Alfred Kantorowicz was born in Poznan on June 18, 1880. He was married and had four children. After graduating from high school in Berlin, he studied in Berlin, Freiburg and Munich, where he qualified as a dentist in 1912. During the First World War, he ran a reserve hospital in Alsace, and in 1918 he took over the still small dental institute at Bonn University as an associate professor. He combined this activity with the management of the school dental clinic founded in 1912. In 1923, Prof. Dr. Alfred Kantorowicz became the first full professor of dentistry in Bonn, which now had equal status. The "Bonn Model" he developed, a system of prophylaxis for dental diseases, particularly in schools, was unique and pioneering in Germany. His socio-medical ideas were closely linked to his political activities: From 1919 to 1933, he was a city councillor and member of the SPD parliamentary group on Bonn City Council.

As early as 1932, he and his three Jewish assistants were the target of lively National Socialist propaganda. After the National Socialists came to power, Prof. Dr. Alfred Kantorowicz initially went into hiding. On April 1, 1933, he was arrested and deported to the Börgermoor concentration camp. After his release on November 5, 1933, he accepted an appointment at the University of Istanbul. His family accompanied him. He had already been dismissed from the Prussian civil service on September 23, 1933, and the honorary doctorate he had been awarded in 1926 was also revoked.

Prof. Kantorowicz was called back to Bonn in 1946, but he was no longer able to pursue his teaching and research activities for health reasons. After his retirement in 1948, he worked as a consultant in the "Healthcare" department of the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior.

Alfred Kantorowicz died in Bonn on March 6, 1962.

Franz Barchfeld was born in Bonn on March 9, 1900. His parents were the upholsterer Carl Moritz Barchfeld (Bonn 1871 - Bonn 1949) and his wife Catharina Steiner (Bonn 1870 - Bonn 1944), who was one of the victims of the heavy bombing raid on October 18, 1944. Franz Barchfeld's birthplace was in Rheingasse (No. 21). He attended elementary school and then completed a three-year apprenticeship in the Hugo Dinter carpentry workshop (Doetschstr. 2a). On November 5, 1925, he married Maria Katharina Linden (Sistig 1899 - Sistig 1971). The marriage remained childless. From June 1934, the couple lived at Ellerstraße 68 (photo), where Franz Barchfeld was arrested by the Gestapo on August 22, 1944.

It is not known in detail when Franz Barchfeld became politically active. He was a trade unionist and chairman of the German Woodworkers' Association in Bonn. He was an SPD candidate in the 1933 local elections.

At the time of his arrest in August 1944, Franz Barchfeld was employed as a carpenter at the August Ochel furniture store in Beuel. His arrest was connected to the so-called "Gewitter" ("Thunderstorm") operation, in which numerous democratic politicians from the Weimar Republic era were arrested in the wake of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, including Franz Barchfeld, who, like many others from the region, was initially taken to the Cologne-Deutz camp. While the vast majority of those arrested during these days were released after a few days, Franz Barchfeld remained in custody. The reasons are not known. Franz Barchfeld was first taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then to the Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace (French: Le Struthof), or one of its satellite camps. These were gradually dissolved as the Allies advanced and the prisoners were transferred to other camps. Many of them died during these "death marches". This probably included Franz Barchfeld, whose traces were lost on February 6, 1945.

After the end of the Second World War, he was declared dead and his date of death was set as May 8, 1945. He was a victim of National Socialist persecution.

Fritz Faust was born in Kessenich on April 16, 1880. His parents, the small trader Ferdinand Faust (1841-1909) and his wife Margareta, née Bach, (1846-1903) also came from the village, which at the time still belonged to the mayoralty of Poppelsdorf. Fritz Faust trained as a plasterer and founded a "studio for decorative art" in 1910. In 1903 he married Elisabeth Magdalena Mertens (born 1881); they had three children. Fritz Faust was seriously wounded in the First World War and had to have one foot amputated.

It was probably his war experiences that led him into active politics in the 1920s. He was a co-founder of the USPD in Bonn and became a city councillor in 1919. He later switched to the KPD, for which he then sat on the city council from 1924 to 1929. Fritz Faust was a well-known local politician who was highly regarded and respected beyond party boundaries.

