Litten, Hans Achim.

Litten, Hans Achim, born 19-06-1903, in Halle (Saale), Stadtkreis Halle (Saale), Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany, the eldest of three sons in a wealthy family in Halle. His parents were Irmgard (born Wüst) and Friedrich Litten (Fritz). Fritz was born and raised Jewish, but converted to Lutheranism in order to further his career as a law professor. Hans was a nationalist conservative, and served in the army in World War I, earning the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class.  He opposed the postwar Weimar Republic. A distinguished jurist and professor of Roman and civil law, he was dean of Königsberg’s law school, later becoming rector of that institution. He was also privy counsel (Geheimer/ secret Justizrat) and adviser to the Prussian government. Irmgard was from an established Lutheran family in Swabia, the daughter of Albert Wüst, a professor at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. The family left Halle in 1906 and moved to Königsberg in Prussia.

Litten himself was baptized a Christian – his godfather was Franz Eduard Ritter von Liszt. Nonetheless, as a youngster he learned Hebrew, choosing it as one of the subjects for his Abitur examinations. From his mother, Litten acquired an interest in humanitarian ideas and art, and gained a strong sense of justice for the threatened, persecuted and disenfranchised. While his father was away at war, Litten once took food from the kitchen to give to a beggar, addressing him as “sir”. Litten’s relationship with his father was strained, and his initial interest in Judaism was out of rebellion; he felt his father’s conversion was opportunistic. Litten became interested in a German-Jewish youth group with socialist-revolutionary ideas, joining with a school friend, Max Fürst. Nonetheless, at times, he considered himself a Christian. In Dachau he was registered as a Jew, and had to wear the yellow star on his clothing.

Litten sought out political debate in his youth. He was shaped by important political and social events of the era, such as World War I, the anti-war demonstration in Berlin on 01-05-1916, when Litten was not quite 13, the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and the arrest and murder of Karl Liebknecht and Dr Rosalia

“Rosa” Luxemburg by Freikorps soldiers in January 1919.

Liebknecht was German socialist politician, who became a Communist after World War I. The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, he became a member of the Reichstag in 1912. He was the first member of the Reichstag ,who spoke against the war credits in 1914. In the same year he founded together with Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin the ‘Spartakusbund.’ He was arrested in 1916 and released two years later. In 1918 he was involved in the founding of the KPD or Communist Party of Germany. On January 15, 1919, after the Spartacist uprising he was arrested and later executed. He became a martyr for the socialist cause in Germany and throughout Europe.

Rosa Luxemburg (Zamość, 05-03-1871 – Berlin, 15-01-1919) was a German Marxist politician, philosopher and revolutionary. She was born as Rozalia Luxenburg into a Polish-Jewish middle-class family, in Weichselland or Russian Poland. Her later surname Luxemburg can probably be traced back to a clerical error in the civil registry.

There is an anecdote from Litten’s school years, when he was asked in the classroom if they should hang a picture of Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Hindenburg, victor of the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg. Litten stated, “I’ve always been in favour of hanging him.”

Litten was pressed into studying law by his father. He was not interested in it, writing in his journal, “When the ox in paradise was bored, he invented jurisprudence.”  He wanted to study art history, but nonetheless, he approached his law studies in Berlin and Munich with intensity, inspired by the events of the day. The Kapp Putsch, the 1924 court case against Adolf Hitler and other events convinced Litten that Germany was approaching a very dangerous period. His perception that right-wing radicals were receiving more lenient treatment in court than their opponents led to his decision to become a lawyer.

Litten passed his examinations in 1927 with excellent grades and was offered a lucrative job in the Reich Ministry of Justice, as well as a good position in a flourishing law firm. He declined both choosing instead to open a law office in 1928 with Dr. Ludwig Barbasch, a friend who was close to the Communist Party.

Politically Litten was on the left, though independent. He valued his independence and once said, “two people would be one too many for my party.” Culturally, Litten was conservative, enjoying classical music and poetry such as that of Rainer Maria Rilke, whose work he could recite. He was an internationalist and was able to read English, Italian, and Sanskrit, as well as enjoying the music of the Middle East. He had a photographic memory and was considered to have a brilliant intellect.

In May 1931, Litten summoned Adolf Hitler to testify in the Tanzpalast Eden Trial, a court case involving two workers stabbed by four SA men. Litten cross examined Hitler for three hours, exposing many points of contradiction and proving that Hitler had exhorted the SA to embark on a systematic campaign of violence against the Nazis’ enemies. That was crucial because, to appeal to middle class voters, Hitler was trying to pose as a conventional politician and maintained that the activities of the Nazi Party were “strictly legal”.

Though a judge eventually halted Litten’s questioning, thereby saving Hitler from further damning exposure, newspapers reported on the trial in detail and Hitler was investigated for perjury that summer. Although he survived that inquiry intact, he was rattled by the experience.

