Helmuth Hübener exhibition

In the summer of 1941, a 16-year-old administrative apprentice from Hamburg named Helmuth Hübener began distributing leaflets with news from foreign radio broadcasts together with his friends Rudolf Wobbe and Karl-Heinz Schnibbe. They wanted to let the public know about the crimes of the Nazi regime. The three boys were members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. In his hidden pamphlets, Hübener held German warfare responsible for the murder of defenceless women and children, ‘cripples and the elderly’. The three boys were arrested in February 1942. The Gestapo searched in vain for their ‘backers’, as they could not believe that such young boys could organize and conduct an active resistance campaign. On 11 August 1942, the Special People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) sentenced Helmuth Hübener to death. He was beheaded on 27 October in Berlin-Plötzensee at the age of just 17. His companions received prison sentences.

Commemorating Helmuth Hübener
When the Hamburg School of Administration moved into the building at Schwenckestrasse 100 in 1967, it named the lecture hall after Helmuth Hübener, who had been a student at the school. On the 50^th anniversary of his execution, the Stadtteilarchiv Hamm (a local history association) presented the school with an exhibition consisting of 65 exhibits. After the school moved to Normannenweg 26, Culture Senator Karin von Welck opened a new permanent exhibition on the second floor of the building in November 2009.

A street in Lohbrügge had been named after Helmuth Hübener in 1966, and a plaque was installed in the entrance to the Hamburg Social Authority at Hamburger Strasse 47. The family support centre at Bei der Schilleroper 15 in the neighbourhood of St Pauli is known as the ‘Haus der Familie im Helmuth-Hübener-Haus’ (Family House in the Helmuth Hübener Building). A shelter for single homeless men which stands on the site of the former police prison at Hütten 42 was named Helmuth Hübener House on the initiative of Fördern & Wohnen, the organisation that runs the facility. In recent years, the project developer BauArt has worked with the current residents of the house to create various artworks in the stairwell in memory of Hübener, who spent the last months of his life in the building.