{"id":871,"date":"2023-07-20T14:51:33","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T12:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/?page_id=871"},"modified":"2023-07-20T14:51:34","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T12:51:34","slug":"edelweispiraten","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/permanent-exhibitions\/history-of-the-former-police-prison-and-its-use-during-national-socialism-1886-1945\/contemporary-witness-wolfgang-breckheimer\/edelweispiraten\/","title":{"rendered":"Edelwei\u00dfpiraten<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Edelwei\u00dfpiraten (lit. Edelweiss Pirates) were formed in 1938\/39, after the B\u00fcndische Jugend had been banned and the decree on \u00bbcompulsory youth service\u00ab of 25 February 1939 had finally forced young people into the Hitler Youth or the Bund deutscher M\u00e4dels. Members of the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten were mainly young workers from the Rhine-Ruhr area. Their distinctive mark was an edelweiss under the left lapels of their skirts or an edelweiss-coloured pin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is estimated that the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten had several thousand followers, aged between 14 and 17. Initially, the name \u00bbEdelwei\u00dfpiraten\u00ab was a provocation for opposition youths, which was then adopted by the resisters themselves only in the middle of the Second World War. The Edelwei\u00dfpiraten\u2018 resistance to the Nazi regime manifested itself in the early stages in the organisation of forbidden trips and camps. The free trips of the \u00bbWandervogelbewegung\u00ab had been banned by the HJ leadership. Instead, HJ trips and camps were introduced. Here the daily routine was regulated by military discipline, ideological training and paramilitary exercises dominated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten\u2018 trips they met other groups, camped together and sang forbidden B\u00fcndische songs. At first, the songs were mainly taken from the B\u00fcndische Jugend, but some of them put an ironic spin on them or on songs of the enemy HJ, giving them political content and wishes for freedom. The Edelwei\u00dfpiraten in particular were also joined by many girls who did not want to be forced into the National Socialists\u2018 \u00bbwife and mother role\u00ab. On 1 June 1938, new guidelines for HJ patrols were issued, authorising the HJ to \u00bbintervene\u00ab in the \u00bbopen street\u00ab and in \u00bbclosed rooms\u00ab. Conflicts with the HJ patrol service became increasingly inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another means of resistance was the distribution of leaflets and the painting on the walls of anti-fascist slogans and information from intercepted \u00bbenemy reports\u00ab. When the streets were almost deserted during aerial bombing raids, the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten wrote on trains, house walls and streets, with the help of leftover paint or school chalk, slogans such as: \u00bbDown with Hitler\u00ab, \u00bbthe OKW is lying\u00ab, \u00bbMedals and Honours for the Great Murder\u00ab, \u00bbDown with the Nazi Beast\u00ab and \u00bbNazi heads will roll after the war\u00ab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youths also listened to enemy radio stations and spread the news as widely as possible. Listening to enemy stations and spreading this information was a life-threatening thing to do. The Nazi regime intensified its control and repressive measures, especially as the course of the war worsened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, attempts were made to reintegrate the opposition youth groups into the system. Nevertheless, the Tor youths had long since been declared enemies of the state and high traitors. Since there were no penal provisions for youth cliquishness in the Reich Penal Code, general penal provisions were used to apply to the youths. This was laid down in the so-called \u00bbGuidelines for Combating Juvenile Cliques\u00ab, issued on 25 October 1944 by Eric Kaltenbrunner (a prominent Nazi jurist).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before this directive was issued, state repression determined everyday life in the resistance. Getting a vacancy or attending school was almost impossible. The repressive measures did not only begin with informing, denunciation and Gestapo terror. The Nazi regime punished oppositional youths with welfare education, prison, youth concentration camps and did not even shy away from the death penalty. The Moringen youth concentration camp was established as early as 1940. Here, \u00bbnon-conformist\u00ab youths were permanently imprisoned. Many Edelwei\u00dfpiraten were among the approximately 1000 inmates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A large part of the group members knew each other only by their nicknames or first names, which was also a protection during torture interrogations. In 1943, some members of the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten decided to go into illegality and make contact with the political opposition, such as the probably best-known Edelweiss Pirate group from the working-class district of Ehrenfeld in Cologne, the so-called \u00bbEhrenfelder Gruppe\u00ab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This group consisted of escaped forced labourers, Russians, Jews, deserters and young people who had been active in anti-fascist actions in the Ehrenfeld district of Cologne since August 1944. The groups were often locally based and organised independently of each other. At the latest due to the turmoil of war and the decision to join the resistance, the group members had also become each other\u2018s family reference and substitute in the underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many of the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten were murdered can only be roughly put into figures. Large numbers of them were interned in prisons and camps towards the end of the war. The Edelwei\u00dfpiraten on the Rhine and Ruhr continued to exist until about 1947. Since the 1980s, some Edelwei\u00dfpiraten have published biographical texts, which represent an indispensable and valuable basis for historical reappraisal and make their decisive contribution in the fight against historical revisionism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Edelwei\u00dfpiraten (lit. Edelweiss Pirates) were formed in 1938\/39, after the B\u00fcndische Jugend had been banned and the decree on \u00bbcompulsory youth service\u00ab of 25 February 1939 had finally forced young people into the Hitler Youth or the Bund deutscher M\u00e4dels. Members of the Edelwei\u00dfpiraten were mainly young workers from the Rhine-Ruhr area. Their distinctive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121,"parent":855,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-871","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/871\/revisions\/872"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/klapperfeld.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}