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Conrad Kaiser * 1892

Eichenstraße 59 (Eimsbüttel, Eimsbüttel)

HIER WOHNTE
CONRAD KAISER
JG. 1892
VERHAFTET
"VORBEREITUNG ZUM HOCHVERRAT"
1944 NEUENGAMME
ERTRUNKEN 3.5.1945
CAP ARCONA

Conrad Kaiser, born on 25 Nov. 1892 in Honigfelde/West Prussia (today Trzciano in Poland), arrested on 29 Dec. 1943 for "preparation to high treason,” taken from the Neuengamme concentration camp to the "Cap Arcona,” presumably drowned on 3 May 1945.

Eichenstrasse 59

The trained carpenter Conrad Kruczynski had four siblings. His parents, the farmer Franz Dominik Kruczynski (born on 29 Jan. 1860) and his wife Rosalia, née Grochowska, had married on 4 May 1883 in Straszewo/West Prussia (today in Poland). We know nothing about his childhood and youth. Apparently, he participated in World War I as a soldier of a M.G. (machine gun) company until 1918. In the documents, he was described as having no religious creed ("glaubenslos”).

Conrad Kruczynski changed his name to Kaiser with the permission of the chief administrative officer (Regierungspräsident) in Marienwerder as of 1 July 1918. It is not known exactly when he arrived in Hamburg.

On 5 Jan. 1924, he married his first wife Anna Frieda, née Bastian, in Hamburg. Presumably, he was renting accommodation as a subtenant at this time. On 25 Sept. 1924, the first child from this marriage, Rolf Kaiser, was born. According to the residents’ registration card, the family had resided as subtenants at Grosse Freiheit 86 since 1928, but the marriage was divorced on 28 Mar. 1933. In the divorce proceedings, the spouses accused each other of adultery, so that both were divorced as guilty parties. Frieda Kaiser remained in the apartment after the divorce and ran a hairdressing salon there.

From 1933, Conrad Kaiser lived at Kleine Freiheit 16, where he operated a grocery store (delicatessen) from 1935 to 1939, which was also described in a company sign as a "fat products wholesaler.” Apparently, a residential basement was located under the store.

Conrad Kaiser was prosecuted – as documented since 1921 – for several criminal offenses. An extract from the criminal register listed 16 offenses overall, including theft, fraud, trade offenses, bodily injury, and aiding and abetting tax evasion, for which he had been sentenced to fines or short prison terms.

In a 1934 case brought against him and four other defendants, he received a one-month prison sentence as an accomplice for "aiding and abetting profit-seeking tax evasion.” His store on Kleine Freiheit had allegedly been used as a transshipment point for untaxed tobacco products and cigarette paper from the Netherlands and Belgium.

On 16 Apr. 1937, the Altona "First Grand Criminal Chamber” (Grosse Strafkammer 1) sentenced Conrad Kaiser to one and a half years in prison for "racial defilement” ("Rassenschande”). An anonymous denunciator had reported to the authorities that Conrad Kaiser had a relationship with the stenographer Rosa Garcia (born in Hamburg on 29 Oct. 1906). Rosa Garcia lived at Wrangelstrasse 10 and she was Jewish. The relationship produced a son, Konrad Garcia, born on 6 Oct. 1936. (Rosa Garcia and five-year-old Konrad were deported to Riga on 6 Dec. 1941, see www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de. Stolpersteine commemorate both of them at Wrangelstrasse 10).

Due to the denunciation, Kaiser was sent to the Altona court prison on 1 Nov. 1936, transferred to the Hamburg penitentiary on 25 Feb. 1937, and to the Börgermoor concentration camp on 16 Mar. 1937. The Börgermoor concentration camp was one of the so-called Emsland camps and it served as a prison camp as well starting in 1934. Conrad Kaiser was released from Börgermoor on 6 May 1938.

