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Anton Saefkow während seiner Haft in Bremen, 1934
© StaH

Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow * 1903

Fuhlentwiete 10 (Hamburg-Mitte, Neustadt)

HIER WOHNTE
ANTON EMIL
HERMANN SAEFKOW
JG. 1903
VERHAFTET 1933
BREMEN-OSLEBSHAUSEN
DACHAU
ZUCHTHAUS BRANDENBURG
HINGERICHTET 18.9.1944
BRANDENBURG-GÖRDEN

Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow, born 22 July 1903 in Berlin, imprisoned 1933-1939, 1944, executed 18 Sept. 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden

Fuhlentwiete in front of the handrails of building number 10 (Fuhlentwiete 28)

Anton Saefkow came from a Berlin working-class family. His father Anton Carl Robert was a tailor and a native of Mechow in Mecklenburg Strelitz where he was born on 14 Mar. 1871. His mother Fanny, née Ludwig, later named Weise in her second marriage, had worked as a launderer. She was born in Ohrdruf, south of Gotha, on 5 Dec. 1875. His parents married in Weimar on 13 Oct. 1897 and were divorced in 1930. He had a sister Leonore who was five years older (born 4 Oct. 1898) (later married under the name Löffler).

Anton Saefkow went to elementary school and high school in Berlin, then completed an apprenticeship as a machine fitter at the metal works company Stumpf & Co. While still undergoing training, he joined the Free Socialist Youth group at the age of 15. In 1924 he became a member of the German Communist Party (KPD).

In 1926, during the world economic crisis, he was let go from his job as a fitter and scraped by working as a messenger and newspaper driver, among other things. He was active in the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) for the district of Berlin-Brandenburg until 1927. After attending a party school at Burg Hohnstein in Saxony, Anton Saefkow became an intern, later party secretary and was responsible for finances and union work. In 1928 he spent one year in Dresden where he managed the union department of the KPD for the district East Saxony. That role took him to Essen in Apr. 1929. After the launch of the Revolutionary Union Opposition (RGO), he took over management of the group in the Ruhr Valley.

In July 1932 Anton Saefkow was transferred to Hamburg. As organization director, he was to pass on his knowledge of working with companies, unions and on unemployment to the party leaders of the KPD district Wasserkante.

Anton Saefkow was living at Jean-Paul-Weg 5 in Winterhude when he married the 22-year-old Theodora (Thea) Brey on 8 Dec. 1932. She came from a Gelsenkirchen family of miners and had completed commercial training. She had joined the KJVD as a young girl and became a member of the KPD in 1930. She had also worked for the district management of the RGO in the Ruhr Valley. They probably met while working there.

On 16 Apr. 1933, Easter Sunday, Anton and Thea Saefkow were arrested. That same day, the well-known KPD functionary Fiete (Fritz) Schulze (born 22 Oct. 1894 in Schiffbek, see Stolpersteine in Hamburg Billstedt-Horn-Borgfelde) was also arrested. Anton Saefkow had illegally run the KPD with him and others after the party was banned (see Fiete Lux).

During interrogation at the Stadthaus, the headquarters of the Hamburg State Police (later Gestapo), Anton Saefkow was so badly maltreated, he was at risk of dying. The Basel newspaper Rundschau über Politik, Wirtschaft und Arbeiterbewegung reported on his case in autumn 1933.

On 23 Oct. 1934 the Hanseatic Regional Court sentenced him to two years in prison for "preparations for high treason” as a leading functionary of the KPD and because of his work setting up and continuing the party in the underground. Anton Saefkow was transferred to Bremen-Oslebshausen. On 8 Feb. 1935 he was moved to Hamburg to testify in the trial of Fiete Schulze, portrayed by the National-Socialist Judiciary as the intellectual mind behind all actions of the Hamburg communists. In his role as "witness” in the trial, Anton Saefkow tried to exonerate him.

After the end of his incarceration on 23 May 1936, Anton Saefkow remained in "protective custody”. Initially he was transferred to Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison and from there sent to Dauchau concentration camp for "re-education”. On 10 Dec. he was returned to Hamburg. Only four days later he once again found himself in prison under investigation.

In a second trial on 28 June 1938, the Hanseatic Regional Court sentenced him to a further 2½-year prison sentence for starting communist cells and continued dissemnation of propaganda; among other things, he was accused of holding a memorial service, along with other political prisoners, for Fiete Schulze who was executed on 6 June 1935.

