Hans Lieber
* 1890

Hans Lieber, born 04/29/1890, died 02/20/1945 at Celle prison

Von-Essen-Strasse 82 (former elementary school)

The son of an employee came from petty bourgeois circumstances. After finishing elementary school, he entered the teachers’ seminar In 1911, Hans Lieber became an assistant teacher, four years later he got a permanent position at the elementary school in Von-Essen-Strasse.

In the same year that he was appointed as teacher, Hans Lieber became a soldier in World War I. He was wounded and discharged from the army as disabled. Hans Lieber returned to his job at the elementary school in Barmbek, where he taught English, biology and chemistry. Besides these subjects, he tried to instill his enthusiasm for sports, especially hiking, in his pupils.

During the Weimar Republic, Hans Lieber was a member of the teachers’ union “Gesellschaft der Freunde”, whose members were mainly Social Democrats. Nonetheless, many colleagues joined the Nazi NS-Lehrerbund in 1933, and so did Hans Lieber.

World War II also affected Hans Lieber’s work. In 1941, he and his class were evacuated to safe Upper Bavaria, where he continued to teach his pupils. In the meantime, the school building was used by militarily relevant institutions. During the air raids in the summer of 1943, Barmbek suffered heavy destruction. The school building in Von-Essen-Strasse as well as Lieber’s Apartment at Eilbektal 24 burned down.

After his return from Bavaria, Hans Lieber was deployed as counseling teacher for juvenile air force helpers in Harburg County south of the Elbe River. His Pupils operated anti-aircraft guns, a fact that thrust Lieber into a deep inner conflict and raised doubts about the sense of the war. And those doubts in the end led to the statement that ultimately cost him his life.

In the winter of 1943/44, Hans Lieber expressed his doubts regarding the National Socialists’ final victory in the war to his pupils; this, in turn, created a moral conflict for his pupils. One of the boys reported the statement to a lieutenant of the anti-aircraft battery; Hans Lieber was denounced, and the incident became an issue for the Gestapo in Harburg.

Hans Lieber was now considered a defeatist and “underminer of military morale” and was detained at the Fuhlsbüttel police prison before he was taken to Berlin-Plötzensee for trial. The “People’s Court” sentenced him to five years in prison, that he was to serve in Celle.

In August, 1944, Hans Lieber in his resume to the prison authorities asserted that he had never been politically active. “I have never been politically engaged before 1933, I belonged to no party and to no lodge. In 1933, I joined the NS-Lehrerbund and the NS-Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (a sports organization), I have been a volunteer of the NS Community ‘Kraft durch Freude’ since 1936, and in May, 1937, I joined the NSDAP.”

On February 20th, 1945, five days after his arrival at the Celle Prison, Hans Lieber died of an insufficiently treated case of exhaustion. He was only 54 years old, weighed only 58 kilos and was classified as “unfit for the moors”, but “fit for a commando” After his death, his clothes were burned. Hans Lieber’s wife and daughter received a short notice that he had died. In 1946, the urn with Hans Lieber’s ashes was buried at Hamburg’s central cemetery in Ohlsdorf. At the funeral, the principal of the elementary school at Von-Essen-Strasse made a short speech for his former colleague.

Translated by Peter Hubschmid
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.