Horst Heilmann

Horst Heilmann (15 April 1923 – 22 December 1942) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. He was a member of the anti-fascist resistance group that formed around Harro Schulze-Boysen in 1940. Later, the people of the group along with many others were bundled together and called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. Heilmann was a student and a wireless operator who worked at the Referat 12 that was in the Inspectorate 7/VI.

Life Heilmann's father was Halle city architect Jakob Adolf Heilmann, and his mother was Helene Heilmann. Heilmann joined the Hitler Youth in 1937 and the Nazi Party in 1941. Heilmann was a student of Federal Foreign Office in Berlin until his conscription in the Wehrmacht.

Schulze-Boysen

In 1940, Heilmann met Luftwaffe officer Harro Schulze-Boysen when Heilmann wrote a paper called The Soviets and Versailles that was presented at a political seminar for the Hitler Youth at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, where Schulze-Boysen was lecturing from September 1940. It was through Schulze-Boysen that Heilmann was introduced to Albrecht Haushofer, Schulze-Boysen and Haushofer met at least twice before, and understood each other's motives, and allowed a compromise to be reached, that in turn enabled the turning of Heilmann away from Nazism. Traxl was a former Czechoslovakia army soldier who survived the war and later became a salesman.

Discovery It was the discovery of the radio transmissions of Johann Wenzel who was captured by the Gestapo on 29–30 June 1942 that eventually revealed the members of the anti-fascist group and led to the arrest of Heilmann. When he was captured Wenzel decided to collaborate with the Funkabwehr and it was his exposure of the Wireless Telegraphy codes that enabled the Funkabwehr and specifically Referat 12 to decipher Red Orchestra message traffic. When Heilmann discovered that the Red Orchestra traffic was being read from documents that had been illegally provided by Alfred Traxl, he conducted a search for the names of Kuckoff, Schulze-Boysen and Harnack at the agency and to his horror after 2 days, he discovered that his friends had already been exposed to the Gestapo. When Vauck answered he was astonished that the person who was prime subject of his investigation was on the phone and realised that Heilmann was a traitor. He asked Schulze-Boysen to clarify his name to confirm it was spelt with a y or an i. After the call, Vauck phoned the Gestapo and this started a process on 31 August 1942 that resulted in many people of the Red Orchestra being arrested, including Heilmann himself who was arrested on 5 September 1942.

Post war His surviving friend in the fight against Nazism, Rainer Hildebrandt, wrote in his memoirs: "My best friends, Albrecht Haushofer and Horst Heilman, died in the Nazi Reich". Peter Weiss wrote about him in his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. In Leipzig, Berlin, Halle, Aschersleben, and Bernburg streets are named after him. In 1976 a memorial wall was erected in the courtyard of the Humboldt University of Berlin at Unter den Linden 6, where his name is mentioned. In 2007 another tribute by Humboldt University of Berlin for Horst Heilmann was added. In 1970–1971, the film studio DEFA filmed episodes from the life of Horst Heilmann that was called KLK Calling PTZ – The Red Orchestra. The screenplay was written by and . describes in his literary bestseller Whoever blinks is Scared of Death: Roman the close relationship of his mother, who escaped with all luck the Nazi terror, to her former childhood friend Horst Heilmann and his murder in Plötzensee Prison as a colleagues of the resistance group Red Orchestra.

Literature