Hamburg, Germany
(Hulton Archive / Getty)
Twenty-six-year-old August Landmesser is shown here refusing to give the Nazi salute, at the end of a ceremony to launch the sailing ship Horst Wessel, on which he had worked. The event at a Hamburg shipyard had culminated in a speech by Rudolf Hess, standing alongside Adolf Hitler.
Landmesser had joined the Nazi party at the age of twenty-one on the assumption that it would increase his employment prospects. Four years later, he agreed to marry Irma Eckle, a Jew, and found he was expelled.
In August 1937, Irma and their two-year-old daughter Ingrid attempted to flee to Denmark, but were arrested. Irma gave birth to their second daughter, Irene, in prison, and was later killed by the Nazis. After years in prison, August was drafted as a soldier, and died in action. Ingrid and Irene were placed in an orphanage and separated.
The Horst Wessel survived the war, was renamed Eagle, and is still in use as a training ship for the American military.
‘In passing sentence on Landmesser, the Court maintained that if the purity of the German race is to be successfully maintained, such violations of the Race Protection Law (Rassenschutzgesetze) must be severely punished. However, in this case the Court did not totally ignore the human aspect of the case. The Court was concerned not so much with the relationship of the accused with the woman involved, who is hardly a very worthy character, but rather his relationship with his children, for which the Court has every sympathy. However, the situation was aggravated by the defendant resuming the forbidden relationship. This was also the reason for the Court’s decision to impose a sentence of penal servitude. Dr Sch.’
German newspaper report, October 26,1938
