Franz Scheider (13.12.1913 Munich – 9.6.1944 Amalias/Greece)

Having grown up in a working-class family in Schwabing’s Belgradstraße, Franz Scheider trained as a machine fitter before going on to become a mechanical engineer. He spent his free time in the socialist-oriented young people’s outdoor pursuits organization Naturfreundejugend and the workers’ sports association Freie Turnerschaft. Becoming involved in political activities at an early age, he joined the Metalworkers’ Union (Metallarbeiterverband), then became a member of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) at the age of 16; and shortly afterwards he joined the communist sports organization Kampfgemeinschaft für Rote Sport-Einheit, where he was a member of the leadership in southern Bavaria from 1932 onwards.

Most of the lesser-known young communists were initially spared the major wave of arrests in the spring of 1933, enabling many of them to subsequently become involved in illegally spreading anti-Nazi information. Franz Scheider was among those who helped produce and distribute pamphlets. He was able to escape arrest the first time in July 1933 by fleeing from his parents’ apartment. When he and his comrades had just finished producing more than 1,000 copies of the KPD newspaper Neue Zeitung at an illegal print shop on Rottenbucher Straße in Obersendling on the evening of August 18, he was arrested, interrogated at police headquarters and then sent to Dachau Concentration Camp. Together with seven other defendants, he was sentenced by Munich Higher Regional Court to two years and three months in prison on May 15, 1934 for “preparing a highly treasonous enterprise”, a sentence he served in Amberg and Straubing. After being released from prison in May 1936, he worked as a heating engineer and married the dressmaker Dorothea Ettmeier in December 1939 – they had met through the workers’ sports’ organization and the Communist Youth Association.

Although officially declared to be ‘unworthy of military service’ due to his previous conviction, he was drafted into the notorious penal military unit 999th Division on December 1, 1942, shortly after the birth of his daughter Christine. Scheider was deployed to fight partisans in the Peloponnese in Greece where he may have witnessed reprisals against civilians. He established contact with like-minded individuals with the aim of disarming officers at the earliest opportunity and persuading as many comrades as possible to defect. Scheider was denounced, sentenced to death by the field war tribunal on June 4, 1944 for “treason in conjunction with undermining military morale” and executed together with five like-minded comrades near Amalias.