John, Hans

Lawyer, resistance fighter

Born: 31.08.1911 in Treysa

Died: 23.04.1945 in Berlin

After graduating from the Staatliches Realgymnasium Wiesbaden, the son of a Prussian surveyor who was transferred here from Treysa in 1922, John studied law at Frankfurt University, as did his brother Otto John, who was two years older. During the last years of the Weimar Republic, John had initially appeared as a sympathizer of the SPD, at times also of anarcho-syndicalism and then of the German Socialist Workers' Party. Eventually, he moved closer and closer to the KPD and around 1931 - like the brothers Fritz and Günther Berkhahn and Hermann Maaß, the son of SPD city councillor Johannes Maaß - joined the small Wiesbaden group of proletarian-revolutionary writers, which met more or less regularly in the back room of the "Zum Elefant" restaurant, not least to critically discuss his own short literary texts. The KPD party office was also located in the same building on the corner of Walramstrasse and Frankenstrasse. After passing the major state examination in law and obtaining his doctorate, John worked for a short time as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig and then, from the summer of 1939, in the same position at the Institute for Air Law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, headed by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schleicher.

Drafted for military service in June of the following year, John suffered several serious gunshot wounds on the Eastern Front in March 1942. The non-commissioned officer was therefore discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1943, whereupon he immediately resumed his academic work. His brother Otto, who worked for Lufthansa and with whom he lived in Berlin-Dahlem, soon involved John in the efforts of military and civilian resistance circles to overthrow the Reich capital and many other places in Germany at the time. He was not only informed that men such as former Colonel General Ludwig Beck, the former Minister of the Interior of the People's State of Hesse Wilhelm Leuschner and First Lieutenant Dr. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, orderly officer with the First General Staff Officer of Army Group Centre Colonel Henning von Tresckow, were involved in these activities, but also the former Lord Mayor of Leipzig, Dr. Carl Goerdeler. He even got to know him personally at a conspiratorial meeting that took place in John's apartment at the end of 1943. Hans John also took part in a corresponding meeting there on 17 July 1944 between Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer, General Counsel of Deutsche Lufthansa and Otto John's superior with numerous connections to military and civilian resistance circles, and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, orderly officer to Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Von Haeften told his interlocutors that "something was about to happen" and that it would be "fabulous" if Bonhoeffer succeeded in making civil aviation available for the overthrow project. The John brothers, who had also been supporting Captain Ludwig Gehre, the resistance fighter in hiding, financially and materially as well as providing and procuring accommodation for months, met with Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer again in their apartment on the night of July 20/21 and celebrated the erroneous assumption that Count Schenk von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators had been successful.

In the days that followed, John was involved in several clandestine meetings to coordinate further action. While Dr. Otto John managed to escape from Germany on 24 July, his brother was arrested in August 1944 and was subjected to severe torture over the next few months in order to extort information from the still communist-minded man. On February 2, 1945, he was sentenced to death by the "People's Court". In the night of 22 to 23 April, Dr. Hans John and several other prisoners, including Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schleicher, were taken to an area near the Berlin cell prison at Lehrter Straße 3 and shot there by an SS firing squad. At the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof cemetery, where the victims of that night of murder were thrown into a mass grave, a memorial stone commemorates the crime, which was committed only shOtto John, who was two years older. During the last years of the Weimar Republic, John had initially appeared as a sympathizer of the SPD, at times also of anarcho-syndicalism and then of the German Socialist Workers' Party. Eventually, he moved closer and closer to the KPD and around 1931 - like the brothers Fritz and Günther Berkhahn and Hermann Maaß, the son of SPD city councillor Johannes Maaß - joined the small Wiesbaden group of proletarian-revolutionary writers, which met more or less regularly in the back room of the "Zum Elefant" restaurant, not least to critically discuss his own short literary texts. The KPD party office was also located in the same building on the corner of Walramstrasse and Frankenstrasse. After passing the major state examination in law and obtaining his doctorate, John worked for a short time as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig and then, from the summer of 1939, in the same position at the Institute for Air Law at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, headed by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schleicher.

Drafted for military service in June of the following year, John suffered several serious gunshot wounds on the Eastern Front in March 1942. The non-commissioned officer was therefore discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1943, whereupon he immediately resumed his academic work. His brother Otto, who worked for Lufthansa and with whom he lived in Berlin-Dahlem, soon involved John in the efforts of military and civilian resistance circles to overthrow the Reich capital and many other places in Germany at the time. He was not only informed that men such as former Colonel General Ludwig Beck, the former Minister of the Interior of the People's State of Hesse Wilhelm Leuschner and First Lieutenant Dr. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, orderly officer with the First General Staff Officer of Army Group Centre Colonel Henning von Tresckow, were involved in these activities, but also the former Lord Mayor of Leipzig, Dr. Carl Goerdeler. He even got to know him personally at a conspiratorial meeting that took place in John's apartment at the end of 1943. Hans John also took part in a corresponding meeting there on 17 July 1944 between Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer, General Counsel of Deutsche Lufthansa and Otto John's superior with numerous connections to military and civilian resistance circles, and Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, orderly officer to Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg. Von Haeften told his interlocutors that "something was about to happen" and that it would be "fabulous" if Bonhoeffer succeeded in making civil aviation available for the overthrow project. The John brothers, who had also been supporting Captain Ludwig Gehre, the resistance fighter in hiding, financially and materially as well as providing and procuring accommodation for months, met with Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer again in their apartment on the night of July 20/21 and celebrated the erroneous assumption that Count Schenk von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators had been successful.

In the days that followed, John was involved in several clandestine meetings to coordinate further action. While Dr. Otto John managed to escape from Germany on 24 July, his brother was arrested in August 1944 and was subjected to severe torture over the next few months in order to extort information from the still communist-minded man. On February 2, 1945, he was sentenced to death by the "People's Court". In the night of 22 to 23 April, Dr. Hans John and several other prisoners, including Dr. Klaus Bonhoeffer and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schleicher, were taken to an area near the Berlin cell prison at Lehrter Straße 3 and shot there by an SS firing squad. At the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof cemetery, where the victims of that night of murder were thrown into a mass grave, a memorial stone commemorates the crime, which was committed only shortly before the complete encirclement of Berlin by Soviet and Polish combat units.