Ernst Thälmann memorial

Ernst Thälmann (1886–1944) was chairman of the Independent Social Democratic Party in Hamburg and a member of the Hamburg Parliament from March 1919. From 1925 to 1933, he served as a member of the German Reichstag and chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which radically split from the Social Democrats under his leadership. From 1929 until he was arrested on 3 March 1933, Thälmann lived with his family at Tarpenbekstraße 66 in Hamburg. After he was arrested as a political opponent of the Nazi regime, he was imprisoned for nearly eleven and half years before being murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp August 1944.

Creation of the memorial
In 1969, Thälmann’s companions from the time took steps to establish a memorial in his former home. The memorial opened on 18 August 1969 and is privately managed by a board of trustees. In April 1985, the square in front of the house was renamed Ernst-Thälmann-Platz. A permanent exhibition at the memorial includes documents on the history of the labour movement and the workers’ resistance movement. It focuses on Ernst Thälmann’s work as chairman of the KPD, his time as a prisoner in Berlin, Hanover and Bautzen, and his death in the Buchenwald concentration camp. There are also memorial plaques dedicated to other resistance fighters, mostly Communists, who were murdered by the Nazis.