On 26 May 2023, Gunter Demnig laid ten stumbling stones in Nuremberg, five of them in memory of individuals who, through their opposition to the Nazis, became victims of the National Socialist state. The biographies were researched by a P-Seminar at Nuremberg’s Hermann Kesten College, led by Dr Maren Janetzko and Dr Pascal Metzger (Geschichte Für Alle / History for Everyone). One of the biographies was that of Georg Winter, who was imprisoned because he was a communist functionary.

Georg Winter was born in Nuremberg on 9 May 1907. A painter’s assistant, he was unemployed for a long period. He lived with his wife Elise at Hintere Kartäusergasse 42 in Nuremberg. In 1927, Winter joined the Communist Youth Organisation and in 1929 the German Communist Party. As a party functionary he was the head agitator and propagandist in the city’s Altstadt district, conducting training sessions, producing leaflets and contributing written material.

The Nuremberg Special Court sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment on 7 June 1933, because he had distributed communist newspapers. A few months later, Winter, together with four other people, was brought before the Higher Regional Court in Nuremberg, after being found in possession of the communist newspaper “Red Old Town” (“Rote Altstadt”) and printing instruments. He admitted writing most of the articles for the paper and obtaining the printing equipment. On 11 November 1933, the regional court sentenced him to one year and six months’ imprisonment for “preparing to commit high treason”. The total sentence, which Winter served in Nuremberg Prison, was two years and ten months.