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Reinhold Meyer * 1920

Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Hauptgebäude Universität Hamburg) (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)


HIER LERNTE
REINHOLD MEYER
JG. 1920
IM WIDERSTAND
WEISSE ROSE
VERHAFTET 1943
KZ FUHLSBÜTTEL
ERMORDET 12.11.1944

see:

further stumbling stones in Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1 (Hauptgebäude Universität Hamburg):
Raphael Broches, Ernst Delbanco, Friedrich Geussenhainer, Hedwig Klein, Agathe Lasch, Gerhard Lassar, Hans Konrad Leipelt, Martha Muchow, Kurt Perels, Margaretha Rothe

Reinhold Hans-Heinrich Meyer, born 18.7.1920 Hamburg, died 12.11.1944 in Fuhlsbüttel police prison

Edmund-Siemer-Allee 1 (University of Hamburg)
Hallerplatz 15

Reinhold Meyer was born in Hamburg on July 18, 1920, the son of the bookseller Johannes Paul Meyer and his wife Christine Louise. He had two siblings: Walter and Anneliese. At the age of 12, Reinhold Meyer suffered from osteomyelitis (inflammation of the bone marrow, also bone tuberculosis) and spent two years in a hospital because of it. After that he needed a cane to walk.

Reinhold Meyer attended the Wichern School and then the Wilhelm High School. He grew up in a liberal, humanistic family, he was a very religious person. In 1940 he graduated from high school and matriculated at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Hamburg to study German language and literature. At the same time he worked as the junior manager of the "Bookshop of the Agency of the Rough House" at Jungfernstieg 50, which also operated a gallery. His father managed the agency of the "Rauhes Haus" and the bookstore ("Rauhes Haus” is still a social service institution, founded in 1833 and located in Hamburg, Germany. It belongs to the German Inner Mission and shelters and trains children, the mentally handicapped and disturbed, and cares for the aged. It also trains people for social service careers)

In addition to his studies, Reinhold Meyer completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller in 1942.

Through his school friend Albert Suhr (1920-1996) as well as in the "Musenkabinett", a literary interested circle under the direction of the philosopher and pedagogue, Prof. Wilhelm Flitner (1889-1990), Reinhold Meyer got to know fellow students critical of the regime. Meyer learned about the leaflets of the Munich "White Rose" from Albert Suhr.

The bookstore of the "Rauhes Haus" developed into one of the Hamburg meeting places for young men and women critical of the Nazis, along with the Kloss bookstore and the Hamburg bookstore Felix Jud. Several interwoven circles of friends had developed in Hamburg, many of whom did not know each other. In the bookstore of the "Rauhes Haus" - or rather, in its basement - it was possible to read or buy forbidden literature and to debate topics that were daring. In addition to students, actors, writers and others also attended. They were all united by an opposition to the Nazi regime, even if at first they "only" limited themselves to individual refusal and nonconformism. But after the execution of the Scholl siblings and Christoph Probst in Munich on February 22, 1943, they decided to become active externally as well. They reprinted the last leaflet of the White Rose with the addition "Their spirit lives on nonetheless" and passed it on.

Unfortunately, one of these circles included the French-Jewish writer Maurice Sachs (1906-1945, actually Maurice Ettinghausen), who frequented the bookshop of the "Rauhes Haus" from August 1943 and took part in the discussions. Later, he turned out to be an informer of the Gestapo, who extradited many resisters from the circle of the Hamburg "White Rose".

When the first arrests took place in the fall of 1943 (eventually involving a total of 30 people), Reinhold Meyer still tried to go into hiding in the provinces. However, the Gestapo tracked him down on December 19 in Blankenburg in the Harz Mountains at the home of acquaintances of his father and arrested him on suspicion of high treason. He was initially placed in solitary confinement in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison.

In June 1944, Meyer and several other of his arrested friends were transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp, where Reinhold Meyer worked in the nursery and later in the commandant's office typing pool and "lay in a room" with Albert Suhr and Felix Jud. On October 16, 1944, they were brought back to Fuhlsbüttel - probably to break their resistance.

Reinhold Meyer's family stood by him: his brother Walter had been killed at Stalingrad, but his mother and sister visited him twice a week. During one of these visits, the Gestapo man raged when the two wanted to give him a bouquet of pansies and threw the flowers behind him: "He doesn't need flowers!" However, he did not discover that the jam jar with the potato salad had a tin lid with two cardboard discs. Hidden inside was a small-print page from the Gospel of John.

Meanwhile, the Hamburg Gestapo had been investigating the arrestees. The chief Reich prosecutor brought charges against 24 people before the special court, but not against Reinhold Meyer. The accused were transferred to the remand prison, he remained in Fuhlsbüttel and could still tell his family that he hoped to be released soon. But instead, shortly thereafter, they received the death notice.

Reinhold Meyer had contracted severe diphtheria under the inhumane prison conditions in Neuengamme. This was considered the official cause of death. However, as fellow prisoners informed the family, he probably died on November 12, 1944, as a result of interrogation.
Reinhold Meyer was 23 years old.

In the post-war period, these circles of friends were referred to as the "Hamburg branch of the White Rose". Felix Jud wrote in 1969 that the "bookstore of the Rauhes Haus agency" had its place of honor in the history of the "White Rose" branched out between Hamburg and Munich; Reinhold Meyer's place of honor was to be found in the German book trade and in the hearts of his friends and companions.

The "Rauhes Haus Agency" was taken over by Sister Anneliese. Her bookstore was renamed "Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel" in 1960.

Today, Reinhold Meyer is commemorated by a bronze plaque in the Auditorium Maximum of the University of Hamburg, a memorial plaque on the house wall of the "Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel," a White Rose Memorial in the Volksdorf Shopping Center, Stolpersteine at Hallerplatz 15 and in front of the main building of the University of Hamburg, and Reinhold-Meyer-Straße in Niendorf.

Translation by Beate Meyer
Stand: February 2022
© Rebecca Schwoch (red. Bearbeitet: Beate Meyer)

Quellen: Rebecca Schwoch, Reinhold Meyer, in: Hamburgische Biografie Bd. 6, hrsg. Franklin Kopitzsch/Dirk Brietzke, Göttingen 2019, S. 216f.; Felix Jud, Reinhold Meyer und die Weiße Rose, in: Bücher und Zeiten. 125 Jahre Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg, von ihren Freunden unter den Autoren, Lesern, Verlegern und Druckern, Frankfurt/M. 1969, S. 132-137; Ursel Hochmuth, Candidates of Humanity. Dokumentation zur Hamburger Weißen Rose anläßlich des 50. Geburtstages von Hans Leipelt, hg. von der Vereinigung der Antifaschisten und Verfolgten des Naziregimes Hamburg e.V., Hamburg 1971, S. 49-50; Buchhandlung am Jungfernstieg Anneliese Tuchel: Der braucht keine Blumen, in: Erinnerung an Reinhold Meyer, Hamburg 1994; Sönke Zankel, Mit Flugblättern gegen Hitler. Der Widerstandskreis um Hans Scholl und Alexander Schmorell, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2008, S. 539, 543; Sammlung Eckart Krause, Hamburger Bibliothek für Universitätsgeschichte.

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