Sources
Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München, Landesentschädigungsamt 1452.
Bundesarchiv Berlin, Oberreichsanwalt R 3017 (NJ 1633/1-3).
Bretschneider, Heike: Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in München 1933 bis 1945, München 1968.
Johann Hartwimmer (31.7.1902 Braunschweig – 31.10.1944 Munich-Stadelheim Prison)
Former Bund Oberland (Highlands Free Corps) member, persecuted and executed as a member of the Munich “Aufbruch Circle” against the war
Johann (Hans) Hartwimmer (1902-1944) | KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, F 3590
After completing his schooling as an adolescent, Hartwimmer worked in the family business, a small wooden clog factory on Waltherstraße. Outrage at the Treaty of Versailles led him to join the nationalist organization Bund Oberland in 1922, with which he also took part in the Hitler Putsch in 1923. Through a connection with Captain (retired) Dr. Josef (Beppo) Römer, former leader of the “Oberland” Free Corps, he later came into contact with national revolutionary ideas. Since 1931, he had collaborated with the Munich working group associated with the journal Aufbruch, headed by Römer. The working group sought a solution to the “national question“ not with the Nazi Party but against it - through cooperation with the labor movement, social revolution, and an alliance with the Soviet Union to prevent war. The head of the Munich “Aufbruch Circle” was the communist Wilhelm Olschewski.
On March 8, 1934, Hartwimmer was arrested as a suspected employee of the intelligence service of the illegal Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Although he was acquitted in the subsequent trial, he was held in Dachau Concentration Camp until December 24, 1937. When Beppo Römer approached him and Olschewski in late 1939 to set up Munich groups of a resistance organization throughout the Reich, he also made contact with former members of the Bund Oberland and persuaded them to join him.
From Berlin, the Gestapo was able to uncover the network throughout the Reich and also arrested Johann Hartwimmer on February 4, 1942 on charges of preparation of high treason. In the subsequent trial, Hartwimmer was accused of striving to create an “energetic communist organization with the aim of weakening the military power of the Greater German Reich in favor of its enemies and preparing a ‘coup d’état’ through communist contamination of the factories, the establishment of factory cells and sabotage.“ On April 19, 1944, the People’s Court in Munich sentenced him to death along with two other defendants. Hartwimmer was executed on October 31, 1944 in Stadelheim Prison.