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Bruno Prieß
© VVN/BdA

Bruno Prieß * 1911

Grevenweg 11 - 13 (Hamburg-Mitte, Hamm)

Internationale Brigaden
Spanien
gefallen am Ebro
21.09.1938

further stumbling stones in Grevenweg 11 - 13:
Erwin Elias, Gerda Elias

Bruno Prieß, born 20.6.1911 in Hamburg, Spain fighter, death at the Ebro on 21.9.1938

Grevenweg 11-13 (formerly: 39)

Bruno Heinrich Friedrich Prieß was the middle of three brothers born into a politically committed working-class family. Their parents, the "Schauermann" (dock worker who loaded and unloaded ships) Carl Gustav Prieß and the worker Marie, née Drews, came from Schleswig-Holstein. They were protestants. Carl Prieß was born in Tangstedt on Jan. 24, 1879, and his wife Marie, in Bühnsdorf on Sept. 13, 1885. At the time of their marriage on June 29, 1907, Marie was still living in Fahrenkrug near Segeberg (today: Bad Segeberg), a village with a good infrastructure and small businesses, Carl Prieß was registered at Grevenweg 39 in the working-class district of Hamburg-Hamm.

The two older sons were born in Hamburg before the family left the city with the First World War. Victor had been born on Aug. 21, 1908, Bruno on June 20, 1911, Heinz only on Febr. 4, 1920, after the family had returned to Hamburg.

Marie Prieß moved with the children to Fahrenkrug during the war, where she worked in the mill. She belonged to the Social Democrats (SPD) and was elected to the workers' and soldiers' council (Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat) there in 1918. Victor and Bruno also began their school years in Fahrenkrug.

Carl Prieß suffered combat gas poisoning as a soldier. After the end of the war, he and his family settled back in Hamburg-Hamm, where Bruno attended the elementary school for boys in Wendenstraße, while his younger brother graduated from the reform-oriented elementary school in Burgstraße.

All three sons took up respected apprenticeships. Victor became a mechanical engineer, Bruno a printer and Heinz a car mechanic, followed by studies at the Technical University, which qualified him as an aircraft designer.

After completing his apprenticeship, Bruno Prieß obtained a job as a lithographer "at Broschek," publisher and printer of the "Hamburger Fremdenblatt," the leading daily newspaper at the time. He became a member of the trade union and joined the KJVD, the Communist Youth League of Germany. Like his mother and brother Victor in the meantime, he became a member of the Communist party, the KPD, and like his brother, he joined the RFB, the Red Front Fighters' League.

On June 6, 1930, the Hamburg District Court sentenced Bruno to one month's imprisonment for unlawful possession of weapons and resistance to state authority. The circumstances leading to this and the following trial could not be clarified. On September 16, 1931, he was sentenced to one week's imprisonment for "non-compliance with police orders".

On April 27, 1932, the Hamburg District Court again brought charges against Bruno Prieß. Together with three comrades, he had been arrested for unauthorized possession of weapons on February 2, 1932, on his way to Hoops, the National Socialists' regular pub in Hamburg-Horn. A Mauser pistol with seven cartridges was found on him. That evening, a meeting was to take place at Hoops, to which a communist had been invited as a speaker. The four had wanted to protect him, they said, and they had carried loaded weapons with them for that purpose. Because of the previous convictions, the public prosecutor requested an eleven-month prison sentence for Bruno Prieß and prison sentences of six and nine months for his three comrades. Bruno Prieß appealed and obtained the dismissal of the case.

On December 1, 1933, Bruno Prieß and Jenni Flügge, who also belonged to the KPD, from Rumpffsweg 13 in Hamm, got married. A short time later he was arrested again, again for illegal possession of weapons. When his son Bruno Viktor Werner was born on March 2, 1934, Bruno Prieß Sr. was in custody. After his release he emigrated to Denmark.

Already before him, at Christmas 1933, his brother Victor had left Hamburg for Oslo. From there he went to Copenhagen, where he was expelled from the KPD, partly because he had acted without the party's permission. The brothers went to Spain in 1936, where they joined the International Brigades in the struggle for the Spanish Republic. Bruno and Jenni Prieß's marriage was divorced. Jenni Prieß entered into a second marriage in February 1938.

Bruno Prieß survived the Battle of Guadalajara and was made a lieutenant, and later a company commander in the "Hans Beimler" Battalion of the XI Interbrigade. He died in the fighting on the Ebro River between Asqio and Flix on September 21, 1938, aged 27.
A stumbling stone commemorates him in front of his parents' home.

Viktor Prieß left Spain, but was interned in France in 1939. Via some intermediate stations he reached the Soviet Union.

One week before the death of his son Bruno, Carl Prieß had succumbed to heart failure at the age of 59 in the Barmbek Hospital on September 14, 1938. His widow Marie moved in with her youngest son Heinz as subtenants with his former vocational school teacher Ernst Mittelbach (see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de) at Wellingsbüttler Landstraße 186 in Klein-Borstel.

Heinz Prieß graduated in 1940. He obtained a job at Blohm & Voss as an aircraft designer. There he learned of Bernhard Bästlein's resistance activities and joined his group together with his mother. In 1942, Marie and Heinz Prieß took in a comrade who had returned from the Soviet Union and organized their care. They were discovered, arrested on October 15, 1942 for "favoring the enemy" and "preparation for high treason," and placed in pretrial detention.

Before the trial could take place, Hamburg was largely destroyed by Allied bombing in the summer of 1943. In the firestorm that destroyed the neighborhoods surrounding Hamm, Bruno Prieß's nine-year-old son Bruno and his mother Jenni died at Rumpffsweg 13 on July 28, 1943.

In order to relieve the affected prisons, prisoners were granted leave for two months, among them Marie and Heinz Prieß. They went into hiding, were recaptured in June 1944 and sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944. Heinz Prieß was executed in the Brandenburg-Görden penitentiary on March 12, 1945; he lived to the age of 25.

Marie Prieß escaped execution in the turmoil of transportation at the end of the war and returned to Hamburg.

Victor Priess spent almost a decade in Soviet labor camps and returned to his mother as a late returnee in 1956. He died in Hamburg in 1999 at the age of 91.

Heinz Priess's ashes were interred in the Resistance fighters' grove of honor at Ohlsdorf Cemetery on September 8, 1946.

On June 20, 1974, Bruno Prieß was given a place of honor next to him. The urn is filled with earth from the place of his death.

Marie Prieß died on January 9, 1983 at the age of 97 in Reinbek near Hamburg.

Translation Beate Meyer

Stand: February 2023
© Hildegard Thevs

Quellen: Hamburger Adressbücher; StaHH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht, 78532; 332-5 Personenstandsregister; 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 8069; Totenliste VVN 1968; Hochmuth, Ursel, Niemand und Nichts wird vergessen, Hamburg 2005; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A4stlein-Jacob-Abshagen-Gruppe; http://baseportal.de/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/jarmerdhm/main&localparams=1&db=main&cmd=list&range=90,10&cmd=all&Id=112.