ABSTRACT
Julius Leber was born at Biesheim in Upper Alsace. When he left the village school the parson suggested that he should be sent to a secondary school at Breisach, but for financial reasons he had to break off his education and went into a wallpaper factory as an apprentice. At the age of thirty he was appointed editor of the Lübecker Volksbote and soon became a central figure among the workers in North Germany, and the unchallenged leader of the Lübeck Social Democrats. On 16 January 1933, Julius Leber appealed to the working men: ‘When it is a question of fighting for freedom, one does not ask what will happen tomorrow.’ Just before Julius Leber was executed on 5 January 1945, he sent a message to his friends: ‘One’s own life is a proper stake for so good and just a cause.
