Leipzig Meuten

The so-called Leipzig packs were in the time of National Socialism groups of young people who were recruited from the working class of the city of Leipzig and in 1939 smashed by the Gestapo. Many of the young people came in prisons, juvenile detention or juvenile corrections facility.

History

The so-called packs met the mid-1930s, particularly after 1937, regardless of state organizations such as the Hitler Youth (HJ ) or the League of German Girls ( BDM ) for the self-organized leisure activities. They refused to order the physical and ideological access the Nazi youth organizations, were alone predominantly after the suppression and prohibition of youth organizations of other parties, or churches, as well as the youth movement. They formed in accordance with the Workers' Youth Associations of the pre-1933 period and group forms of the Bund Youth. Many members had been organized before 1933 in one of the social democratic or communist children 's and youth organizations. Accordingly, they called themselves mostly as " bündische youth ," while the defamatory name meant " pack " the Nazi parlance stems, especially the Gestapo, which looked at the Leipzig packs as local expression of "Wild cliques ".

The single group is not joined as a fixed -contained unit with a name of it on, but it was more or less loose associations. The names usually had a direct bearing on the public squares, in which the group members met regularly. Overall, there were in Leipzig 1937-1939 up to 1500 young people who were a member of a pack, of which about a quarter to a third of them girls. The best known of about 20 record groups had become

• " Dogs Start" in Kleinzschocher, named after the popular name of the old cemetery and
• "Lille" in Reudnitz, after the "Lily Place ", the original name of Bernhardi square, each with about 40 members and
• " Reeperbahn " in Lindenau, with up to 100 members, the largest group. They gathered in the Schlageterstraße (now Georg-Schwarz -Strasse ), a popular entertainment area with numerous theaters and taverns, which was based on the eponymous street in Hamburg popularly Reeperbahn.

The members developed over time their own dress code inspired by the clothes of the former migrant movement, left-wing socialist youth groups and the Bund Youth to visually distinguish from the HJ and BDM. The boys usually wore short leather pants with suspenders, the girls dark skirts, this plaid shirts or blouses, white knee socks and hiking boots. Sometimes even red scarves were worn and skull insignia or badge with the initials " BJ", which stood for " bündische youth".

First, more or less ignored and treated as " outgrowth urban hooliganism ," the young people came increasingly into conflict with the Nazi regime and operated partially active resistance against National Socialism. Just as the edelweiss pirates include the Leipzig packs for youth opposition from working class backgrounds, the comparable Swing Kids was on the other hand dominated bourgeois. Frequently attacked packs to individual members or groups of the Hitler Youth and their meeting places and distributed leaflets with slogans like " Die, HJ " or " Down with Hitler ". So smashed example members of the " Reeperbahn " even before its official opening the windows of Hermann Goering 's home of the Hitler Youth, Adolf Hitler near the field at the future site of the Leipzig Central Stadium. The Connewitzer pack that met Union Theater Conne joke in front of the cinema, attacked the showcases of the Nazi Party and Hitler Youth on the former Adolf- Hitler -Straße ( today Karl -Liebknecht -Straße) or changed the entrance sign " Leipzig Empire Fair City " in " Leipzig Empire city Grump ". It took such proportions that the local Hitler Youth leaders in Berlin complained that in some parts of the city Leipzig, members of the HJ would not dare evening in uniform on the street.

This resulted in approximately from 1938 to increased state repression. Since 1937, a series of investigations against mob members already were strained, however, were still set for lack of evidence by the courts first. End of October 1938 there were two processes at the Leipzig People's Court for " conspiracy to commit high treason " instead, which ended with multi-year prison sentences. After the hoped-for deterrent effect of this imaginary as an example processes had not been set, the Nazi judiciary went from 1939 to condemn in numerous processes as many members to prison. In addition, the Leipzig Youth Office set up a concentration camp -like " youth training camp" in Mittweida in the pack members for several months should be "educated". Thus, the Leipzig packs were largely shattered in its known form in the summer of 1939, although some packs existed a little longer.

From 1942 a new generation of oppositional working class youth appeared in public in Leipzig. In contrast to the packs of the 30s they wore no more hiking clothes but oriented in her appearance on American lifestyle. Some of them called themselves " Broadway Gangster " in reference to the American movie " Broadway Melodies" and the colloquial name of larger shopping streets in Leipzig as "Broadway". Your leisure behavior was analogous to the Leipzig packs of the 30s, but Swing records were reinforced heard on suitcase gramophones. With the Hitler Youth, it also came to blows.

Source situation

The most extensive source material to the Leipzig packs represent approximately 300 investigation files that were incurred from 1937 to 1939 in the special court Freiberg and today lie in the Saxon State Archives in Dresden. The Federal Archives Berlin has additionally some Gestapo interrogation records, investigation reports, indictments and verdicts from the files of the Reich Ministry of Justice. Saxon police files to the packs can be found in the Saxon State Archive in Leipzig - Paunsdorf, filing for " youth training camp" in Mittweida located in the city Archiv Leipzig.