While he was still serving his sentence, Anton and Thea Saefkow were divorced on 13 Jan. 1939. Thea was not sentenced, she was released and later immigrated to France via Prague and the Soviet Union. In Paris she was arrested along with her friend the resistance fighter Irene Wosikowski (born 9 Feb. 1910 in Danzig, executed in Berlin-Plötzensee on 27 Oct. 1944) and detained at Gurs internment camp from where she was able to flee in 1940.

Anton Saefkow was released from prison on 28 June 1939 under the provision that he was not to stay in Hamburg, and he returned to Berlin. In Potsdam he worked at a car rental agency and married a second time on 9 Aug. 1941 in Berlin-Pankow, Aenne Thiebes, born in Düsseldorf in 1902. She had joined the KPD in 1920 and brought her 14-year-old daughter Edith into the marriage. The couple had a daughter together named Bärbel who was born in 1942. Until their later arrest, the Saefkows lived in Hohen Neuendorf. They had built a summer house there and it was there that they continued their illegal work. Anton Saefkow had once again become politically active in Berlin and built one of the largest resistance groups during the war, initially with Franz Jacob (see his entry) who fled Hamburg after the resistance organization Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen Group, as it came to be known, was crushed. Anton Saefkow had first found him illegal accommodations in Berlin. The two men knew each other not just as party functionaries from their days in Hamburg, Franz Jacob was also a witness at Anton’s wedding when he married Thea Brey in his first marriage. Their joint political work concentrated on ending National Socialism and the war as quickly as possible, and to create a foundation for the movement "National Committee for a Free Gemany” (NFKD) which had been launched in the Soviet Union in June 1943 on the initiative of German communist emigrants and war prisoners. On 29 Jan. 1944 Bernhard Bästlein (see his entry) fled Plötzensee Prison during a British air raid. He joined the two other men in the Berlin leadership, and the so-called triumvirate of the Saefkow-Jacob-Bästlein Organization was complete. Their contact with other resistance groups extended far past the borders of Berlin and encompassed about 400-500 individuals, not just in Berlin and Hamburg but also in the Rhine-Ruhr Valley and in other cities.

On 22 June 1944 a meeting took place with the leading Social Democrats Julius Leber (born 16 Nov. 1891 in Biesheim, Alsace) and Adolf Reichwein (born 3 Oct. 1898 in Ems). The two were among the circle of conspirators surrounding Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg (born 15 Nov. 1907 in Jettingen, shot to death in 1944). The planned second meeting never came to pass. Betrayed by an informer, Anton Saefkow, Franz Jacob and Adolf Reichwein were arrested on 4 July 1944, and a few days later Julius Leber was as well.

On 5 Sept. 1944, the People’s Court in Berlin sentenced Anton Saefkow along with Franz Jacob and Bernhard Bästlein, who had been apprehended on 30 May 1944, to death for high treason. They were beheaded in Brandenburg-Görden on 18 Sept. 1944. Adolf Reichwein and Julius Leber were sentenced to death on 20 Oct. in a show trial and executed at Berlin-Plötzensee.

Anton’s wife Aenne Saefkow, who had also been arrested on 5 July 1944, was sent to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp without having been sentenced. She was liberated by the Red Army during an evacuation march on 1 May 1945. After the war, she became a city councilor and later mayor of Pankow and Prenzlauer Berg. She was among the first women to initiate the founding of a memorial at Ravensbrück. Aenne Saefkow died on 4 Aug. 1962 in East Berlin.

Recently the resistance fighter was honored in Berlin: The street Anton-Saefkow-Straße and square Anton-Saefkow-Platz were named after him. In Brandenburg he is memorialized by Anton-Saefkow-Allee.

Translator: Suzanne von Engelhardt
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2020
© Susanne Rosendahl

Quellen: StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II Abl. 10, St. 298; StaH 242-1 II Gefängnisverwaltung II 4058; StaH 332-5 Standesämter 13908 u 792/1932; Hochmuth: Niemand, S. 78-79, S. 147; Weber/Herbst: Kommunisten, S. 641; Hochmuth: Fiete Schulz, S. 15 u. 40; Meyer: Nacht, S. 22, S. 88, S. 94; Auskünfte von Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, 2009 und 2015; www.ancestry.de (Geburtsurkunde von Leonore Saefkow am 4.10.1898 in Berlin, Zugriff 12.7.2016); www.ancestry.de (Heiratsurkunde von Anton Karl Robert Saefkow und Fanny Ludwig am 30.10.1897 in Weimar, Zugriff 12.7.2016).