Harald Poelchau

Poelchau was the son of Harald (1866-1938) and Elisabeth Poelchau (née Riem, 1871-1945) and was brought up in the Silesian village of Brauchitschdorf.[2] His father was a Lutheran pastor in the village.[2] Poelchau attended the Ritterakademie (knights academy) in Liegnitz, where he participated in school Bible classes and became involved in the German Youth Movement, that resulted in him turning away from a village conservative piety.

At the University of Tübingen, Harald Poelchau met the librarian Dorothee Ziegele (1902-1977).[3] The couple married on 12 April 1928, lived in Berlin and cultivated a large group of acquaintances, which was to prove its worth even after the handover of power to the Nazis. In 1938 the couple's son, also baptised Harald, was born,[3] and in 1945 the couple's daughter Andrea Siemsen.[4]

After graduating from the Ritterakademie in 1921, he studied Protestant theology in Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel, the University of Tübingen and the University of Marburg from 1922. This was followed by social work at the Free University of Berlin at the Berlin College of Political Science. In Tübingen he was secretary of the Köngener Bund. The Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich, who taught in Marburg in 1924, was the decisive, intellectual influence on him, particulalry in the study of religious socialism.[5] Tillich became a lifelong friend and mentor.[5] As a working student at Robert Bosch company in Stuttgart, he gained an insight into the world of work and industry. After his first theological examination in 1927 in Breslau, he studied welfare and state welfare policy at the German Academy for Politics in Berlin.[6]

Berlin memorial plaque placed on 17 November 1988 in Wedding

Memorial plaque at Tegel Prison in Berlin

Poelchau served as executive director of the German Association for Juvenile Courts and Juvenile Court Assistance in Berlin and assistant to Paul Tillich at Frankfurt University.[2] In 1931, he passed his second state examination in Berlin and wrote his doctoral thesis under Tillich. His doctoral thesis was titled: Die sozialphilosophischen Anschauungen der deutschen Wohlfahrtsgesetzgebung (The Social Philosophical Views of German Welfare Legislation).[2] The paper was published in 1932, as a book titled Das Menschenbild des Fürsorgerechtes: Eine ethisch-soziologische Untersuchung (The Image of Man in the Law of Welfare: An Ethical-Sociological Investigation).[7]

Poelchau applied for a position as a prison chaplain at the end of 1932 and took up his post on 1 April 1933[8] as the first clergyman appointed by the Nazi regime in a prison. The judicial officer worked at Tegel Prison in Berlin as well as at various other prisons such as Plötzensee and Moabit.[9] Opposed to the Nazis from the beginning, he joined Confessing Church.[10][11]

With the beginning of the World War II in 1939, death sentences against opposition members increased. Poelchau accompanied about one thousand people to execution[2] as spiritual advisor to those sentenced to death.[9] After 20 July 1944, many of his close friends were sent for execution.[2] To help the families of the executed, in despair, he would illegally smuggle letters and messages out of the prisons he worked in.[2]

In October 1941, the deportation of Jews from Germany began. Poelchau knew early on that only an escape into hiding would ensure survival. The refugees were supposed to call him at his office in Tegel and only talk if he answered with the code word "Tegel". But the actual conversation took place in his office, that could only be reached through several locked doors. Supported by his wife, he arranged accommodation among his large group of acquaintances. These included Gertie Siemsen, a long-time friend from his student days, Willi Kranz, canteen worker in the Tegel and Plötzensee prisons, and his partner Auguste Leißner, Hermann Sietmann and Otto Horstmeier, two former political prisoners, the couple Hans Reinhold Schneider and Hildegard Schneider, parents of the later political scientist Gesine Schwan, who worked in the welfare and school sectors respectively. The pastor's wife Agnes Wendland who is also Righteous Among the Nations for hiding Jews, and her daughter Ruth Wendland, the prison doctor Hilde Westrick, and the physicist Carl-Friedrich Weiss and his wife Hildegard.[12]

Only a few of Poelchau supporters are known by name. One Jewish couple, Manfred and Margarete Latte with their son Konrad, fled from Breslau after they learned they were to be deported, to Berlin where they went into hiding.[10] Through a family friend, Ursula Teichmann,[10] they made contact with Poelchau in late February 1943 and turned to him for help.[13][14] He provided them with ration cards, cash and found accommodation for the family.[10] He also found work for Manfred Latte, who became a cleaner.[10] As Konrad Latte was a typical age to be conscripted[10] Poelchau filled in a registration card, for the Volkssturm, a German militia that was independent of the German army, to provide camouflage.[10]

Through Konrad Latte, contact was made with Ruth Andreas-Friedrich[10]the co-founder of the resistance group Onkel Emil, after their warning cry. along with the conductor Leo Borchard.[15][16] The resistance group was motivated more by humanitarian concerns, rather than ideology and was made up on middle-class professionals. They began to work with Poelchau, who provided them with accommodation, forged identity papers and food ration stamps.

