Fritz Heilscher (1898-1942)

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Fritz Heilscher came from a working-class family and began his professional career with a commercial apprenticeship. However, in 1920, at the age of 22, he decided to change careers and began training as a dancer at the German Opera House in Berlin, where the Deutsche Oper Berlin is now located. In 1922, he became a member of the “Petz-Kainer Ballet” and adopted the stage name Ferry Dworak.

In 1923, Heilscher began his professional career as a solo dancer at the opera house in Breslau. From 1926 to 1930, he worked as a ballet master at the municipal theater in Chemnitz. In 1931, he went to the Stadttheater Dortmund as a solo dancer before moving to the Badisches Landestheater Karlsruhe as a choreographer in 1932. There he was able to fully develop his artistic abilities and present his own choreographies. It is remarkable that he continued to be employed at the theater despite his first criminal trial for homosexual relations.

In 1933, the year the National Socialists seized power, Heilscher accepted a position as ballet master at the Silesian Oberlandestheater in Bytom (now Bytom in Poland). This was to be his last in the theater world.

The persecution of homosexuals, which had already taken place in the Weimar Republic on the basis of Paragraph 175, intensified dramatically under the Nazi regime. Fritz Heilscher became a victim of this increasing repression.

In April 1935, the district court in Bytom sentenced him to two years in prison for homosexual relations. This sentence had serious consequences: He lost his employment at the theater, was expelled from the artists’ association and was effectively banned from his profession. This put an abrupt end to his career as a dancer and choreographer. After his release from prison in 1937, Heilscher returned to Berlin.

Despite the difficult circumstances, he managed to build a new life. He found a job with Helene Bähr in her specialty store for riding boots at Leipziger Straße 54, but his relative safety in Berlin did not last long. At the end of 1941, he was arrested again for a love affair and sentenced to eight months in prison. His employer stood up for him and wrote a letter of recommendation, but it had no effect.

After serving his sentence, Heilscher was not released but handed over to the criminal investigation department. They ordered him to be sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp – a common practice of the Nazi regime, especially for people who were classified as “habitual criminals” or “asocials”, which often included homosexuals. He was given the Pink Triangle on his prisoner’s clothing with the prisoner number 42315.

Fritz Heilscher died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp on July 21, 1942, just two months after his arrival. His death was part of a targeted murder campaign against homosexuals in the camp’s brickworks.

The brick factory was a notorious branch of Sachsenhausen concentration camp where prisoners were forced to work under inhumane conditions. The work there was extremely hard and dangerous; many prisoners died from exhaustion, malnutrition or accidents. The targeted murder of homosexual prisoners at the Klinkerwerk shows the systematic and brutal persecution to which they were subjected under the Nazi regime.

The fate of Fritz Heilscher was initially forgotten after the war. For a long time, the persecution of homosexuals during National Socialism was not recognized as part of the Nazi crimes and the victims were often stigmatized.

It was only decades later that an active culture of remembrance for the homosexual victims of National Socialism began. On September 12, 2003, a stumble stone was laid for Fritz Heilscher in the Rosenthaler Vorstadt district of Berlin. It commemorates him in front of his last home at Strelitzer Straße 58 in the Mitte district. His life and the cruel persecution by the National Socialists are also commemorated at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial. There, his fate is reported on the information board on the camp wall at “Station Z”.