Ludwig Schwamb

Ludwig Schwamb ( born July 30, 1890 in Undenheim; † January 23, 1945 in Berlin- Plotzensee ) was a lawyer, social democratic politician and close associate of Wilhelm Leuschner. Schwamb fought as Christian motivated member of the " Kreisau Circle " against the Nazi dictatorship and was involved in the failed coup attempt of 20 July 1944.

Life

Ludwig Schwamb came from a large rural Rhinehessen family. After finishing high school in Mainz, he studied in Giessen jurisprudence. Here he became a member of the fraternity Landsmannschaft Darmstadtia. One short-term office as an attorney followed a career in the administrative service; In 1921 he was Regierungsassessor the tax office Alzey and 1925 Senior Government in Oppenheim.

After the union Wilhelm Leuschner had become Minister of the Interior in 1928 in the then People's State of Hesse, Schwamb changed as the personal assistant to the capital city of Darmstadt. He worked closely with Leuschner's press officers, who later became members of the Reichstag Carlo Mierendorff together and quickly rose to the Ministerial and Council of State.

1933 Ludwig Schwamb was removed by the Nazis from office and was then under police supervision. He tried in vain to establish a law practice in Mainz, and moved to Berlin, where he served as General Counsel of the shoe factory tack.

After Leuschner, Mierendorff and other leading Social Democrats were released from protective custody and concentration camps, located Schwambs apartment developed into a conspiratorial meeting point of resistance fighters. Among them were further Julius Leber, who came from the Heidelberg / Mannheim journalist Emil Henk (1883-1969), who was born in Frankfurt, co-founder of the Reichsbanner black-red- gold Theodor Haubach and in 1940, after his release from Dachau even the later Rhineland-Palatinate interior and Social Affairs Minister Jacob Steffan ( 1888-1957 ).

How Leuschner and Mierendorff was Schwamb beyond later a member of the Kreisau Circle, a bipartisan resistance group that met on the Lower Silesian Good Kreisau by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke. While Wilhelm Leuschner was provided among the conspirators of July 20 as a future Vice-Chancellor, if not later, as Chancellor or even as head of state, Ludwig Schwamb should as a political officer in the military district XII ( Wiesbaden), ie in the area between Kassel and Heidelberg, the opposition coordinate forces. He should mobilize the local primary social democratic trade union resistance groups, not least prepare for a general strike. He also had the coordination of the Rhine -Main region particularly dense conspiratorial stewards network with the military wing of the resistance guarantee, so in the space Hessen / Rheinland -Pfalz would have a democratic and social order can be prepared.

Ludwig Schwamb was arrested three days after the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 in Frankfurt am Main. After months of detention in solitary confinement Lehrterstraße he was the People's Court under Hitler's " hanging judge " Roland freisler sentenced on January 13, 1945 to death and hanged along with nine other participants on January 23, 1945 in Plotzensee.

On January 31, 1945 Schwambs wife Elisabeth - communicated the death sentence and its execution with the passage - formless and without salutation: " The publication of a death notice is not permitted ."

Memory

In the vicinity of the execution site Plotzensee the Schwambzeile was named after him.

Several memorials, streets, squares and schools remember today Ludwig Schwambs life and work.