When the National Socialists seized power, years of persecution began for him too. As early as March 1933, he was taken into "protective custody" for several months and his invalidity pension was withdrawn in 1934 for political reasons. On January 13, 1939, Fritz Faust was arrested again; the charge was "preparation for high treason". After three days, he was transferred from Gestapo custody to the court prison, where he died on 14 May 1939 before the trial began; whether he chose suicide or whether he was murdered in prison, as Dr. Arthur Samuel, a doctor from Bonn, later reported, remains unclear.

Fritz Faust's grave is located in the Poppelsdorf cemetery. Fritz Faust was, as the later Bonn city director Sebastian Dani wrote, "a popular personality in Bonn's political life". He died in Nazi prison.

Hermann Alef was born in Cologne on June 14, 1889. His father was the director of the Wessels wall panel factory in Bonn. After leaving school, Hermann Alef first studied music and later economics in Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in 1922. In 1924, he took up the position of Syndicus of the Bonn Retail Association. In 1925, he married Ilse Gerhard from Essen and had two daughters. From 1924 to 1933, Dr. Hermann Alef was a city councillor for the Centre Party. Even before the National Socialists seized power in January 1933, he had already become the target of National Socialist agitation. In the local elections in March 1933, Dr. Alef ran again on the Centre Party list and won a seat, which he resigned on 6 August 1933 after the party was dissolved. He had already had to give up his post as Syndicus.

Dr. Hermann Alef moved to Aachen with his family. On August 23, 1944, he was sent to the prison there as part of the "Gewitter" campaign, where his spiritual brother - who later died in Dachau concentration camp - was already imprisoned. Dr. Alef was transferred from the Aachen prison to the Cologne-Deutz Messelager, from where he was to be taken to another camp, presumably Buchenwald. However, he was unexpectedly released on October 18, 1944. The Alef family lived through the end of the war in Sauerland.

In 1945, Dr. Alef became the first president of the re-established Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Bonn. He emerged as a patron of culture in Bonn and was particularly committed to the reconstruction of the Beethovenhalle. Dr. Hermann Alef died in Bonn on 9 December 1966.

Hubert Peter was born on October 18, 1902 as the fifth of seven sons in a working-class family in Rüngsdorf. After attending elementary school and working in various industrial sectors, his next professional station took him to the Ruhr region, where he worked as a miner in Dortmund. From 1928 to 1930, Hubert Peter attended the State Technical College for Economics and Administration in Düsseldorf.

Even as a teenager, Hubert Peter was politically active and was particularly interested in socio-political issues. In 1920 - during the time of the Ruhraufstand - he joined the SPD and from 1927 he was a member of the Workers' Welfare Association. In 1931, Hubert Peter became the youngest member of the Bad Godesberg municipal council for the first time; he was the local chairman of the SPD until the so-called "seizure of power" in 1933.

During the Nazi era, Hubert Peter was persecuted and arrested several times due to his political convictions and his resistance to the terror regime. He supported a Cologne resistance group. He lost his job at the Bad Godesberg city administration as early as 1933. In the course of July 20, 1944, Hubert Peter was arrested by order of the Gestapo and, like many others, imprisoned in the Cologne exhibition halls.

As early as mid-1945, Hubert Peter campaigned for the re-establishment of the Bad Godesberg SPD local association, and in 1951, with his support, the "Sozialistische Bildungsgemeinschaft Bad Godesberg" (now the Working Group for Education and Culture) was founded; Hubert Peter was also involved in the re-establishment of the Workers' Welfare Association. From 1959 until his retirement in 1967, he worked as managing director of the Bad Godesberg car ferry. His constant commitment was recognized on all sides: the social politician received the Federal Cross of Merit in 1969, Hubert Peter was honored as a city elder in 1971, and in 1999 the city of Bonn named a street after Hubert Peter in Friesdorf.

Hubert Peter died in Bad Godesberg on February 23, 1992. He is buried there in the castle cemetery.

Johannes Henry was born in Bonn on June 20, 1876. His family ran the bookshop founded by his grandfather Aimé Henry. Both his grandfathers and his father Carl Henry were active in local politics and served as city councillors.

Henry initially studied classical philology and history, and later law. He set up as a lawyer in 1906. Coming from a family that practiced Catholicism, Henry always strove to anchor the Catholic faith and its values in all areas of society and especially in politics. As early as 1907, Henry became chairman of the Bonn Center Party, in 1912 he became a city councillor for Dottendorf; in 1914 he took over the chairmanship of the Center faction in the city council. In 1917/1918, he represented the Bonn-Rheinbach constituency in the Reichstag. After the First World War, however, he returned to local politics.

