Hans Buttersack
Hans Buttersack practiced as an attorney at law in Wiesbaden from 1909 onward. He was highly decorated in World War I and did not return from his internment as a prisoner of war in France until 1920.
A Gauführer of the “Stahlhelm, League of Front Soldiers” he welcomed the demise of the Weimar Republic. He then did an about-face, however, and began helping establish the Confessing Church in Nassau-Hesse and working as the attorney for the Pastors’ Emergency League. He was disciplined by the German Christian church government for attending the Confessing Church’s National Synod in Dahlem in 1934.
As legal counsel for victims of political and racial persecution, Buttersack ultimately came into conflict with government and party authorities repeatedly. He was imprisoned for political statements for several weeks in 1938. He was arrested again in May of 1943 and sent to Dachau concentration camp. He had to perform forced labor in Haunstetten subcamp near Augsburg. He was injured seriously during an air raid in February of 1944 and sent back to Dachau where he died of typhus one year later.
