Kurt Piehl, former edelweiss pirate in Dortmund,
around 1985
Fritz Theilen, former edelweiss pirate in Cologne,
around 1984
The edelweiss pirates - a forgotten movement of resistance against Hitler
This text is dedicated to Kurt Piehl and Fritz Theilen.
Did you ever hear about the "Edelweißpiraten" (edelweiss pirates)? They were loose bands of renegade youths during the nazi era in Germany, objected to the harsh drill of the Hitler youth. Some of them were outright Hilter-youth dropouts, others came from the so-called "Bündische Jugend" (a scout-like movement), which had been a melting pot for young people with very different backgrounds before Hitler took power. Those kids weren't exactly left-wing or politically conscious resistance in any way, though most of them were working class kids. With conditions in German deteriorating through the war, they found more and more loopholes in the system, especially in the big cities alongside Rhine river. Living in bombed out houses, stealing and looting goods from freight trains and defending themselves against Gestapo, Hitler youth, and normal police with knives and guns they made a miserable yet nazi-free living. What you see with the edelweiss pirates is a strange mix of pre-Beat hippiedom, traits of an autonomous youth culture (they even styled a certain look to recognize each other!), political resistance and dare devil mentality. In the end, there must have been thousands of them. They had to pay heavily for their dissent. Many of them were tortured by the Gestapo, sent to concentration camp-like compounds, and even killed. On October 27, 1944 for instance, eleven of them were hanged by the nazis in Cologne, the youngest being 16. Normal people despised them as criminals, cranks, and they had very few friends besides their own kind. After the war this perception of the edelweiss pirates didn't change substantially, and I know only of one small plaque in Cologne reminding of them (especially of the hanging). I think one reason why they're looked upon with contempt and suspicion is because they made anyone else look so bad. They were only kids and yet they confronted people like Wilhelm Heinz Schmitz, the Gestapo Chief of Cologne, who for all the terror he inflicted on others was convicted to one year and seven months in prison of which he got spared five months in the end.Maybe the edelweiss pirates used tactics we would frown upon under normal conditions. Maybe they just had nothing to loose. Yet brave they were to an almost unbelievable extent. And I think they deserve respect for what they did.
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