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Balthasar Brand * 1891

Hammerbrookstraße 47 b (vormals Nr. 61) (Hamburg-Mitte, Hammerbrook)

KZ Fuhlsbüttel
ermordet 29.07.1936

Balthasar Brand(t), born on 18 Sep. 1891, died on 30 July 1936 in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp

At the time of his arrest Balthasar Brand worked as a journeyman tailor, not being a member of the German Labour Front (DAF, Deutsche Arbeitsfront). The fact that he did not belong to this forced organisation – which generally all employers and employees had to join – seems to give a first hint that he disapproved the NS-regime or at least dissociated himself from it.

In July 1936 in the restaurant "Weltecke” at Hammerbrookstraße in close vicinity to his flat, he took the risk and approached a man – who was going to denounce him at the Gestapo later – and to invite him to the restaurant "Lokal von Kohut” since two Swedes were going to "inform about today’s Germany” as it was later summarised in a report sent from the Hamburg Gestapo to its headquarters in Berlin on 28 July 1936. This short report contains the evaluation that their information was to be interpreted as "information in a Communist sense”. At that, Balthasar Brand was "taken into preventive detention to solve the issue”. The lists of food for detainees of the concentration camp record him from 27 July to 30 July. Thus he most likely died on the final day reported on that record (Herbert Diercks indicates 29 July as the day of death).

Translator: Paula Antonella Oppermann
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

© Benedikt Behrens

Quellen: StaH 213-8 Staatsanwaltschaft OLG-Verwaltung, Al. 2, 452 a E 1, 1a; StaH Mikrofilm Bundesarchiv Berlin PSt 3/250, S. 190, 195; Diercks, Herbert, Gedenkbuch Kola-Fu. Für die Opfer aus dem Konzentrationslager, Gestapogefängnis und KZ-Außenlager Fuhlsbüttel, Hamburg 1987, S. 17.