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Nikolaus Christoph von Halem | |
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_Nikolaus_Christoph_von_Halem_(cropped).jpg) | |
| Born | 15 March 1905 |
| Died | 9 October 1944 (aged 39) |
| Cause of death | Execution by guillotine |
Nikolaus Christoph von Halem (15 March 1905 – 9 October 1944) was a German lawyer, businessman, andresistance fighter againstNazism.
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Halem was born inSchwetz inWest Prussia (present-day Świecie,Poland). He was the fourth child of Gustav Adolf von Halem (1870–1932), aPrussian district administrator, and his wife Hertha von Halem, née von Tiedemann (1879–1957). During the First World War, the family moved to Berlin.
As a child Halem was first educated at home, later he attended agymnasium in Schwetz. After his family moved to Berlin, he attended the Protestant monastery school inRoßleben,Thuringia. Having finished high school, in March 1922, he studied law at theUniversity of Göttingen, inLeipzig,Munich, andHeidelberg. During Halem's time at the university he belonged to theCorps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg student fraternity, but was excluded for intoxication.
From 1931 he did his legal clerkship. In the same year he married Marie (Mariechen) Garbe, with whom he had two sons.
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After his studies, Halem initially joined far-rightBlack Reichswehr paramilitary troops and became involved inAdolf Hitler'sBeer Hall Putsch and the Nazis' march on theMunichFeldherrnhalle on 9 November 1923. Later, however, he distanced himself from the risingNazi Party.[why?] From about 1930, he became active in theconservativeCatholic circles around scholar Carl von Jordans inBerlin, whose goal was to keep the Nazi movement from power. Through these groups and his legal training he established close contacts with other opponents of the Nazis likeKarl Ludwig Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg andHenning von Tresckow.
A few months after the appointment of Adolf Hitler asReich Chancellor and theNazi seizure of power in January 1933, Halem quit his legal internship to avoid having to swear allegiance to Hitler. By 1935, under the influence ofErnst Niekisch and Carl von Jordans, Halem already had concluded that killing Hitler was a political necessity to avert a catastrophe.[1]
In 1936 Halem served as an official of the Reich Price CommissionerCarl Friedrich Goerdeler, who soon after fell out with the Nazi government and was replaced byJosef Wagner. By 1938 Halem acted as a liaison, with his friend Wilhelm von Ketteler, of anti-Nazi groups inAustria. Hitler's plans for theAnschluss annexation of Austria upset Halem, while Ketteler conspired to assassinate the dictator at the time of the German invasion. According to his brother, Halem traveled to Czechoslovakia during theAnschluss in March 1938, to be safe from being arrested by theGestapo.[2]
In 1940 Halem took a leading position in the estate management of his friend Hubert von Ballestrem. This activity served him well as a facade to disguise his renewed activity on assassination planning and goal of political unrest. He took many business trips abroad and used them to contact anti-Nazi groups inEngland and other countries.
Already upon the 1934Night of the Long Knives, Halem was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, together withJosef "Beppo" Römer, a formerFreikorps member like him, which led to Römer's arrest and imprisonment in theDachau concentration camp until 1939.[3] Upon theInvasion of Poland, both agreed that Hitler's war was a "sheer madness" and saw the need to end Hitler, the war and to eliminate Nazi governance. Halem offered Josef Römer money to find and hire an assassin who could eliminate Hitler by shooting him or using a grenade.[4]
In 1941 Halem broke contact with Römer who agreed to continue with the plan but still hesitated to act. In early 1942, Römer was arrested by the Nazi police and under torture revealed the assassination plot. Halem was arrested on 26 February 1942 by the Gestapo and suffered torture through a number of prisons and concentration camps, includingSachsenhausen, but did not reveal any of his fellow conspirators. In June 1944, shortly before the20 July 1944 coup attempt, thePeople's Court indicted Halem for conspiracy to commit treason andundermining the war effort. He was sentenced to death and executed byguillotine inBrandenburg-Görden Prison on 9 October 1944.[5]
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In the vicinity ofPlötzensee Prison in Berlin, a street was named Halemweg in 1957. Nearby is theU-Bahn station likewise namedHalemweg. In the station is a plaque, erected in honour of Halem's in September 2010. InBrandenburg an der Havel is a street named after him: Nikolaus-von-Halem-Straße.[6]
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