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Karl-Heinz Meyer * 1920

Hammer Landstraße /Ecke Hammer Steindamm (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

HIER WOHNTE
KARL-HEINZ MEYER
JG. 1920
DESERTIERT
VERHAFTET 1942
ARRESTANSTALT ALTONA
TORGAU FORT ZINNA
1943 STRAFBATAILLON 500
GEFÄNGNIS STUTTGART
ENTHAUPTET 24.8.1944

Karl-Heinz Meyer, born on 19 Oct. 1920 in Hamburg, detained for "desertion” in the Stuttgart prison, executed on 24 Aug. 1944

Intersection of Hammer Steindamm/Hammer Landstrasse (formerly: Bei der Hammer Kirche 35)

Karl-Heinz Meyer was born in Hamburg on 19 Oct. 1920, the son of Elisabeth Frieda Karoline Meyer, née Hassler, born on 12 Jan. 1891, who came from Flensburg, and Gustav Ernst Meyer, born in Hamburg on 22 Nov. 1889. Gustav Meyer had trained as a commercial clerk and later worked as an accountant.

The Meyer couple lived in an apartment in the Hamm quarter at Eiffestrasse 586 and belonged to the Lutheran Church. Their son Karl-Heinz probably finished his school education in 1935 and became a driver by occupation.

In 1940, Karl-Heinz Meyer was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He began his service close to home with the Infantry Replacement Battalion 69 in Wandsbek. In Mar. 1941, he was transferred to the Infantry Replacement Battalion 156 in Wuppertal-Barmen and in the same month to the Infantry Regiment 408, with which he participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

On 22 Sept. 1941, Karl-Heinz Meyer was wounded by an infantry projectile near Maskovskaya in Latvia. He was promoted to corporal and assigned to the convalescent company of Infantry Replacement Battalion 494. After his convalescence, he returned to his unit for the time being, but he was then reported by his company as a "deserter” on 9 May 1942.

It is unknown whether he did not return to the front after a home leave or whether he otherwise evaded the troops’ reach. Apparently, he was arrested in Hamburg and imprisoned in the Hamburg-Altona military detention center. On 25 June 1942, the field court martial of Division z.b.V. 410 (= "for special use”) with headquarters in Hamburg sentenced him to five years in prison and loss of "worthiness to do military service.” The military criminal law of the Wehrmacht stipulated that the convicted had to serve their sentence after the end of the war. Until then they were to be kept in prison camps (Stalag).

Karl-Heinz Meyer was transferred to Stalag III Brual-Rhede/Ems, one of 15 Emsland camps, in early Aug. 1942. In the Emsland camps, the prisoners, also known as "Peat Bog Soldiers” ("Moorsoldaten”), were forced to work in the moor. An estimated 20,000 persons imprisoned there did not survive the time in the camp.

In Nazi Germany, the social ostracism of a criminal conviction affected the entire family. Karl-Heinz Meyer’s parents moved out of the apartment in Eiffestrasse 586, which had been their home for more than 15 years. They were accommodated with the Möhring family, residing at Bei der Hammer Kirche 35.

In the Emsland camps, in addition to hard forced labor, the prisoners were regularly subjected to violence and harassment by the guards. These prison conditions were aggravated by the particularly cold winter months of 1942/43. In Feb. 1943, Karl-Heinz Meyer was transferred to the Lingen/Ems prison due to "unfitness for the peat bog” ("Moorunfähigkeit”).

For the "examination with a view to probation troops,” he was detained in the Wehrmacht prison of Torgau-Fort Zinna from June to July 1943. By a "Führer’s Decree” dating from 1940, so-called probation battalions (Bewährungsbatallions) of the Wehrmacht were established starting 1942. Convicted soldiers classified as "conditionally fit for military service” were deployed at particularly dangerous sections of the front or for "combating of bandits,” i.e., military action against the civilian population and (alleged) partisans.

The war started by the Nazis had long since turned against German cities. In the course of "Operation Gomorrah,” Hamburg was hit by heavy air raids from 24 July to 3 Aug. 1943. The eastern districts of Hamburg, including Hamm, were severely damaged. The apartment at Bei der Hammer Kirche 35 and the church opposite were also affected. The Meyer couple left the bombed-out house at the beginning of Sept. 1943 and found accommodation, again as subtenants, at Lokstedterweg 100a House No. II in Eppendorf. Clara Hassler, Elisabeth Meyer’s mother, worked there as a maid.

Karl-Heinz Meyer himself was again stationed on the Eastern Front since the end of July 1943. In Skierniewice, Poland, he was assigned to the Fourth Company of Infantry Replacement Battalion 500. In early Dec. 1943, he was wounded once more. From mid- January to February, he remained in the convalescent company of Infantry Replacement Battalion 500, and on 3 Mar. 1944, he was ordered back to his unit.

