Eugen Prötzel 1915 - 1940

Born 7.7.1915 in Bad Cannstatt
Died 17.2.1940 in Mauthausen

Biography

Eugen Prötzel was born on 7 July 1915 in Cannstatt near Stuttgart. His father, Hermann Prötzel, was a mechanic by trade and in 1914 had married Eugen’s mother, his third wife. Eugen had a total of eight (half) siblings. His father died in 1921.

Eugen Prötzel did well at vocational school, gaining very good grades and two prizes. In summer 1930 he began an apprenticeship at an engineering works in Cannstatt. He made friends with workers who had Communist sympathies but did not himself join a KPD [Communist Party of Germany] organisation. But he did take part in their illegal activities. Together with another apprentice from the factory who was the same age, he kept watch on the night of 22-23 June 1933 while older comrades painted slogans in white paint in large letters on the walls around works infirmary, on the concrete fencing at the gas works and in other places around the district: ‘Away with Hitler, chancellor of blood. KPD lives on’, ‘Down with Hitler. KPD’, ‘Bring out Thälmann. Red Front’.

One week later Prötzel and his fellow apprentice were arrested. After two weeks in police protective custody he was detained awaiting trial. On 22 August 1933 the Stuttgart district court sentenced him for offences against the decree of 28 February 1933 (‘Reichstag Fire Decree’) in concomittance with criminal damage to one month’s imprisonment, including time spent in custody. The sentence also took into account his having folded around 150 Communist leaflets. Overall the court had passed a relatively mild sentence, despite its serious doubts about the remorse shown by Prötzel during the main trial.

Prötzel completed his training in 1934 and subsequently worked for different firms in Cannstatt as a mechanic and polisher. While his participation in the KPD propaganda action meant he was on the Political Police’s radar, there are no suggestions that he continued to be harassed by them over the following years. Apart from an unsubstantiated assertion made later on by an uncle, there are no reports that he continued to be politically active for the opposition. What is certain is that his last employment in Stuttgart came to an end in mid-June 1937. On 10 July he crossed the German-Dutch border without a passport and remained in Holland and Belgium for over a year. In October 1938 he was picked up by the Dutch police and handed over to the German border police.

The information on his motives for emigrating varies. In 1937 he would have been called up for military service so to avoid this, he initially set his sights on Switzerland, to no avail. At which point he tried his luck in Holland, from where it was easier to get overseas. Possibly, however, it might have been his intention to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans. The latter was alleged by the local court[1] in Krefeld, which sentenced him on 2 December 1938 to six weeks in jail for passport offences. It might also be that Prötzel brought suspicion of espionage on himself. After serving his sentence he was handed over to the Gestapo and taken to the Gestapo’s Württemberg jail in Welzheim. On 8 March 1939 he arrived at the Dachau concentration camp and was transported to Mauthausen with others on 27 September 1939. The reason given for concentration camp imprisonment was ‘recidivist protective custody’. Eugen Prötzel died in Mauthausen on 17 February 1940 at the age of 24.

Sigrid Brüggemann

 

Sources:

Archiv der Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Nazi-Regimes (VVN-Archiv) Stuttgart D 2693, A 31 (with thanks to Volger Kucher).

Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, EL 350 I Bü 725.

Information provided by the Archive of the Mauthausen Memorial.

 

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