Parallel to his relationship with Rosa Garcia, Kaiser was involved with Marie Christine Gerken, who was officially considered his fiancée. She had been born on 10 Aug. 1906 in Helvesiek, District of Rothenburg in Lower Saxony. Her parents Johann Gerken, born on 13 Apr. 1868, and Anna Maria Katharina, née Behrens, born on 31 July 1878, owned a farm in Scheessel. Marie Gerken had helped on her parents’ farm after leaving school and then done household work in Bremen. When she was 25 years old, her parents paid out her share of the inheritance. From 1934, she initially stayed in Hamburg employed as a factory worker. It is documented that she also worked in Conrad Kaiser’s store, whom she had met as a customer.

The two became closer. Conrad’s second son, born on 19 Oct. 1936, was also named Konrad. Thus, in Oct. 1936, two sons from different relationships were born with the same first name. Konrad was co-cared for by his maternal grandmother. Marie Gerken and her mother, widowed by then, lived at Dreyerstrasse 4 at the time. The farm in Scheessel was continued by the son and brother, respectively, so that Marie’s mother could spend her retirement in Hamburg.

Marie Gerken submitted a petition for clemency reasoning that the delicatessen business had to continue operating during Conrad Kaiser’s imprisonment. She unsuccessfully asked for his release so that he could work in the business and provide for his son. Presumably, Marie Gerken, supported by her mother, continued to run the business during this time.

After Conrad Kaiser’s release from prison, he and Marie Gerken married. From May 1938, he continued to manage his business until he was convicted again in December of that year, this time for violating the Food Act. This meant that he was banned from running any business involving the production and sale of foodstuffs. Thus, the family lost its livelihood and Conrad then looked for other means to earn a living. Among others, the occupational designations of waiter, bathroom attendant, checkroom attendant, and kitchen helper have been documented. Apparently, he was the lessee of the toilets at the Bierhaus Astra on Steindamm for a time. The residential address was Kleine Freiheit 16 in Altona, the former business address, until 1939.

After that, the family frequently changed their domicile: From 15 Feb. 1939, the address was Dreyerstrasse 4; from 25 Oct. 1939, Paulinenstrasse 15; from 1940 to 1942, Eduardstrasse 47; from 1942, Eichenstrasse 59; and from 1943, Eidelstedter Weg 24. The couple owned a plot of land on Silbersackstrasse, which had been purchased with funds from Marie’s inheritance. A business was to be built there, which the wartime events prevented. The house at Eichenstrasse 59 (where the Stolperstein commemorates Conrad Kaiser) was also owned by the Kaiser family, as was the house at Eduardstrasse 47. The house on Eichenstrasse – see below – was completely destroyed by bombing in 1943.

In the midst of the events connected to war, the family grew: On 23 Apr. 1940, daughter Rosalind Kaiser was born, followed by son Horst Kaiser on 19 Mar. 1943.

Conrad Kaiser was arrested by the Gestapo on 29 Dec. 1943 and sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp on 3 June 1944. In the documents of the "United Association of Nazi Persecution” ("Vereinigte Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Naziverfolgung – VVN),” "preparation to high treason” ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat”) is mentioned as the reason for the imprisonment. In the Neuengamme concentration camp, Conrad Kaiser was listed as a prisoner with KPD (German Communist Party) membership under prisoner number 27013, first detained in Block 11 and 27, then in Block 24.

There are contradictory statements regarding the date of his death: According to the list of the dead of the Hamburg resistance fighters and persecutees, he apparently died in the Neuengamme concentration camp on 14 Dec. 1944. Documents to the contrary, however, indicate that he was transported together with other prisoners from Neuengamme to the ships "Cap Arcona” or "Thielbek” in the Bay of Lübeck at the end of April. There, during British attacks on the ships on 3 May 1945, almost all of the concentration camp prisoners who had been transferred there perished.

Conrad Kaiser’s widow reportedly received a letter from her husband while imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp as late as 11 Mar. 1945, which supports the version that he drowned.

Before Conrad Kaiser’s arrest, the family and their three children lived at Eichenstrasse 59, where they became homeless in the summer of 1943 after an air raid. They first took shelter in a barracks on Am Weiher and then in a ruined basement on the same street until Nov. 1943. After that, they initially lived at Eidelstedter Weg 29 until Dec. 1945, when they moved to Alardusstrasse 4, where Marie Kaiser’s mother, Anna Gerken, also lived until her death. In July 1958, the family moved into a two-story apartment building at Wrangelstrasse 47, which Marie Kaiser had purchased with her son Konrad from equalization of burdens funds. Konrad Kaiser junior had completed an apprenticeship as a plumber and fitter and he operated a business as an independent plumber on Kieler Strasse.