In early May 1944, Karl-Heinz Meyer deserted for a second time. With the report dated 4 May 1944, the Fourth Company of Infantry Battalion 550 z.b.V. ("for special use”) reported him as a "deserter.”

Karl-Heinz Meyer apparently managed to make his way as far as southern Germany until he was caught in the jurisdiction of the Court of Division No. 465, Ulm Branch, and brought before that court.

Only three months passed from the time of escape to the execution. The Ulm court belonged to Division No. 465 with headquarters in Ludwigsburg. The two highest-ranking judges, who had already worked at the Ulm Regional Court (Landgericht) before the war began, remained (very unusual for military judges) at the Ulm Military Court for almost the entire duration of the war. They passed the death sentence on Karl-Heinz Meyer in the summer of 1944. In his case, the court did not exhaust the discretionary scope of the Nazis’ military penal code, which definitely existed, with regard to the sentencing. On the contrary: While deserting soldiers were usually placed before firing squads for reasons of deterrence, Karl-Heinz Meyer was sentenced to death by decapitation. For this purpose, the 23-year-old was transferred to the pretrial detention facility in Stuttgart, where he was executed by guillotine on 24 Aug. 1944 at 5 a.m.

When desertions occurred, massive investigative measures were immediately initiated by the Wehrmacht, police and Gestapo, and all persons living in the deserter’s circle were subjected to extensive interrogation. Meyer’s parents presumably had knowledge of their son’s desertion. However, the relatives of deserters did not receive information about arrest, sentence, and execution in all cases. Public obituaries or funeral services for the executed persons were prohibited. In addition, there was no right to have the body transferred to the hometown of the executed. In the case of Karl-Heinz Meyer, the body was handed over to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Tübingen on the very day of his execution.

Epilogue:
Parts of the remains of Karl-Heinz Meyer and hundreds of other Nazi victims were still being abused as preparations at the University of Tübingen after the end of the war. Still in the winter semester of 1946/47, an autopsy course at the university "practiced” on Meyer’s mortal remains. The mortal remains not needed were buried in burial site X of the Tübingen mountain cemetery (Bergfriedhof). It was not until 1990 that the University Hospital of Tübingen also released the last remains of Nazi victims from its anatomical collection for burial and had a memorial stone erected for them.

After the end of the war, in Feb. 1951, the first conviction of Karl-Heinz Meyer for desertion by military court was quashed by order of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (Hanseatisches Oberlandesgericht). Post-war judicial documents on the illegality of the later death sentence of Karl-Heinz Meyer are not documented. On the contrary: In 1946, Hermann Bames, one of the two presiding judges of the Ulm branch of the Division Court No. 465, justified his involvement in death sentences by writing: "Political considerations played no role in this. In all four cases, the condemned were, as I recall, criminals convicted of common crimes.”

The Spruchkammer [a German civilian court handling denazification] proceedings against the former chief military court judge Hermann Bames were discontinued by order dated 14 Aug. 1946. It states, "The investigations carried out into B., who had been resident in Ulm since 1933 and had worked as a judge, revealed an impeccable political position [...].” Hermann Bames continued to work at the Ulm Regional Court until his retirement and he was even appointed Chairman of the Ulm Spruchkammer in 1946.

Karl-Heinz Meyer’s parents left the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in Apr. 1945 and moved to Marxen in Lower Saxony. They returned years later. In May 1972, Elisabeth Frieda Karoline Meyer, née Hassler, passed away in Barmbek-Uhlenhorst; her husband, Gustav Ernst Meyer, died a few months later, in Sept. 1972.

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

Stand: September 2020
© Oliver Thron

Quellen: Hamburger Adressbücher; StaH 332-5 Personenstandsregister; 332-8 Meldewesen, K 2312, K 2335, K 5050; BArch, Pers15/113418; Wehrmachtsauskunftsstelle Auskunft vom 19.5.2017; Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart EA 4/150 Bü 52; Standesamt Stuttgart, Sterbeurkunde Nr.4051/1944; Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg EL 902/21 Bü141; Universitätsklinik Tübingen, 174/118a; Schönhagen, Benigna, Das Gräberfeld X. Eine Dokumentation über NS-Opfer auf dem Tübinger Stadtfriedhof. 1987; Deserteure und "Wehrkraftzersetzer": Ein Gedenkbuch für die Opfer der NS-Militärjustiz in Ulm / Autor Oliver Thron, hrsg. Von Nicola Wenige, Dokumentationszentrum Oberer Kuhberg Ulm e.V., 2011.