The "seizure of power" by the National Socialists deprived Henry, as a representative of political Catholicism, of the opportunity to continue his political work. On July 21, 1933, he gave up his seat on the Bonn City Council. His refusal to adapt to the new political circumstances had consequences that Henry reported on after 1945. The number of mandates of his law firm was considerably reduced. In 1938, he had to endure a house search and his mail was opened. At the end of August 1944, Henry was arrested as part of Aktion Gewitter. He was held in the Cologne exhibition halls until September 2, 1944.

In 1945, Henry was one of the co-founders of the Bonn CDU and became parliamentary group leader. He was actively involved in the reconstruction of Bonn and was particularly committed to schools. In 1946, he was a member of the city council appointed by the British military government. In 1950, Henry relinquished the office of party chairman and became honorary chairman. On his 75th birthday, he was made an honorary citizen. Further honors followed: the Federal Cross of Merit in 1954 and the Golden Ring of Honor in 1956.

Johannes Henry died on September 2, 1958. His grave is in the old cemetery. A street in Gronau has been named after him since 1978.

Josef Thiebes was born in Schwarzrheindorf on August 22, 1889. After training as a locksmith at Lorscheidt in Bonn from 1903 to 1906, he was employed by the electric railroads in the districts of Bonn-Stadt, Bonn-Land and Siegkreis from 1912. Thanks to this work, he was spared a lengthy deployment as a soldier in the First World War.

After the war, Thiebes joined the SPD and the free trade unions and became involved in the works council, representing the social and economic interests of employees. During the economic crisis, he saw it as his duty to support the unemployed and co-founded the Beuel branch of the Workers' Welfare Association in 1927.

His political work at municipal level began with his election to the municipal council and the district council on March 12, 1933. This was no longer possible after the National Socialists seized power. Thiebes resigned his seat before the first municipal council meeting. On March 16, 1933, Thiebes - deputy chairman of the Beuel SPD - was arrested, interrogated for hours and threatened.

After 1945, Thiebes resumed his political and honorary activities. He was first a member of the citizens' council and then of the municipal council. He played a key role in establishing the Beuel SPD, created the city recreation program with the AWO, of which he remained chairman until his death, and campaigned for affordable housing. After the war, Thiebes was responsible for the social and refugee office and thus took care of the numerous refugees and displaced persons.

In 1956, he was re-elected to the city council and acted as parliamentary group spokesman. Thiebes retired in 1960 for health reasons. In recognition of his services, the city of Beuel awarded him the Ring of Honor in 1963.

Josef Thiebes died on April 16, 1968 and was buried in the cemetery on Platanenweg in Beuel. A street in Beuel has been named after him since 1978.

Joseph Roth was born in Cologne on January 30, 1896. He was a primary school teacher and came to Bad Godesberg in 1919. In 1927 he became a teacher at the Burgschule. In 1924, he married Katharina Paffenholz, a native of Friesdorf, with whom he had three children.

Joseph Roth was politically active and was a member of the Center Party, of which he became chairman for Bad Godesberg in the 1920s. In the local elections in March 1933, he was elected to the district council. Shortly afterwards, Joseph Roth was arrested, released a short time later but suspended from teaching. For the next two years, Joseph Roth worked as a freelancer for the "Godesberger Volkszeitung", which was originally close to the center. In 1935, he returned to teaching and was transferred to the Friesdorf elementary school. Having already taken part in the First World War as a war volunteer, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1939, but was discharged again after the campaign in France in 1940.

On August 22, 1944, Joseph Roth was arrested in connection with the "Gewitter" operation and taken to the camp in Cologne-Deutz. While the majority of those imprisoned with him were released after a few days, Joseph Roth was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp on September 16, 1944. Although his release was secured at the end of October 1944, Joseph Roth returned to Friesdorf physically and emotionally shattered. He never recovered from his experiences in Buchenwald concentration camp.

He died on January 22, 1945 as a victim of National Socialist persecution. Joseph-Roth-Straße in Friesdorf commemorates his ordeal.

