Hermann Conring (politician)

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Hermann Conring

Hermann Johannes Conring (born November 4, 1894 in Aurich ; † February 9, 1989 in Weener ) was a German administrative officer and politician of the CDU . During the time of the Nazi state he held functions in areas occupied by Germans; from 1940 to 1945 he was the representative of the Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands in the province of Groningen .

Life

Education and career

Hermann Conring was born without a left hand, which made him unfit for military service. Conring, who was an evangelical reformist , studied law in Göttingen from 1913 to 1916 and was a member of the Corps Hannovera . In October 1916 he passed the first state examination with distinction. After he had written his dissertation under the title “Basic Concepts of Fund Law”, he was awarded a doctorate in 1917 at the University of Göttingen. iur. PhD. From 1921 to 1927 he worked first as a government assessor in the Prussian finance department and then in the state ministry .

In 1927 he was appointed district administrator in the Northeim district. The Social Democratic President of the Province of Hanover , Gustav Noske, assessed him as "an official who is well above average". In 1930 he was elected district administrator for the district of Leer , where he was in office until 1945 (on leave since 1940). During his term of office he was responsible for the implementation of the Prussian district reform, after which the district of Leer was expanded to include the island of Borkum and the parts of the disbanded district of Emden east of Emden , and after the dissolution of the district of Weener, the Reiderland came to be.

Functions in the Nazi state

In 1933 Conring was a member of the Reich Association of German Civil Servants . From 1933 to 1936 he was a member of the Nazi legal guardian association. From 1934 to 1945 he was also a member of the NSV . From 1942 to 1945 Hermann Conring was honorary president of the East Frisian landscape .

After the NSDAP came to power in the spring of 1933, Hermann Conring remained in office as district administrator, probably because of his good relations with the National Socialist Prime Minister of the Free State of Oldenburg, Carl Röver , who valued Conring as an anti-communist and "nationally minded patriot" and because of his administrative skills. At the meeting of the district assembly on April 7, 1933, Conring described democracy as a form of government that did not correspond to the “indispensable forces of the German people”. He ended his speech with a triple “ Sieg Heil ”.

In his function as District Administrator of Leer, Conring signed protective custody orders against members of the opposition and applied to the district president for the arrest and transfer of communists to concentration camps (e.g. to the Börgermoor concentration camp ). When, for example, the cattle dealer Henry de Jonge was sentenced to three months in prison on June 7, 1933 for coercing and insulting a country hunter master, Conring advocated his remaining in so-called “protective custody” after serving his sentence: “Jonge is a particularly nasty Marxist A Jew who cannot possibly be released here at the border. ”In 1942 de Jonge was murdered in Auschwitz .

From March 1933 Conring worked in cooperation with the National Socialist Erich Drescher to push the empty mayor Erich von Bruch out of office by announcing his (illegal) dismissal. Committed in 1933 on May 7 from breaking suicide . The district leadership of the Nazi Party had originally planned well Conring from his position as district administrator to remove because it is a "characterless, libertarian and ambitious careerist" was, of all avoid to plug in the party. In addition, his Aryan ancestry was questioned, a common way of discrediting politicians at the time. Conring assured the acting district president Gustav Bansi that he had always voted “right” and most recently the NSDAP. In a statement because of hoisting a swastika flag and a black-and-red white Reich flag in front of the Empty Kreishaus I "I myself have the hoisting of the flags mitveranlasst [...] from my personal political views, as he wrote on 8 March 1933 I also voted National Socialist in this election. ”In 1937, thanks to the goodwill of Viktor Lutze , the chief president of the Prussian province of Hanover , he survived an intrigue by the Gestapo. In the same year he joined the NSDAP on May 1st at the request of his patron saint Röver (membership no. 5.104.902).

From 1939 Conring was employed as a senior war administrator in the occupation administration in German-occupied Poland and later in Belgium . From 1940 to 1945 Conring was in the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Wehrmacht, initially with the military commander in France and from June 1940 "Commissioner of the Reich Commissioner for the occupied Dutch territories for the province of Groningen". As a Frisian he was related to several Groningen families and spoke Dutch . On August 1, 1940, Conring accompanied Heinrich Himmler on a visit to East Frisian farms.

