AT THE CIRCUS?

Horst Wessel was a young leader of the Nazi Party in the working-class neighborhood of Friedrichshain. On January 14, 1930, he was shot in his apartment, and he died a month later. Joseph Goebbels turned him into the Nazis’ principle martyr. After 1933, the Horst Wessel Song became the Third Reich’s national anthem. There were Horst Wessel Streets, Horst Wessel Squares, a Horst Wessel Hospital — Friedrichshain even became Horst Wessel City.

Hitler said that Wessel would be remembered for hundreds of years. Today, most people have never heard of him. Two myths have since competed about Wessel’s murder: the Nazis said he was assassinated by a red hit squad; the communists said he was a pimp and was killed in a dispute with another pimp. Both these myths are completely false, and the real story offers important insights about working-class life in Friedrichshain in the late 1920s.

Our tour will start at the site of the murder. In the style of a historical murder mystery, we will trace the path the murderers took on that cold January night so many years ago. We will end up at the site of a Communist bar in the Scheunenviertel.