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Amandus Karges * 1888

Lippmannstraße 69 (Altona, Sternschanze)

1943 KZ Fuhlsbüttel
ermordet 16.03.1944

further stumbling stones in Lippmannstraße 69:
Alfred Norden

Amandus Carl Matthias Karges, born 30 Jan. 1888, detained at the Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison from 28 Oct. 1943, detention at Hamburg Remand Prison from 8 Nov. 1943 where he was killed 16 Mar. 1944

Lippmannstraße 69 (Friedenstraße)

Amandus Carl Matthias Karges was denounced in 1943 for critical remarks about Hitler and the war; the charge at the Gestapo led to his arrest and killing. On 30 Jan. 1988 he was born in Hamburg as the son of Heinrich Christian Karges and Dorothea Anna Therese Karges, née Möller. After elementary school, he trained at the shipyard to become a riveter. Before finishing his training, he went out to sea as a coal trimmer, later as a stoker. During WWI he served in the navy; in 1918 he was discharged as a petty officer. For a time he worked at the coal storage in the coal ship harbor Hamburg-Steinwerder where ships loaded with coal were unloaded. Afterwards he again went to sea. Amandus Karges was married from 1914 to 1927. He had two daughters from that marriage: Gertrud Amanda Marie Karges, later married as Langenberg, born on 25 July 1914, trained sales assistant, and Hertha Dora Lisa Henkel Karges, born on 21 Jan. 1917. At the end of 1931 he wed a second time, marrying Anna Elfriede Langschmidt, born on 12 Oct. 1896 in Altona as the daughter of Friederike Alwine Karoline Langschmidt. The trained laundress had previously worked in a factory, now she worked as a cleaning woman to earn additional money. She had a son named Ludwig from her first marriage which ended in divorce after two years. Her son was killed in an accident in 1930 at the age of 16. Amandus Karges, who was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1902 to 1916, joined the Germany Communist Party (KPD) in 1930 and remained a member until 1933. He was a co-founder of the Altona Häuserschutzstaffel, a Communist Party guard organization deployed to protect locals from National-Socialist attacks in the years leading up to 1933. The year the National Socialists took power, the couple moved to Hamburg-Niendorf where Amandus Karges worked in underground construction. He then worked on a trawler and later at the Stülcken Shipyard and at Blohm & Voss, interrupted by periods of unemployment. In Nov. 1938 he finally found work as a stevedore with the Gesamthafenbetriebs-Gesellschaft, unloading ships. His daily wage was 7.60 Reich Marks. In 1943 he was temporarily sent to Kiel where he worked in the harbor for a transport supply company. The couple lived in a working-class neighborhood of old town Altona in a basement apartment at Friedenstraße 69 (today Lippmannstraße, Altona-Sternschanze). Following the heavy air-raids on Hamburg in July/Aug. 1943, Amandus Karges had to take bombing victims into his home: Anna Steen, widowed Möllers, who previously had also been in the KPD, and her two daughters Thea Preisser, née Möllers, and Anna Möllers. That was his undoing. After the end of the war on 9 July 1945, his wife wrote a report to the Committee of Former Political Prisoners: "My husband took in our acquaintance Anna Steen, widowed Möller[s], and her two daughters. Ms. Steen was given two rooms in our apartment with the provision that her son-in-law T[h]omy, nicknamed Fritz, was not allowed to enter our apartment because T[h]omy had threatened Ms. Steen and her daughter Anna on several occasions to have them arrested for political reasons.” Yet Friedrich Thomy, nicknamed Fritz, still visited his mother-in-law in the Karges’ apartment. He was married to another one of Ms. Stehen’s daughters and had been discharged from the military due a severe war injury. The 23-year-old Fritz Thomy, raised in the Hitler Youth, was a committed National Socialist. It came to blows with Amandus Karges who again banned Fritz Thomy from his apartment. Amandus Karges received a summons to the office of the Hamburg Gestapo on Dammtorstraße for 15 Oct. 1943 due to a charge made by Fritz Thomy. His wife accompanied him. During the interrogation, he was accused of stating that his brother was beaten to death in Oranienburg and that he was keeping weapons in a hidden place. After the interrogation, he was released and told the Gestapo would be questioning witnesses. The informer Fritz Thomy had named Thea Preisser and Anna Möllers as witnesses. During their questioning, they accused Amandus Karges of having made subversive remarks. Two weeks later on 28 Oct. 1943, Amandus Karges received a second summons and was subsequently detained. Anna Karges learned