Max Weis was born on May 4, 1881 in Windsheim/Bavaria. He came to Beuel as a young doctor in 1906. His marriage to Bella Mendel from Meckenheim resulted in a son. In 1912, Dr. Weis opened his own practice in his home at Friedrich-Breuer-Straße 34. During the First World War, he headed the military hospital housed in the Adelheidis-Stift in Vilich as a staff doctor. To this day, he is known as the "doctor of the poor" due to his great charity work in Beuel. From 1922 to 1929, Dr. Max Weis was a member of the Beuel municipal council, initially for the German Democratic Party and later for the communal political working group that emerged from it.

After the National Socialists seized power in January 1933, Jewish doctors were also gradually restricted in their ability to work; in October 1938, they were finally banned from practicing medicine. The day after the Reichspogromnacht, on November 10, 1938, Dr. Max Weis was arrested and taken to a concentration camp. After his release, he made preparations for himself and his wife to emigrate to Cuba. After a dramatic sea voyage on the MS St. Louis, the Weis couple found refuge in Great Britain. After a brief internment, Dr. Weis returned to his original profession, working in Llandaff near Cardiff in Wales from around 1948.

On October 25, 1952, Dr. Max Weis died in the hospital where he had worked until shortly before his death. A few weeks later, on November 19, 1952, his wife took her own life.

Otto Renois was born on August 8, 1892 in Griesel, Brandenburg. He was a model carpenter and came to the Rhineland as a young craftsman on his travels. In 1922, he married Margarete Schlimbach (1891-1962) from Bonn and their son Manfred was born in 1927. The family lived in Poppelsdorf.

Otto Renois passed his master craftsman's examination in 1925. He worked at the Kürten and Dinter furniture factory in Kessenich. He was made redundant at the end of 1927. According to his widow, it was his work as works chairman that led to his dismissal. Otto Renois was a member of the KPD and had been a member of Bonn City Council since 1929. He was particularly committed to social policy.

On the night of April 4-5, 1933, Otto Renois, who had been re-elected as a KPD city councillor on March 12, 1933, was taken from his apartment at Jagdweg 45 by a squad of armed Nazis. Otto Renois was shot the same night, allegedly because he wanted to escape arrest by fleeing.

The committed local politician Otto Renois was one of the first victims of the Nazi regime. The urn given to his widow was buried in the Poppelsdorf cemetery. The city of Bonn honored him in 1949 by naming a street after him.

Peter Faßbender was born in Kessenich on March 23, 1879; he lived there with his wife, who was also from Kessenich, and his two children. The trained machinist worked as managing director of the Christian Metalworkers' Association from 1918 and gave the organization its profile and shape with his work and Christian convictions. He also volunteered in the social and health sector. Peter Faßbender was initially a member of the board of the Wessel's Wandplatten-Fabrik health insurance fund; he later served as chairman of the Bonn General Local Health Insurance Fund. Peter Faßbender was also involved in local politics in his home town of Bonn; he had been a city councillor for the Center Party since 1919.

Peter Faßbender's professional and honorary activities came to an end in 1933 when the National Socialists seized power. He was removed from his post as trade union secretary by the Nazis and the Christian trade union was incorporated into the German Labor Front. Faßbender was unable to find employment for many years. On August 22, 1944, Peter Faßbender was arrested in the course of the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and remained imprisoned in the Cologne exhibition halls until September 22, 1944.

Immediately after the liberation in 1945, Peter Faßbender made himself available to contribute to the reconstruction of the Bonn community. In May 1945, the insurance office commissioned him to manage the affairs of the General Local Health Insurance Fund. He held this position until the end of March 1949. Peter Faßbender was also appointed to the Citizens' Council and City Council set up by the military government.

Peter Faßbender died in Kessenich on March 12, 1954, shortly before his 75th birthday.

Werner Wichterich was born on April 6, 1880 in Euskirchen in the Eifel region and came to Godesberg with his family in 1908. The trained plumber worked there for 40 years as a foreman and plant manager at the Godesia bath stove factory. His political involvement in Godesberg began shortly after his arrival. He was not only a co-founder of the local SPD association, but also of Gemeinnützige Bauverein GmbH, of which Wichterich was a member of the supervisory board from 1918 to 1933. When the Godesberg SPD was elected to the municipal council for the first time in the newly established democracy in 1919, Werner Wichterich was the parliamentary group leader.

