Emma Hutzelmann (17.11.1900 Rosenheim – 27.11.1944 Munich) and Hans Hutzelmann (29.5.1906 Munich – 15.1.1945 Brandenburg-Görden Penitentiary)

At the end of the 1920s, Johann Hutzelmann and Emma Holleis had joined the “Workers’ and Farmers’ Party of Germany (Christian Radical People’s Front)”, which fought against National Socialism and capitalism on a Christian Socialist basis. Shortly afterwards, they also took part in the communist-dominated Red Assistance. The couple had known each other since 1923 and had a son together in 1924. They married in 1937, having lived together before then, defying the norms of the era.

Even before the start of the war, they had been in contact with Karl Zimmet and Rupert Huber, who had published leaflets opposing the impending war. Now, with the escalation of the war in 1941, they also saw opportunities within the German populace to highlight the dreadful consequences of the war and its futility. Through the communist Georg Jahres, a locksmith at Krauss-Maffei, connections were made with dissidents in Munich enterprises. The group was tightly organized and referred to itself as the “Anti-Nazi German Popular Front“ (ADV).

The connection to an underground organization of Soviet POWs and “Eastern workers“ that had formed in camps and factories was also essential. From July 1943, secret meetings were held with the POW Ivan Korbukov  n the Hutzelmanns’ apartment on Margaretenstraße in Sendling, during which the production of leaflets and their distribution to Munich businesses as well as aid for POWs were arranged. Emma Hutzelmann, for example, stole fats from her workplace at the Saumweber company bit by bit and exchanged them for food and clothing to give to POWs. Weapons were also collected for a joint uprising against Nazi rule.

The married couple was arrested on January 5, 1944. Emma Hutzelmann managed to escape from Stadelheim Prison on July 31, 1944; she hid in the Isar valley for months, but was seriously injured in a bombing attack and died - undetected - in a clinic in November 1944. Hans Hutzelmann was sentenced to death by the People’s Court in Berlin in December 1944 together with two other defendants and executed in Brandenburg-Görden Penitentiary on January 15, 1945. Other group members received long penal servitude sentences or died in prison. On September 4, 1944, 92 Soviet officers, soldiers and forced laborers from the secret organization of POWs had already been shot in Dachau Concentration Camp.