Hilarius Gilges: Murdered by the Nazis

Hilarius ‘Lari’ Gilges was an Afro‑German amateur actor and political activist who was murdered by the Nazis at the age of 24.

Gilges, known as ‘Lari,’ was born in 1909 in Düsseldorf, Germany; sources differ on his date of birth, with some citing 4 March and others 28 April. He was one of the few Black Germans born in the country before the First World War. His mother, Maria Stüttgen, was a textile worker in Düsseldorf, and the precise origins of his biological father—often described as an African boatman on the Rhine—are uncertain. In 1915 Maria married Franz Peter Gilges, and Hilarius took his stepfather’s surname.

Gilges grew up in the working‑class milieu of Düsseldorf and joined the Young Communist League of Germany in the mid‑1920s. He became an amateur actor and tap dancer with the communist agitprop theatre group ‘Nordwest ran,’ directed by Wolfgang Langhoff. His radical politics led to his arrest in 1931 and a sentence of one year in prison. After his release in 1932, he resumed his work as an organiser and agitator, travelling across the Lower Rhine region to warn against the growing Nazi threat.

In early 1933, after the Nazis seized power, Gilges tried to go into hiding, but his visibility as a Black communist made this difficult. In June 1933 he was seized from his apartment in Düsseldorf’s Altstadt district and taken away by members of the Gestapo and SS. He was brutally tortured and killed around 20 June 1933; his body, bearing multiple stab wounds, dislocated arms and a gunshot to the head, was found under a bridge over the Rhine. Although the perpetrators were widely believed to be Gestapo and SS men, they were never brought to trial, even after the fall of the Nazi regime.

He was survived by his wife, Katharina Hubertine Laatsch (née Vogels), and their two children. In 1949, his widow received a lump‑sum compensation of 12,000 Deutschmarks, and some accounts note additional payments to the children.

In 1988, a commemorative plaque was installed near the site of his murder, commissioned by the Düsseldorf city museum and designed by local artist Hannelore Köhler, featuring a relief profile of Gilges. On 23 December 2003, the city of Düsseldorf named a plaza in his honour, close to the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts, further embedding his memory in the city he fought to defend from Nazism.”

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilarius_Gilge

https://blackpast.org/global-african-history/hilarius-gilges-a-k-a-lari-gilges-1909-1933

Acknowledgement: I would like to acknowledge the support of Perplexity AI (Tylis) for assistance in refining and updating this post. I would like to thank my AI collaborators, Comet (Perplexity) and ChatGPT, for their deeply sensitive and imaginative support in shaping this commemorative artwork for Hilarius Gilges. Their careful engagement with his life, their attention to historical detail, and their ability to translate memory into visual narrative helped transform a city plaza into a luminous space of remembrance, where Gilges’s courage, artistry, and resistance against Nazism continue to speak to all who stand before his name.