After the war, Marie Kaiser was recognized as the sole heir and received widow and orphan’s pensions for herself and the three children. Since the family had lost all of their belongings in the air raids of 1943, they had to apply several times for furniture and aid for the children.

The widow received support from the "Committee of Political Prisoners,” which provided assistance in researching her husband’s whereabouts as well as in finding a new apartment and applying for restitution payments. Marie Kaiser had initially searched for him through the Tracing and Reporting Service. On 22 May 1946, this service ascertained "that Kaiser along with 10,000 other prisoners had been forcibly taken from the Neuengamme concentration camp to Lübeck and from there to the Cap Arcona or Thielbek. Since Kaiser was not ascertained among those rescued and could not otherwise be located, it is quite certain that he was among the 7,600 victims of the disaster on 3 May 1945.” On 6 June 1946, Conrad Kaiser was declared dead by the Hamburg District Court (Amtsgericht).

In response to her application for restitution payments due to political persecution, Marie Kaiser initially received a special assistance pension. However, years of disputes ensued with the Restitution Office (Wiedergutmachungsamt) because the latter doubted that Conrad was among the politically persecuted, for which there was hardly any evidence. The Restitution Office made extensive inquiries as to the basis for the arrest in 1943. Among other things, a surviving prisoner heard as a witness testified that Kaiser had worn the "red triangle,” i.e., the badge on the prisoners’ clothing for political persecutees. This witness also recalled that Kaiser had told him that he had been arrested for listening to foreign radio stations. This statement, together with the wife’s assumption that Kaiser had been denounced by Alfons Pannek, a Gestapo informer, sheds a different light on the arrest, for Pannek, disguised as a "Lesebote” (newspaper deliverer), had turned in many families to the Gestapo.

Until 1962, however, Marie Kaiser was unable to provide any concrete evidence of political activities, so that Conrad Kaiser was considered a presumptive criminal persecutee and further reparation payments failed to materialize. However, Marie Kaiser was awarded a prison compensation payment under the Federal Indemnification Act due to her husband’s 18-month imprisonment for "racial defilement,” to which Conrad Kaiser would have been entitled and which was inheritable to her.

Until her death on 20 July 1996, Marie Kaiser lived in Hamburg with her son Konrad and his wife Margrit. Konrad passed away in 2009, his sister Rosalind in 2008. Horst Kaiser, the third child, lives in South Africa.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: May 2021
© Ursula Mühler

Quellen: StaH 213-9_104; StaH 213-11_30736; StaH 213-11_50738; StaH 241-1_2849; StaH 351-11_30851; StaH 351-11_30856; StaH 324-1_K 5082.xls; StaH 351-11_30857; StaH 351-11_32720 und 32721; div. Hamburger Adressbücher und Meldekarteien; KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme: WVHA Karteikarten und FGN Hans-Schwarz-Nachlass; Totenliste Hamburger Widerstandskämpfer und Verfolgter 1933-1945; Arolsen Archiv, Reference services; VVN-BdA Hamburg; Kreisarchiv Landkreis Rotenburg/Wümme, Geburtenregister; Westpreußisches Ortsverzeichnis Familienforschung; Klaus Bästlein: "Hitlers Niederlage ist nicht unsere Niederlage, sondern unser Sieg!" Die Bästlein-Organisation. Zum Widerstand aus der Arbeiterbewegung in Hamburg und Nordwestdeutschland während des Krieges (1939-1945), in: Beate Meyer/Joachim Szodrzynski (Hrsg.): Vom Zweifeln und Weitermachen. Fragmente der Hamburger KPD-Geschichte. Hamburg 1988, S. 44ff.; Stefan Buchen: Die neuen Akten des Gestapo-Verräters. Taz, 15.9.2019; Gespräch mit Angehörigen: Margrit Kaiser und Caroline Kaiser, div. Daten.