonment by Reich Governor (Reichsstatthalter) Karl Kaufmann on 18 May 1934). On 19 May 1934, on a Saturday morning at 6:15 a.m., the sentence against the 26-year-old Arthur Schmidt was carried out in the courtyard of the Holstenglacis pretrial detention center.

Henny Schmidt was present in the courtroom on the day the sentence was pronounced. She was arrested for illegal assembly on the day of the urn burial at her husband’s grave in Ohlsdorf Cemetery, as were most of the mourners. From 9 June 1934 to 28 July 1934, she was detained in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison. Her library with books by Maxim Gorki etc. had been confiscated by the Gestapo after a house search.
Henny Schmidt had to sell part of her household goods and moved in with friends, who, however, were themselves imprisoned shortly thereafter. On 29 Dec. 1935, she entered into a second marital union, with Ernst Liebers, and lived at Stresowstrasse 24 in Billwerder Ausschlag (today Rothenburgsort). Henny Liebers continued to be politically active. According to her own statements, she provided the well-known labor leader and member of parliament of the KPD, Etkar André (see corresponding entry), and his partner Martha Berg with food parcels and fresh laundry after their arrest.

Etkar André was executed on 4 Nov. 1936, in Hamburg’s Holstenglacis pretrial detention facility. He has been commemorated by Stolpersteine in front of Hamburg City Hall and at Adlerstrasse 12 in Hamburg-Barmbek, and so has Jonny Dettmer by a Stolperstein at Auenstrasse 2a (see Stolpersteine in Hamburg-Eilbek).

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2021
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quelle: StaH 351-11 AfW 32988 (Liebers, Henny); StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13201 Nr. 79/1929; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 1023 Nr. 170/1934; StaH 731-9 Polizeibehörde 202; StaH 213-11 LO 08413/47 Band 3; StaH 213-11 LO 125/36.