Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (Ministerial Director)

Friedrich Kritzinger

Kritzinger as a representative of the Reich Chancellery in the minutes of the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942

Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (born April 14, 1890 in Grünstier , Filehne district , Prussia ; † April 25, 1947 in Nuremberg ) was a German civil servant, among other things as ministerial director and state secretary in the Reich Chancellery under Hans Heinrich Lammers during the National Socialist era .

Life

Education, World War I and Weimar Republic

Kritzinger was the son of a pastor in Grünstier ( Posen Province ), today Zielonowo . In his youth, after three years of private lessons, he attended the Berger- and Auguste-Victoria-Gymnasium in Poznan from 1899 to 1904 and the Gymnasium in Gnesen from 1904 to 1908 . He then studied law in Freiburg , Berlin and Greifswald . After passing the trainee exam in October 1911, he was accepted into the legal preparatory service . He served this from 1911 to 1913 and - interrupted by his draft for military service in 1913 - from 1920 to 1921 at the courts in Mogilno and Berlin and at the Hirschberg public prosecutor's office.

From 1914 to 1918 Kritzinger took part in the First World War with the Jäger Battalion 5 , most recently in the rank of lieutenant of the reserve. During the war, Kritzinger was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes and the House Order of the Hohenzollern . At the end of the war, he was taken prisoner by the French in 1918, where he remained until February 1920.

After his return from captivity, Kritzinger continued his preparatory service, which he was finally able to complete in May 1921 by passing the Great State Examination in Law (Assessorexamen). Since May 30, 1923 Kritzinger was married to Walti Luise Agnes Countess of Schwerin and Krosigk (1897-1996), the daughter of a large landowner. The marriage had three children.

From July to September 1921 Kritzinger worked as an assessor at the Striegau District Court . He then came to the Reich Ministry of Justice as an "unskilled worker" , where he remained until 1925 and dealt with questions of international law. Then he was employed until 1926 as an assessor or district judge with the field of "deposit banks and revaluation" in the Prussian Ministry of Commerce. In 1926 Kritzinger moved back to the Reich Ministry of Justice, where he was to remain active until 1938: As a consultant, he initially dealt with matters of international law and from 1928 on matters of constitutional law . During this time he was promoted to government councilor, senior government councilor and - in 1929 or 1930 - to ministerial councilor. Kritzinger did not belong to any political party in the Weimar Republic . According to his own statements during interrogations after the Second World War , he voted for the German National People's Party (DNVP) in the Reichstag elections until 1933 .

time of the nationalsocialism

In the first years after the National Socialists came to power, Kritzinger remained at his post in the Reich Ministry of Justice. At the beginning of 1938, the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers , asked him to move to the Reich Chancellery, as it needed a specialist in constitutional law. According to his own information, Kritzinger initially rejected this request, but changed his mind. On the one hand, Lammers had repeated his request several times and, on the other hand, Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner had explained to him that it was his “duty” to comply with the request. Thereupon Kritzinger joined the Reich Chancellery in February 1938 as a ministerial director , where he was made head of department B. At the same time he became a member of the NSDAP .

In early 1942 he was promoted to Undersecretary of State and on November 21 of the same year (at the same time as Gerhard Klopfer ) by Hitler to State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery.

During his work in the Reich Chancellery, Kritzinger was also involved in the processing of the subject area “Jewish problems”. In this capacity he took part in the drafting of the so-called ordinance against public pests and the eleventh ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Act in 1939/40 , the basis for confiscating the assets of German Jews on the occasion of their deportation . As State Secretary in 1942/43 he was also involved in drafting ordinances restricting legal remedies for Jews.

In January 1942 Kritzinger was one of the participants in the Wannsee Conference . Here the foundations for the murder of the Jews residing under the rule of the National Socialists were decided or coordinated by representatives of leading state and party official agencies. According to an expert report by the Institute for Contemporary History , Kritzinger did not yet have any reliable knowledge of genocide at that time.

post war period

Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger after his capture

Shortly before the conquest of Berlin by the Red Army , Kritzinger left the city on April 23, 1945, after having been entrusted with the management of the evacuation of the remaining ministers and ministerial officials from April 20, 1945. After he had become State Secretary in the Dönitz government in Flensburg - Mürwik in May 1945 , he was finally arrested by the British in the Mürwik special area there on May 23 .

After a stay in POW camp No. 32 ( Camp Ashcan ) in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg , Kritzinger was transferred to Bruchsal . In the following years he was questioned several times, among others by the American prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials Robert Kempner . As the only participant in the 1942 Wannsee Conference, Kritzinger admitted his participation and confirmed its criminal nature. He also declared that he was “ashamed of German politics [...] during the war” and agreed to characterize Hitler and Himmler as “mass murderers”.

In April 1946 Kritzinger was released from prison, but was imprisoned again in December. He was finally released again for health reasons and died a short time later.

Cinematic and literary representation

Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger was portrayed in the German television film Die Wannseekonferenz by Franz Rudnick in 1984 and in the BBC / HBO co-production Conspiracy by David Threlfall in 2001 .

Kritzinger also appears as a literary figure in Robert Harris ' Alternative World History Vaterland (1992), in which a criminal case about the participants in the Wannsee Conference unfolds against the backdrop of a fictional Third Reich that won World War II.

literature

• Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gesellschaft: Personalitäten der Verwaltung , 1991, pp. 445–449.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Kritzinger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• The curriculum vitae of Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger . In: GHWK.de (PDF; 19.6 kB)
• Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger . In: Morgenpost.de , January 15, 2017
• Minutes of an interrogation of Kritzinger by Robert Kempner in 1947 in the IfZ archive (PDF; 3.3 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Mommsen : "The Holocaust and the Germans", in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft ZfG 56 (2008), no. 10, p. 853.
2. ^ Interrogation of Kritzinger by Kempner in 1947 , p. 10.
3. ↑ Goruma. Wannsee Conference. Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger (1890-1947) ( Memento of the original dated August 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on: June 14, 2017. 
4. ^ Kempner interrogated Kritzinger in 1947 . Kempner expressly notes that Kritzinger blushed face when giving the relevant information.