The building circled in red is Veillodterstrasse 21. Bayreuther Strasse, with its tram tracks, can be seen further to the east (over to the right). In the upper third of the picture, Pirckheimerstrasse cuts through the photo from east to west. In the top right-hand corner, a small part of the city park is visible. Aerial photo 1927.

(Nuremberg City Archives, A 97 No. 238)

Adam Schwind

(1899-1945)

Location of stone: Veillodterstrasse 21 District: Gärten hinter der Veste
Sponsor: Dieter Barth Laying of stone: 9 November 2018

Biography

On 9 November 2018 Gunter Demnig came to Nuremberg to take part in a ceremony to mark the laying of stumbling stones. On the day which marked the 80th anniversary of the “Night of Broken Glass”, he laid stumbling stones for Jewish and homosexual victims of National Socialism. Dieter Barth sponsored the laying of Adam Schwind’s stumbling stone. Schwind died in Gusen concentration camp in 1945.

Adam Schwind, son of the attorney Karl Schwind and his wife Elizabeth (née Lippold), was born in Bamberg on 1 July 1899. The family was Catholic. After leaving school, Schwind trained to become a decorator. In the final two years of the First World War, he was conscripted to the emergency services, working for the company Hecht & Merkel. After the war, he worked for a time as an attendant for the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control in Berlin. The commission’s role was to ensure compliance with the regulations of the Versailles Treaty. Schwind then returned to Bamberg, where he lived off his savings and from the estate inherited from his deceased parents. In November 1930 he gave up his parents’ house in Bamberg and moved to Nuremberg.

In the years that followed, Schwind was active in the homosexual scene which was developing in the city and made numerous contacts there. He was particularly active in the “Silhouette” association – where homosexuals could interact socially and organise group activities – and, in 1933, this attracted the attention of Nuremberg’s criminal police. They had obtained information from a neighbour that Schwind had received various male visitors at his flat in Veillodterstraße. Nevertheless, it could not be proved that he had contravened Paragraph 175. However, the investigating officers later claimed that this was because Schwind had always been very careful and “extremely cunning”.

In October 1936, following a statement from one of Schwind’s sexual partners, the police eventually obtained the desired grounds for his arrest and he was immediately taken into custody. In the subsequent interrogations, Schwind was anxious not to incriminate anyone and did not divulge to the police the names of any other sexual partners. However, in the weeks that followed, the police were able to broaden their investigations, arresting a number of Schwind’s acquaintances. These had also been members of the already-disbanded “Silhouette” association.

Eventually, 22 former members of “Silhouette” were brought before Nuremberg’s regional court. The trial began on 14 March 1937 and lasted several days. Schwind was regarded as one of the principal defendants – he had engaged in intimate relationships with men but in the opinion of the court had also introduced several of his homosexual acquaintances to each other, thus practicing procuration – and was sentenced to three years in prison. It was the most severe sentence handed out to any of the defendants.

Schwind’s three years of imprisonment were followed by an odyssey through a number of concentration camps up until the end of the Second World War. Imprisoned in Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp until September 1944, he was then moved to the concentration camp in Dachau. Only a few days later, he was transferred to Mauthausen concentration camp.

The particularly inhuman conditions in the Mauthausen camp, aimed solely at the physical extermination of the prisoners, must have weakened Schwind to such an extent that, when the camp was liberated, it was too late to save him. Schwind died in Gusen concentration camp – a sub-camp of Mauthausen – on 11 May 1945, five days after Gusen had been liberated by American troops.

- Nuremberg City Archives, C 21/IX registration card.

- Nuremberg City Archives, public prosecutor’s office, Regional Court of Nuremberg-Fürth II, No. 759.

- Information from Mauthausen concentration camp, 19 January 2017.

- Dokuments on Adam Schwind in the data bank of the Arolsen Archives – International Center on Nazi Persecution, URL: https://arolsen-archives.org/.

- Biographical compilation by Dr. Matthias Gemählich.

Stolpersteine in the vicinity