John Graudenz

Wolfgang Kreher Johannes "John" Graudenz (12 November 1884 – 22 December 1942) was a German journalist, press photographer, industrial representative and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime. Graudenz was most notable for being an important member of the Berlin-based anti-fascist resistance group that would later be named by the Gestapo as the Red Orchestra and was responsible for the technical aspect of the production of leaflets and pamphlets that the group produced.

Family Born in Danzig, Kingdom of Prussia, Graudenz was the son of a saddler, and came from a large family with 10 siblings. She was the daughter of art publisher Ernst Wasmuth. Together they had two children, Silva and Karin.

Life In 1901, aged 16 or 17, Graudenz left the family home after a quarrel with the father, to work in various German cities before travelling to England via Italy, France and Switzerland.

In 1924, Graudenz organised a Steamboat River cruise along the Volga River along with a group of journalists where they discovered the desolate and famine-stricken state of the Soviet Union.

Red Orchestra

In 1938, Graudenz met the Luftwaffe officer and anti-fascist Harro Schulze-Boysen through his neighbour, the supposed fortune-teller and clairvoyant, Anna Krauss who also owned a lacquer and paint wholesaler. Graudenz became one the members of the anti-fascist resistance group of friends that was led by Schulze-Boysen and that would be later be named by the Gestapo as the Red Orchestra. Krauss become a core part of the group and used her apartment to host two mimeograph machines that produced leaflets, with Graudenz running the operation.

Graudenz became one of the core members of the group and was considered by Schulze-Boysen as one of his most valuable informants, who had many contacts in the German aviation industry. Shulze-Boysen was keen to inform the Allies. It was through Graudenz that Marcel Melliand, a left-wing textile magazine owner and businessman with good contacts in Switzerland became known to Schulze-Boysen.

Graudenz was the initiator the campaign to post adhesive sticker across five Berlin neighbourhoods containing the message:

Permanent Exhibition The Nazi Paradise War, Hunger, Lies, Gestapo How much longer? Even before the beginning of the oral proceedings of Reichskriegsgericht, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht i.e. the High Command of the Wehrmacht, ordered strangulation, a method of execution without precedent in either Prussian-German civil or military justice.

Due to the German idea that the family shares responsibility for a crime, known as Sippenhaft, both John's daughters and his wife were also arrested on the same day. The 2nd senate of the Reichskriegsgericht sentenced his wife, Antonie Graudenz, on 12 February 1943 for listening to enemy broadcasters and refraining from an advising [the state] to three years in prison. Both Karin and Silva were released after two weeks.

Memorials In Stahnsdorf: John Graudenz Street is named after him A memorial stone for Graudenz and Anna Krauss in Anni Krauss Street