from the Gestapo that he had been taken to the Fuhlsbüttel Police Prison. When she received a letter from him that abruptly ended and was incomplete, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Anna Karges finally spoke with Ms. Steen, and her suspicion was confirmed that her daughter Anna Möllers and her daughter’s brother-in-law Fritz Thomy had accused her husband of making remarks critical of Hitler. At the end of Oct. 1943, she was also summoned by the Gestapo. During her questioning, the interrogating Gestapo official accused her of having listened to foreign radio broadcasts. She was released, but on the table she could see Fritz Thomy’s signed charge against her. Due to the arrest warrant issued by the President of the Hanseatic Special Court II in Hamburg from 8 Nov. 1943, Amandus Karges was handed over to the Hamburg City Remand Prison at Holstenglacis 3 that same day. Proceedings had been initiated against him for "preparing high treason” (case number OJs 49/43). He was accused of "Wehrkraftzersetzung” or degradation of military strength, a criminal offence punished with unusual severity during the last phase of the war. Amandus Karges was then detained as a political "protective detainee” in remand prison. After the first five weeks in prison, Anna Karges was allowed to visit her husband every three weeks. "I remember that he looked sick and feverish. The laundry that he gave me, it was the dirtiest that I took in exchange, each time (every week) it was soiled with blood, what was also clearly visible were prints from dirty boots, so that you got the impression that it all unmistakably came from terrible mistreatment.” She also found "signs that my husband had been dragged along the floor.” When she tried to go into the matter, she was threatened with jail herself. "I asked an officer where the blood came from, and he said the change of air does that.” The public prosecutor’s office passed the case on to the regional Reich prosecutor in Berlin who, on 17 Feb. 1944, pressed charges after §5 Section 1 no. 1 of the Wartime Special Criminal Law Order (Kriegssonderstrafrechtsverordnung) and §§88 Section 2, 91b of the German Penal Code. The regional Reich prosecutor’s indictment accused Amandus Karges "of seeking to undermine the resilience of the internal front, thus preparing high treason and aiding the enemy, by repeatedly making inflammatory remarks intended to bring down the government, remarks welling from his Marxist convictions, to bombing victims from mid 1943 to the end of that same year in Hamburg.” The indictment continued: "The defendant is an old Marxist and as such an opponent of National Socialism. He especially voiced his hostile attitude towards National Socialism to the siblings Anna Möllers and Thea Preißer, née Möllers, bombing victims he had to house in his apartment. He railed against the current government, called them ‘dogs’ and ‘pigs’ and talked himself into such a rage in front of the witnesses that the Möllers left the room out of fear. During broadcast of the German news on the radio, he suggested the news was not credible, yet he showed visible joy over reports that German troops had withdrawn from a city in enemy territory. He then expressed the conjecture that the city in question had been relinquished at least eight days prior and that this was only being reported now to ‘dumb down’ the German people. Often, in his anger, he took out his pocket knife, opened the blade and waved it about in the air, saying: ‘Wait until we are there (or until it’s our turn)’. Repeatedly he threatened that all the ‘Nazis’ would be killed, and he wanted to help. Another time he told them during one of these episodes that had hidden a revolver and ammunition in Niendorf and at a house on Eimsbütteler Chaussee. During a conversation about the terror attacks, he told the witness Preißer and her husband who happened to be on leave from the military at the time: ‘I am waiting for the Americans to come and get rid of the Nazis. It will be my pleasure to help them.’ In the very first days of their stay with the defendant, he said in a conversation about the witness’ loss of her apartment and belongings: ‘We warned you back then on flyers: ‘Whoever votes for Hitler, votes for death and destruction’.’ The defendant repeated that remark again later. Following a visit at the defendant’s apartment by the witnesses’ brother-in-law who was severely wounded with an amputated leg, the defendant said: ‘I have never tolerated having Nazi pigs in my apartment, and now I am forced to. Lunch didn’t even taste any good.’ In essence the defendant admits to all of this, and what he denies will be proven by the witnesses.” In March the order was given for his transfer to Berlin-Plötzensee for the start of the main trial against Amandus Karges scheduled for 5 Apr. 1944. However on 16 Mar. 1944, he was found dead at Hamburg Remand Prison, as his wife was informed the next day. "On 17 March I brought him clean clothes again and had to go to the inspector. They told me my husband had taken his own life. I screamed in his face that it wasn’t true, he had been killed. Three guards came who then grabbed me. When I had calmed down a bit, I ran to my brother-in-law Henny Karges. He immediately went with me to the inspector. In the afternoon we then saw my husband at the harbor hospital. He was covered up to his neck. They said we weren’t allowed to touch the body.” The death certificate noted that Amandus Karges died on 16 Mar. 1944 at 10 p.m. Anna Karges told the Committee of Former Political Prisoners on 17 June 1947: "I had visited him the week before, and he had said that he would soon get his date and then it wouldn’t be much longer before he would be free again. My husband was in remand prison in a communal cell (3-man cell), and it is hardly believable that the other two would not have noticed him since his death supposedly occurred at 10 p.m.” His surviving wife was certain that Amandus Karges did not voluntarily take his own life. Later she remembered one of her husband’s boots was damaged: "On the left one, a whole bunch had been cut out of the upper part of the shaft.” Perhaps Amandus Karges had cut out a leather strap and – in despair over the hopelessness of his situation – hung himself with it. Either he was killed or systematically driven to death during his imprisonment. In the period after the war, some of Hamburg’s cases of "military degradation” were followed up with criminal proceedings in which charges were pressed against informers for "crimes against humanity”. In 1947/48 the criminal charge of the Committee of Former Political Prisoners/Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime against Friedrich Thomy, Thea Preisser and Anna Möllers "in the Karges matter” went to trial at the Hamburg District Court. Friedrich Thomy stated at first he only reported at a police station that Karges refused to store Thomy’s furniture after he was bombed out because Karges didn’t do things for "Nazi pigs”. From there he was sent to the Gestapo who then summoned Thea Preisser and Anna Möllers as well. All three defendants claimed they were pressured by the Gestapo officials. The court followed in essence the statements of the defendants and came to the conclusion that it was not a denunciation but rather a "report with a valid background”. The former military soldier Friedrich Thomy, whose severe war injuries and amputated leg were underscored, was legitimately angered by the loss of his furniture. The court found the defendant Thomy to have shown no "aggressive behavior”, but rather "defended himself against the massive attack by Karges himself”. He merely wanted to get a charge for insult off the ground and could not have anticipated the severe consequences the report would have. The two women were forced to make statements under threats by the Gestapo that they had not actually wanted to make. On 8 Nov. 1948 the Hamburg District Court – the head judge was Dr. Heymann – acquitted the defendants of the charge of crimes against humanity. The prosecution’s argument that the defendants had to have known that their denunciation would lead to imprisonment and mistreatment for the victim Amandus Karges under the National-Socialist regime was not followed by the court. In Sept. 1949, Friedrich Thomy had to fill out a questionnaire from the British military authority within the framework of de-nazification; he reported having joined the Hitler Youth in Mar. 1933 and the National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) in May 1944. He was classified as "exonerated”.


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

Stand: April 2018
© Birgit Gewehr

Quellen: StaH 351-11 Amt für Wiedergutmachung, 10904 (Erbengemeinschaft Karges, Amandus), 41916 (Henkel, Hertha), 40169 (Langenberg, Gertrud), 18606 (Karges, Anna); StaH 213-11 Staatsanwaltschaft Landgericht – Strafsachen, 4324/49 (Thomy, Friedrich Bernhard Adolf); StaH 221-11 Staatskommissar für die Entnazifizierung und Kategorisierung, 63956 (Friedrich Thomy); VVN-BdA Hamburg, Archiv, handschriftliche Berichte von Anna Karges, 1949, und Abschrift der Anklageschrift des Oberstaatsanwaltes am Volksgerichtshof Berlin, 17. Februar 1944, und Aktenbestand des Komitees ehemaliger politischer Ge-
fangener; AB Altona; Diercks, Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu; Justizbehörde Hamburg (Hrsg.), "Für Führer, Volk und Vaterland …", S. 88 f.