Otto Lederer (18.4.1880 Thalmässing/Franconia – 4.11.1943 Munich)

This merchant had been honored as a front-line soldier in the First World War. In 1928, he and his wife left the Protestant church and were baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses. Starting in 1934, Otto Lederer was responsible for a Schwabing cell of his religious community. Furthermore, he supplied the Schwabing subgroup with writings from 1934 to the beginning of 1937. Lederer and his wife also participated personally in the dissemination of protest flyers against the treatment of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany on December 12, 1936. He also supplied the Schwabing cell for the second action in 1937. On February 27, 1937, Otto Lederer was imprisoned, as was his wife one week later. The Munich Special Court sentenced him on September 7, 1937 to one year and four months, his wife to four months in prison. Otto Lederer died in 1943 from stomach cancer.

After 1945, the authorities deemed the assumption that there was a causal connection between his death and the Nazi persecution to be insufficiently substantiated. Therefore, they denied his wife compensation.