Transcript
Narrator “Hundestart” – “Texas” – “Reeperbahn”. Already the names of the Leipzig youth cliques testify to their rejection of outdated conventions and above all of Nazism. They refused to march in step with the HJ, the Hitler Youth. The groups of young people from the city’s working-class districts became known as the “Leipzig Gangs”. They deliberately called attention to themselves with their clothing style, their gang attire. Rolf Franz from the Reeperbahn Gang recalled:
Rolf Franz “The feeling of solidarity resulted from the common ‘anti’-attitude – to put it ‘mildly’ – towards everything that came from or had to do with the Nazis. A conspicuous expression of this was our clothing. The preferred attire for boys was: leather trousers, drawstring shoes, white knee socks or socks and plaid shirts with as much red in them as possible.”
Narrator Wolfgang and Rudolf Schieweg were among the leaders of “Reeperbahn”. The gang members met in their neighbourhood in front of ice cream parlours and cinemas, and hiked or cycled out to the country. A number of them wore red neckerchiefs that were taken away from them again and again. At evening gatherings organized by the Schieweg brothers, they listened to Radio Moscow and jazz music, both of which were prohibited. Wolfgang Schieweg fashioned brass pins with the letters BJ. They stood for Bündische Jugend and thus represented open rejection of the state-administered Hitler Youth. The defiant lyrics of a Leipzig Gang song translate as:
And you want to combat us
Bündische Jugend will persist!
And you want to suppress us
Bündische Jugend will not go down!
The gangs were combatted, their members persecuted for subversive conduct. In 1938, the year before the war began, the Gestapo stepped up their policing activities. Arrests set in. The young people were charged with subversive activity. Proceedings were conducted against some ninety adolescents accused of “preparations for high treason”. Since the majority of the defendants were not yet of age, they were put in a city-owned juvenile and education centre in Mittweide. The adults were punished with prison sentences. The criminal investigation department later transferred a number of them from the prisons directly to a concentration camp.
Wolfgang Schieweg was arrested in mid June 1939. The public prosecutor accused him of having listened to Radio Moscow regularly along with his brother and two other adolescents. He was also charged with leading the gang and calling on it to pick fights with members of the Hitler Youth. The Higher Regional Court of Dresden sentenced him to three years and three months in the Waldheim prison. His brother Rudolf was also sentenced to prison. When Rudolf was released in late 1941, he was called up for Wehrmacht service and assigned to a punishment unit. There he perished in 1944.
After serving his prison sentence, Wolfgang Schieweg was taken directly into “preventive custody” and committed to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Here he survived above all thanks to his profession: his toolmaking skills were needed in the armament factory adjacent to the camp. He advanced to the position of foreman, but was then transferred to the Schönebeck subcamp for alleged theft. There he toiled for the Junckers aircraft company as a concentration camp inmate until the end of the war. When the camp was cleared in late April 1945, he managed to flee. He returned to Leipzig. He had already died a premature death by the time his actions and the opposition of the Leipzig Gangs were recognized as acts of resistance.