By 1932, the Nazi Party was in ascendancy. Litten’s mother and friends were urging him to leave Germany, but he stayed. He said, “The millions of workers can’t leave here, so I must stay too”. Hitler’s hatred for Litten was not forgotten and in the early hours of 28-02-1933, the night of the Reichstag fire, by the Dutch man Mzarinus van der Lubbe

he was roused from his bed, arrested and taken into protective custody. Litten’s colleagues Ludwig Barbasch and Professor Felix Halle were also arrested.

Litten was first sent – without trial – to Spandau Prison. From there, he was moved from camp to camp, despite efforts by his mother to free him, along with jurists and prominent people from in and outside Germany, such as Clifford Allen who was a British politician, leading member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and prominent pacifist and the “European Conference for Rights and Freedom”, which had members from several countries. Litten was sent to Sonnenburg concentration camp, Brandenburg-Görden Prison, where he was tortured, along with anarchist Erich Mühsam. In February 1934, he was moved to the Moorlager, Esterwegen concentration camp in Emsland and a few months later, he was sent to Lichtenburg.

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German antimilitarist anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic, for which he served five years in prison. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was tortured and murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.

The treatment Litten suffered was later described to his mother by an eyewitness. Very early on, he was beaten so badly that the Nazis refused to let even his fellow prisoners see him. He was tortured and forced into hard labor. He attempted suicide in 1933 in an attempt to avoid endangering his former clients, but he was revived by the Nazis so that they could interrogate him further. Litten’s suicide attempt came at Spandau Prison, after he buckled under torture administered to extract information about the Felsenecke trial. After revealing some information, he was immediately accused in the press as an accomplice to the murder of an SA man. Litten then wrote a letter to the Gestapo, saying that evidence gained in such a manner was not true and that he recanted. Knowing what awaited him, he then attempted to take his life.

Litten’s mother wrote about his ordeal, recounting how injuries sustained by him early on left his health permanently damaged. One eye and one leg were injured, never recovering; his jawbone fractured; inner ear damaged; and many teeth knocked out. She also related how, despite her access to many important people in Germany at that time, including Reichswehrminister Werner von Blomberg, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, Reichsbischof Ludwig Müller, Minister of Justice Franz Gürtner and even then-State Secretary, jurist  Roland Freisler, she was unable to secure her son’s release.

Despite his injuries and suffering, Litten strove to maintain his spirits. At one point, in 1934, his situation improved a little bit when he was moved to Lichtenburg. Initially, it was the same, with more beatings, but then he was allowed to work in the book bindery and the library. On occasion, he was able to listen to music on the radio on Sundays. He was well liked and respected by his fellow prisoners for his knowledge, inner strength and courage. One prisoner wrote about a party (allowed by the SS) at which a number of SS men were in attendance. Unafraid of their presence, Litten recited the lyrics of a song that had meant a lot to him in his youth, “Thoughts are free” (in German, Die Gedanken sind frei). The prisoner said that apparently the SS men did not grasp the significance of the words.

Death and burial ground of Litten, Hans Achim.

In summer 1937, Litten was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp for a month, before finally being sent to Dachau. He arrived on 16-10-1937 and was put in the Jewish barracks. The Jewish prisoners were isolated from others because Jews in other countries were then spreading the grim news about Dachau. Litten’s last letter to his family, written in November 1937, spoke of the situation, adding that the Jewish prisoners were soon to be denied mail privileges until further notice. All letters from Jewish prisoners at Dachau ceased at this time.

In the face of their depressing situation, the Jews at Dachau made efforts to have culture and discussion in their lives, to keep their spirits up. Litten would recite Rilke for hours and he impressed the other prisoners with his knowledge on many subjects. Underneath, however, Litten was losing hope. On 05-02-1938, after five years of interrogation and torture  and a failed escape attempt, Litten age 34 was found by several friends from his barracks, hanging in the lavatory, a suicide.]

The “bunker”, Dachau’s prison

The day before his suicide, one of Litten’s friends, Alfred Dreifuß, found a noose under Litten’s pillow. He showed it to the blockälteste, who said it was not the first that had been found in Litten’s possession. At the time, Litten was under interrogation in the “bunker” When he came back, he was clearly in a suicidal frame of mind, repeating several times that he “must speak with Heinz Eschen”, a prisoner who had just died. He also had recently told his friends that he had enough of being imprisoned. Another of Litten’s Dachau friends, Alfred Walter Grünebaum, said later that Litten was in constant fear of more brutal interrogations and that Litten had given up on ever being free. On the evening of 04-02-1938, it was clear what Litten had in mind, but no one kept watch. In the middle of the night, his bed was discovered empty and his friends found him hanging in the lavatory. Litten wrote a few parting words and that he had decided to take his life.

Litten, Hans Achim is buried at Friedhof Pankow III, Niederschönhausen, Pankow, Berlin, Germany, Section UWB, Grave No. 349.

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