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August Landmesser is the man from the iconic photograph who not only refused to salute Hitler with the Nazi salute, but above all, stood firm against the Nazis for the sake of his love.
History is not just dry facts from history books. Behind them are thousands and thousands of ordinary human stories. Today, we will look at one of them. It’s a story of love, courage, and a terrible time.
The photograph that introduces this article is quite well-known. However, few people know the story of the man captured in it, who, in the middle of a crowd saluting Hitler with raised arms, stands in protest with his arms crossed.
The photo itself was taken on June 13, 1936, and shows a large gathering of workers at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg during the launch of the navy training ship Horst Wessel. Adolf Hitler was also present at this event. Almost everyone in the picture is giving the Nazi salute, except for one man standing towards the back of the crowd, who is sternly standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
Who was this man? And why did he refuse to join in saluting the Führer?
The answer is quite surprising. He was August Landmesser, a member of the Nazi party NSDAP since 1931. However, we should not lump him in with what we commonly associate with the word “Nazi.” On the contrary, he is a man whose story could be the subject of a deeply human film, where the strange time of Hitler’s rise clashes with a romantic love that cannot be denied. August fell in love with a Jewish woman and, despite the pervasive antisemitism, refused to give up his feelings.
August Landmesser: Life during the global crisis
August Landmesser was born in 1910 in Moorrege as the only child of August Franz Landmesser and Wilhelmina Magdalena, née Schmidtpott.
According to available sources, August Landmesser joined the NSDAP in 1931, hoping it would help him find a job. Let’s remember that the global economic crisis had been raging for several years by then. The so-called Great Depression, triggered by the 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash, was the largest economic crisis in human history, and it had devastating effects in Germany. The country was struggling with massive unemployment, peaking at nearly 30%, which led to widespread poverty, social unrest, and essentially enabled the rise of the Nazi movement. For context, reports indicate that by 1932, the number of unemployed Germans had grown to six million.
The crisis undermined faith in the Weimar Republic and contributed to the rise of extremist movements, especially the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler. Consequently, political radicalization and destabilization occurred, ultimately leading to the collapse of democracy and the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933.
Love for the “wrong woman” and the end of Nazi service
Outwardly, August appeared to be a loyal part of the Nazi machine, but he was not an active member of the movement. He remained an ordinary man, a worker at the shipyard. Then, in 1935, he fell in love with a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler, and they soon became engaged.
That same year, his NSDAP colleagues discovered her background. It is likely that as a good German, they first tried to reason with him, then gave him a choice between his fiancée and service to the Nazi party. August must have known that either choice would turn his life upside down. He chose love and was immediately expelled from the NSDAP. He slowly began to realize that things would only get worse.
Despite this, he attempted to marry Irma, who was seven months pregnant at the time. They registered their wedding in August 1935 in Hamburg, but the Nuremberg Laws passed a month later prevented them from officially marrying. A month after that, on October 29, 1935, Landmesser and Eckler welcomed their first daughter, Ingrid.
Raising a child with a Jewish woman who was not his legal wife (nor could she be) was hell in Nazi Germany, but what followed was even worse.
A detour to the Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws mainly refer to two constitutional laws passed by the German Reichstag on September 15, 1935, in Nuremberg: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.
The first of these laws, the Reich Citizenship Law, established that only a German or someone of “kindred blood” could be a citizen of the Reich. With the introduction of this law, German Jews lost their political rights. The second law, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, prohibited marriages between Jews and Germans and also forbade extramarital relations between them.
To enforce these laws, implementing regulations were gradually issued, the first on November 14, 1935, which defined who would be considered a Jew or of mixed Jewish descent for the purposes of these laws. The escalating wave of anti-Jewish terror, fueled by Goebbels’ propaganda, was reaching its peak.
1936: The year of the famous photograph
On June 13, 1936, a grand event took place at the Hamburg harbor. A ship named Horst Wessel, named after a member of the SA killed by communists in Berlin six years earlier, was launched in the presence of Nazi dignitaries. Among the photographers capturing the event was one who took the now-famous photo of August refusing to salute Hitler with the raised Nazi salute. Given what we know about his life, it is clear that this public act of defiance was both brave and desperate. By this time, August already knew that if he wanted to live with his wife and child, he would have to flee Germany.
Escape, punishment, and the machinery of death
In 1937, Landmesser attempted to escape Nazi Germany with his family to Denmark but was detained at the border and charged with “racial defilement” under the Nuremberg Laws. He claimed that neither he nor Eckler knew whether she was fully of Jewish descent. Due to a lack of evidence, he was acquitted on May 27, 1938, but warned that any repeat offense would result in a lengthy prison sentence.
This did not deter August and Irma. They continued their relationship openly, and on July 15, 1938, Landmesser was arrested again and sentenced to two and a half years in the Börgermoor concentration camp. Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the Fuhlsbüttel prison, where she gave birth to their second daughter, Irene. She was then transferred to Oranienburg concentration camp, later to Lichtenburg women’s camp, and eventually to Ravensbrück. The last letters from Irma were received in January 1942. It is believed she was transferred to the Bernburg Euthanasia Center in February 1942, where she, along with 14,000 others, was murdered. Postwar documentation declared her legally dead in 1949, with the official date of death as April 28, 1942.
Unlike Irma, August Landmesser, being of the “right” race, was released from prison on January 19, 1941. However, he never saw his wife or children again. He worked as a foreman for a transport company called Püst until February 1944, when he was drafted into a penal battalion and sent to Croatia. He was declared missing in action on October 17, 1944, and was buried in a mass grave near the village of Hodilje, Croatia.
Their children were initially taken to a city orphanage, but later, Ingrid was allowed to live with her maternal grandmother. In 1941, Irena was placed with foster parents. After her grandmother’s death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster care.
Cultural Impact
The story of August and Irma Landmesser is depicted as one of the storylines in the 2023 film Origin.
PS: Are you interested in other unknown heroes? Did you know that one polish women, Irena Sendler organized the rescue of approximately 2,500 Jewish children, several of whom she personally led out of the Warsaw ghetto?
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