Kurt Adams (politician)

[1] Following the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in July 1944 Kurt Adams was one of several thousand high-profile non-Nazis arrested and detained by the government during August.

He faced a call from the newly appointed Hamburg Nazi Gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann to renounce his political convictions, but did not do so.

Kurt Adams was succeeded as head of the Hamburg People's Academy by Heinrich Haselmayer [de].

[7] After losing his public service employment Adam worked briefly for a cinema news-sheet, before taking on a small coffee distribution business in Hamburg's Nikolaifleet (in the city's old harbour quarter).

The coffee business brought him into contact with a number of politically like-minded individuals, and his little trading office quickly became a Hamburg meeting point for SPD and Communists, whose party activities had become illegal in 1933.

Adams was able to help fellow victims of Nazi persecution, including Hermann Hoefer [de] and Rudolf Klug.

[1] He quickly weakened and became ill: from later reports provided by fellow detainees he appears to have caught pneumonia, and was taken, on 15 September 1944, to the camp hospital where he received treatment and his condition may have improved.