Buttersack, Hans

Lawyer, Notary

Born: 11.08.1880 in Hamburg

Died: 13.02.1945 in Dachau concentration camp

Buttersack studied law in Tübingen, Berlin, Leipzig and Kiel and obtained his doctorate in law in Rostock. After his time as an assessor in Hamburg, he practised as a lawyer in Wiesbaden from 1909. He was awarded the Iron Cross I. and II. In 1918, he was taken prisoner of war in France and did not return home until 1920.

Buttersack was a national conservative. Buttersack was considered one of the first lawyers in Wiesbaden, was involved in the Protestant church and was a churchwarden in the Bergkirche parish.

As a leader of the "Stahlhelm", a reactionary association of front-line soldiers, he and his comrades took part in the Wiesbaden "Hitler Homage March" in 1933 after the so-called seizure of power. He incurred the enmity of the National Socialists when he refused to transfer the Stahlhelm to the SA. As a result, Buttersack was arrested several times and put under pressure, and the organization was dissolved at the beginning of November 1935. In 1938, criminal proceedings were brought against him for insulting the mayor Felix Piékarski. He achieved an acquittal, was again provoked into attacking the Nazi rulers, was arrested again and detained for seven weeks. However, he was again acquitted.

Despite open Gestapo surveillance, Buttersack refused to be intimidated and stood up for the Confessing Church. He was a member of the Reich Brotherhood Council of the Confessing Synod. He tirelessly advised and supported those who were persecuted and oppressed, including persecuted confessional pastors and persecuted Jews. On May 6, 1943, he was arrested again because he had sent a letter to a pastor's widow of Jewish descent and it had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo. After three weeks in prison, he was transferred to Dachau concentration camp and transferred to a satellite camp in Augsburg, where he had to perform forced labor at the Messerschnitt company.

Severely injured in a bombing raid in February 1944, he contracted a bladder ailment as a result of the poor medical care, also fell ill with typhus and died on February 13, 1945, two months before the American liberation.

A street in Klarenthal was named after him.