Franz Leuninger

Franz Leuninger (28 December 1898 – 1 March 1945) was a Christian trade unionist and resistant against the National Socialism regime.

Life

Leuninger was born in Mengerskirchen. During the Weimar Republic he worked as local and district secretary of the Christian Construction Workers' Association in Aachen, Euskirchen and later in Breslau. The trained bricklayer was a member of the Deutsche Zentrumspartei in the city parliament of Breslau and in March 1933 he ran for the Reichstag.

After the Nazis came to power and free trade unions were crushed, he took over the construction and management of a non-profit settlement community ("Deutsches Heim"). In this function the determined opponent of National Socialism later came into contact with the resistance groups around Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck and the Christian trade unionist Jakob Kaiser. After a successful revolution and a democratic new beginning in the Shadow Beck/Goerdeler Cabinet, Leuninger was foreseen as the Ober-Präsident of the province of Silesia. After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944, Fleuninger was arrested on September 26 and remained in custody for several months before being tried by the Berlin People's Court on 26 February 1945. He was Sentenced to Death and hanged on 1 March 1945 in Plötzensee Memorial Prison Berlin aged 46.

Memorial
  • The Catholic Church has included Franz Leuninger as witness of faith in the German Martyrology of the 20th Century.
  • The primary school Franz Leuninger School in his birthplace Mengerskirchen in the district of Limburg-Weilburg bears his name.
  • In der Nähe der Hinrichtungsstätte Plötzensee wurde 1962 der Leuningerpfad nach ihm benannt.[1]
  • In Hannover, the Leuningerstraße, which was built in the district of Wettbergen in 1984, honours the name giver.[2]

See also

Further reading
  • Günter Buchstab (1985), "Leuninger, Franz", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German), 14, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 375–376; (full text online)
  • Alois Leuninger: Franz Leuninger zum Gedenken.[3] Self edited. Mengerskirchen 1970
  • Helmut Moll: Den Widerstand mit dem Tod bezahlt. Katholiken unter Hitlers Terror im Euskirchener Raum. In Stadt Euskirchen (ed.): Euskirchen im 20. Jahrhundert. 700 Jahre Stadt Euskirchen 1302 – 2002. Weilerswist 2002. pp. 239–260
  • Helmut Moll (edited on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), Zeugen für Christus. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts.[4] 6th extended and restructured edition, Paderborn among others 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78080-5, vol. I, 425–429.

References
  1. Leuningerpfad
  2. Helmut Zimmermann: Leuningerstraße, in Die Strassennamen der Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1992, ISBN 3-7752-6120-6, p. 159
  3. Franz Leuninger zum Gedenken on WorldCat
  4. Zeugen für Christus. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts on WorldCat
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