Wilhelm Sollmann - 1933

1933

Sollmann remained a member of parliament until 1933, when he was forced to flee Germany. In January of that year the Nazis seized power (the "Machtergreifung"), and on March 9 Sollmann became the first member of parliament to be attacked by the SS. He was beaten and taken to Nazi party headquarters in Cologne, where he was confined with Hugo Efferoth, a fellow editor of the "Rheinische Zeitung". There, both were tortured and threatened with death, and Effenroth was stabbed and nearly killed. Two days later Sollmann was able to flee to Luxembourg from a prison hospital with the help of a doctor. Soon after he moved to the Saarland, under the jurisdiction of the League of Nations, and became editor-in-chief of the anti-Nazi daily "Deutsche Freiheit". This ended in 1935 when a plebiscite returned the Saarland to Germany, and Sollmann fled again, travelling throughout Europe and contributing to various newspapers. At the end of 1936 he resided at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, a Quaker center near Birmingham, England, and in 1937 he emigrated to the United States. There, he became a member of the faculty at the Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation, another Quaker study center located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.