Wilhelm Adam Hugo

At Linnéstraße 27 in Frankfurt am Main, a Stolperstein commemorates Wilhelm Adam Hugo and his resistance to Nazism. The small brass plaque connects this residential street with a life shaped by poverty, work and political courage.

Born in Frankfurt, Wilhelm Adam Hugo worked as a labourer without formal vocational training and endured long unemployment between 1928 and 1938. He lived with his wife and three children, sharing a house with painter Anton Breitinger, a Communist Party member. In 1934, the two men formed a group that read political texts, with Hugo acting as treasurer and illegal organisational leader. From 1938, his work at Post Office 9 near the main railway station brought colleagues into discussions about the war and prisoners of war. Meetings moved through canteens and pubs, while German-language broadcasts from London supplied information for circulation.

Hugo helped organise the resistance group known as “the head” and trained members to write and distribute leaflets. After his arrest in 1941, a high-treason conviction led to his execution by guillotine in 1942. No burial place was granted to him or the other condemned members, leaving the stone at Linnéstraße 27 as a tangible place of remembrance.