His political work, which was based on a deep sense of social responsibility, was brought to a temporary end by the Nazi tyranny. For Wichterich, the "seizure of power" not only meant exclusion from all political offices, but also persecution. He was arrested several times, for example in the spring of 1933 and in connection with the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944; like many others, Wichterich was also imprisoned in the Cologne-Deutz exhibition halls.

After liberation, Wichterich was able to resume his political activities in April 1945. He was appointed to the citizens' council approved by the military government. Until 1946, Wichterich headed the Economic and Food Office, and from 1946 to 1950 he worked again as an honorary alderman and head of the Social Welfare Office.

As long as his health permitted, he was a member of various municipal representative bodies, including being a city councillor in Bad Godesberg again from 1946 to 1956. He also rendered outstanding services to the town of Bad Godesberg as deputy mayor from 1950 to 1954. The town council honored him on 31 July 1952 by making him an honorary citizen.

Werner Wichterich died on April 26, 1958; he was given an honorary burial at the Hochkreuz Central Cemetery. In 1968, the Godesberg council decided to name a street in Schweinheim after the Social Democrat.

Wilhelm Joseph Kraft was born on December 7, 1885 in Gevenich (now the town of Linnich). He came to Beuel-Limperich in 1921 and married Katharina Hambitzer. The couple, who were to have a son and two daughters, lived in his wife's parents' house at Bahnstraße 2. Wilhelm Joseph Kraft ran a horticultural business and was a member of the Beuel municipal council as a representative of the Center Party from 1929 until his parliamentary group was dissolved on July 18, 1933.

On August 22, 1944, Wilhelm Joseph Kraft was arrested as part of the "Gewitter" campaign following the Hitler assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 and taken to the Messelager in Cologne-Deutz. Although he was released after just twelve days, this time took its toll on him physically and mentally. This, the death of his 13-year-old son at the beginning of 1944 and the destruction of his business in the heavy air raids of October 18 and December 24, 1944 ruined his health.

Wilhelm Joseph Kraft died in Oberstdorf on May 1, 1945. "From the time of his imprisonment, my husband was ill ... ...", wrote his widow in 1946.

Wilhelm Parsch was born on October 4, 1895 as the fifth child of a working-class family in Bonn. In 1910, he began training as a plumber and worked for the city of Bonn. There he was also involved in the works council of the gas, water and electricity works. He lived in Bonn with his wife and daughter.

He volunteered early in the First World War. After the war, he became involved in the KPD in Bonn. From 1924 to 1933, he was a member of the city council and deputy chairman of his parliamentary group. In 1928 and 1930, Parsch stood as a candidate for the Reichstag in the Cologne-Aachen constituency.

The National Socialists used the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933 as an opportunity to massively expand the persecution of their political opponents, especially the Communists. The "Reichstag Fire Decree" - a de facto suspension of basic rights - made it possible to take numerous KPD functionaries into "protective custody". Parsch also spent the period from March 1 to July 22, 1933 in Bonn court prison. On July 23, 1933, he was transferred to the Börgermoor/Emsland concentration camp for the following eight months. The illegal KPD in Bonn was involved in the distribution of the pamphlet "The Socialist Republic". A wave of arrests among communists in the Rhineland in June 1935 also affected Parsch. From June 1935 to May 1936, he was remanded in custody in Bonn and Cologne, Klingelpütz. After his conviction for "preparation for high treason" by the Hamm special court, he was imprisoned for two years in Siegburg prison. In 1939, Wilhelm Parsch had to endure almost three months in Gestapo custody in Bonn, Kreuzbergweg.

Parsch was conscripted to work in a chemical factory; in 1941 he suffered a head injury in an accident at work. The Parsch family was also harassed by the National Socialists outside of his imprisonment; he was required to report to the Gestapo on a daily basis and had to hand over the keys to his home so that night-time house searches could take place.

In the summer of 1944, he was to be arrested again as part of "Aktion Gewitter". Parsch managed to escape and hid on a farm in Alfter until the Americans liberated him in March 1945.

After the war, Parsch returned to work for the city of Bonn as a streetcar workshop manager. He was involved in the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime (VVN-BdA e. V.) and was a member of the ÖTV district executive committee.

Wilhelm Parsch died in Bonn on July 10, 1975.