Walter Chall

Walter Chall was born on October 28th 1913 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. He was son to the greengrocer Johanna Chall, née Criée, and the worker Gustav Chall. The couple had five children of whom two died in early age. Walter grew up with two elder brothers. Willi was four years older and Hans two; not much is known about them.
Already as a pupil Walter helped his mother with the work at her vegetable stall. Early on, he started to be aware of politics and led discussions with his classmates about Communism. He spent much of his time with antifascist activities. Both parents understood themselves as left wing followers. They supported the “Rote Hilfe”, affiliated to the “International Red Aid” and thus approved of Walter’s political activities and encouraged him in doing so. Since 1928 Walter Chall was member of the “Rotfrontkämpferbund“ (RFB), a Communist self-defence organisation, and soon on he was part of the “Häuserschutzstaffel”, a group of activists defending houses against fascist attacks. He often was involved in fights with the SA troop “Sturm 33”. This SA troop was notoriously known in Charlottenburg, it was also called “murder-troop” and was responsible for the death of many antifascists from the beginning of the 1930s on.
In school he had problems because of disregarding the authorities and early on came into conflict with the law. The Charlottenburg court sentenced him because of several thefts and “serious mischief” and demanded him to be confined in a youth welfare home. In total, Walter Chall was brought to the youth welfare homes Berlin-Lichtenberg and to the Neander-house in Klein-Cammin eight times. Again and again he escaped or was hidden by his parents, who at the beginning agreed with his detention in a youth welfare home, but soon insistently asked for his release and return to home. Walter carried on with not adjusting his behaviour to the required demands and found himself in a permanent clash with the courts and youth welfare authorities. This ended up with the attempt to pathologize him and he was declared to be insane. It is interesting that Walter’s process of becoming politically involved is also described as him being in an “incited condition”. There is reason to suspect that the young man was a thorn in the flesh of the authorities due to his political activities. It is proven that he stayed in the mental hospitals “Kückenmühler Anstalten” in the town of Stettin and in Berlin-Buch, but apparently Walter and his family managed to be left in peace from July 1930 on. His mother states in her compensation claim that possibly his participation in the “Häuserstaffel” and the RFB also stabilised him.
After returning from the mental hospitals, Walter Chall continued his antifascist work. He thus became victim of an armed attack of the SA-troop 33 in the Röntgenstraße in Charlottenburg on August, 29th of 1932. According to an eyewitness report after the war, he was betrayed by his fiancée, Friedegunde Wittig, for allegedly being an accomplice and was then accused of murdering the SA-member Gatschke during the attack in Röntgenstraße together with further eight communists. Due to the German emergency law, five of the accused, among them Walter Chall, were facing capital punishment. The trial was accompanied by various solidarity actions of the Red Aid and became a symbol of a judiciary not being democratically legitimised any more. The cause of the defendants was pled by the famous lawyer Hans Litten, who previously had publicly declassed Adolf Hitler in a lawsuit and thus was exceedingly hated by the Nazis. Due to close reasoning, Litten managed to prove that the defendants were innocent and that the SA-member had been shot by his own people. As a result, the mood of the press and the court changed for the benefit of Chall and the other defendants. They were acquitted in October 1932. Even though Walter Chall was much hated by the SA since the Röntgenstraßen-trial and he had to be beware of acts of revenge, he continued with his political activities. He stayed in the RFB which had been forbidden in the meantime. After the Nazis had taken over power he was in constant mortal danger, but his mother later stated that he nonetheless carried out courier tasks for the illegal Communist party. Apparently, Walter tried not to be at home anymore. Emmy Grünberg, whose family harboured persecuted people, testified in 1947 that Walter Chall stayed at her home for some days. She also mentioned that Walter hid in the garden colony of his parents at Tegeler Weg; it could not be ascertained whether the whole family lived there to that time.
On September 20th 1933, SA members found Walter in the garden colony – their intention must have been obvious to him for he tried to flee through the garden. Trying to escape by climbing over a fence, he was shot and collapsed. It remains unclear whether he managed to reach the nearby police station 130 on the corner of Keplerstraße/Osnabrückerstraße in search for help or whether – and more probable – the SA-members took him there. In the police station, his mother Johanna Chall, asking about his whereabouts, was not told anything. She impressively describes in several statements after 1945 how she was locked into a room on the station and there heard the voice of her son crying for help. She also heard how her son, who was not able to walk on his own anymore, was pushed down the stairs. After she heard a truck drive away, she was released without any further information. Walter Chall was brought into the notorious “Maikowski House” in the Rosinenstraße and was heavily tortured there. It is not known how long he had to suffer; fact is that he was murdered. The “Maikowski House”, named after the leader of the SA troop 33, Hans Maikowski, who died after a fight in the night of the takeover of the Nazis and was declared to be a martyr, was one of the infamous torture centres in Charlottenburg. After the war, Johann Chall said that the body of her son was found in a “completely mutilated” condition and with chopped off hands by a forester in the Tegel woods behind the Spandau canal. Not before September 23rd 1933 were she and her husband informed after a week of pained waiting that the body was in the mortuary. The death certificate named shots to the trunk and head to be the cause of death, but it was taken from Johanna Chall before the funeral by Gestapo officers.
Several witnesses emphasised after the war that the parents of Walter Chall became fierce opponents of the Nazis and that, even though they had very little money, they supported the antifascist work financially. If they themselves were persecuted remains unknown.
Walter’s brother Hans died in 1938 due to an accident he had while building the Siegfried Line. His oldest brother Willi was conscripted to the Wehrmacht, his hands were heavily injured in the Soviet Union. His further fate is not known, he is not being mentioned by his mother in any of her later statements. Walter’s father, Gustav Chall, died on November 14th 1945. According to an eyewitness it is mentioned that he died due to the persecution of the Nazis. Johanna Chall was recognised as an “Opfer des Faschismus” – a victim of fascism – after the war. She died on January 5th 1963.

Translation: Sophia Schmitz