The Gestapo apprehended the Latte family in October 1943. Manfred and Margarete Latte were immediately deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp,[17] Konrad Latte managed to escape the Great Hamburg Street collection camp [14] and went back into hiding again. Rita Neumann[18] and her mother Leontine Cohn had been in hiding with the resistance fighter and Protestant pastor wifes Agnes Wendland since August 1943.[19] Her brother Ralph Neumann joined Wendland.[18] The siblings worked as bicycle couriers for Poelchau. In February 1945, the siblings were arrested along with Wendland. The siblings managed to escape the Große Hamburger Straße deportation collection camp and make their way back to Poelchau's door.[20][21]

Other people Poelchau helped were Ilse Schwarz and her daughter Evelyne, a young stenographer Ursula Reuber, Anna Drach, Edith Bruck,[22] Charlotte Paech, part of the Baum group[23] and Charlotte Bischoff. From 1941, Poelchau belonged to a group of people around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke known as the Kreisau Circle resistance group[24] and also took part in the first meeting of the group.[1] After the attempted coup of 20 July 1944, the prison chaplain cared for many of those involved in the assassination. Harald Poelchau's extensive opposition work remained undiscovered until the end of the war.

In 1945, he co-founded the Aid Organisation of the Protestant Churches in Stuttgart, together with the theologian Eugen Gerstenmaier[25] and became its General Secretary. The Aid Organisation took care of the problems of refugees, the construction of apartments (settlement work), the construction of old people's, apprentice homes and emergency churches. After returning to Berlin in 1946, Poelchau became involved in the prison system of the Central Administration of Justice in the Soviet occupation zone. This was connected with a teaching assignment for criminology and prison science at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Along with Ottomar Geschke and Heinrich Grüber he sat on the central board of the Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime for the Soviet Occupation Zone.[26] When Poelchau was unable to push through his ideas in the east, he moved to West Germany. From 1949 to 1951, he was again appointed as the prison chaplain at Tegel Prison.[27] In 1951, Bishop Otto Dibelius appointed him the first social and industrial pastor of the Protestant Church in Berlin-Brandenburg.[28] Harald Poelchau dedicated himself to this task until his death in 1972.[26] He is buried in the Zehlendorf cemetery.

Gravesite at the Zehlendorf Cemetery

• On 30 November 1971, Harald and Dorothee Poelchau were recognised by the Yad Vashem memorial as Righteous Among the Nations.[5]
• In 1973, an elite sports school bearing the Poelchau name, the Poelchau-Oberschule was opened in the Charlottenburg-Nord district of Berlin.[29][30]
• By resolution of the Senate of Berlin on 6 October 1987, the couples burial place at the Zehlendorf cemetery was converted into an honorary grave of the State of Berlin.[31]
• On 17 November 1988, a Berlin memorial plaque was affixed to the house at Afrikanische Straße 140b in Wedding in Berlin, where the couple lived from 1933 to 1945.[32]
• On 31 January 1992, Karl-Maron-Straße in the Marzahn district of Berlin, was given the name Poelchaustraße, as was the Berlin S-Bahn named after the street.[32]
• On 29 April 1992, an asteroid discovered by Freimut Börngen at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory was named Poelchau (10348) in honour of the couple.[33][34]
• On 18 September 2017, a memorial stele for Harald and Dorothee Poelchau was handed over at the corner of Poelchaustraße, Märkische Allee in the Marzahn district of Berlin.[35][36]
• On 5 October 2018, a memorial created by the artist Katrin Hattenhauer and the inmates of Tegel Prison, was inaugurated for Harald Poelchau.[37]

• Poelchau, Harald (1932). Das Menschenbild des Fürsorgerechts. Eine ethisch-soziologische Untersuchung. Potsdam: Alfred Protte.

• Bitter, Stephan (2005). "Harald Poelchau als Theologe des 20. Jahrhunderts". In Angermann, Norbert; Garleff, Michael; Lenz, Wilhelm (eds.). Ostseeprovinzen, Baltische Staaten und das Nationale. 14. Munich: LIT-Verlag. pp. 513–534.
• Harpprecht, Klaus (2004). Harald Poelchau : ein Leben im Widerstand (in German) (1st ed.). Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. ISBN 3-498-02969-X. OCLC 54777865.
• Harpprecht, Klaus (1 October 2003). "Ein stiller Kämpfer" (41). Zeit-Verlag Gerd Bucerius GmbH & Co. KG. Die Zeit. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
• Mehlhorn, Ludwig, ed. (2004). Ohr der Kirche, Mund der Stummen : Harald Poelchau : eine Tagung zu seinem 100. Geburtstag (in German). Berlin: Wichern-Verlag. ISBN 3-88981-166-3. OCLC 250024383.
• Siegfried Mielke; Marion Goers; Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (Berlin, Germany); Freie Universität Berlin (2008). "German". Einzigartig : Dozenten, Studierende und Repräsentanten der Deutschen Hochschule für Politik (1920-1933) im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus : Begleitband zur Ausstellung (1st ed.). Berlin: Lukas Verlag. pp. 302–309. ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0. OCLC 314107425.
• Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon / 7 Patočka, Jan bis Remachus (in German). 7. Hamm: Bautz. 1994. pp. 769–775. ISBN 3-88309-048-4. OCLC 873794573.
• Schuppener, Henriette; Brakelmann, Günter (2006). "Nichts war umsonst" : Harald Poelchau und der deutsche Widerstand (in German). Munich: Lit. ISBN 3-8258-9315-4. OCLC 494666960.
• Maier, Hugo (1998). Who is who der sozialen Arbeit. Freiburg: Lambertus. pp. 473–475. ISBN 9783784110363. OCLC 40933946.

• Memorial - Harald Poelchau - Berlin - Justizvollzugsanstalt Tegel