According to Conring's own statements, after the war he was assigned to the position in Groningen “against his will”. He complained to his superior Arthur Seyß-Inquart , unsuccessfully, that he no longer had powers and that he had "next to nothing to say". But he was extremely successful in the Nazification of the Dutch authorities. Conring had his office in the Huis Panser next to the Scholtenhuis , the infamous headquarters of the Gestapo, where prisoners were interrogated and tortured. Conring complained to the commander of the Scholtenhuis , Bernard Georg Haase , that he could not work because of the shouting of the abused victims that came from the "interrogation room" of Gestapo employee Robert Lehnhoff .

In a personal conversation, Croning is said to have said that you have to "be tough in war". National Socialism could only win if the Jewish enemies were destroyed. The future belongs to National Socialism and not to the Christian churches, whose time is finally over. When the Dutch politician Linthorst Homan asked that the first violinist of the Groningen Orchestra Association, Jo Juda, be released from prison with reference to his Beethoven concerts, Groning replied: “Impossible! Beethoven was Teutonic and a Jew could not have understood Beethoven. ”He also wrote:“ For the province of Groningen it would be very desirable if the Jews preferred to disappear from the vicinity of the Delfzijl coastal place , especially from Appingedam and Winschoten , etc. as soon as possible . “Since an Allied air landing in the north of the Netherlands is expected, the Wehrmacht is demanding that the Jews be transported because they are viewed as potential opponents of the war. Conring defended himself after the war: “On my honor and conscience, I didn't know anything about extermination camps. I assumed that the Jews were to be used in labor camps for the German war economy, which was weakened by conscription. "

Marten Buist, historian from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen , said: “Conring was an intelligent man and an outspoken Nazi, who devoted himself to his task to convert the Groningers to the 'New Order' [...] half measures were his not to be expected. ”He resolutely pushed ahead with the labor deployment [of Dutch people in Germany] and the deportation of Jews. An active participation in the National Socialist persecution of the Jews could not be determined in a later investigation initiated against him, especially since the relevant files were burned after the explosion of the Scholtenhuis in April 1945.

In April 1943 Conring suggested in a telex to State Secretary Friedrich Wimmer in The Hague that furniture confiscated in the Netherlands should be handed over to bomb victims in Germany. After the war he was charged with this, but Conring denied any active involvement in such processes. It has been proven that he acquired numerous valuable items for himself privately and for the East Frisian landscape from the Arent Gans family's antique shop in Delfzijl after the Jewish owner Kornelia Gans-Visser had already been deported . After the war, the items had to be returned.

After the war

After the war, Conring was under automatic arrest for fourteen months in British internment , from which he was released in 1947. In his denazification proceedings in 1946, he claimed that in the 1930s he had been able to keep his district administrator's office only with "great difficulty" and that he had been accepted as a candidate for the NSDAP in 1937 without any personal assistance. In 1948, Conring became general secretary of the main agricultural association for East Frisia .

In 1952 he ran for the new district assembly in Leer, was re-elected as district administrator for the district of Leer and was chairman of the district assembly from 1952 to 1956. In April 1953 he was directly elected as a substitute for Louis Thelemann as a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament, of which he was a member until 1955. After he had joined the CDU, he won the direct mandate in the constituency of Leer in the federal elections in autumn 1953 and was a member of the German Bundestag until 1969. In the fifth parliamentary term of the Bundestag he was the third oldest member of parliament after Konrad Adenauer and Arthur Enk . From May 5, 1964 to 1969, he was deputy chairman of the budget committee of the Bundestag. In this position, after the flood disaster of 1953, he was one of the masterminds behind the “Lower Saxony Coastal Plan” for its implementation. This envisaged joint funding from the federal and state governments to improve the dykes and drainage for several years, which a special, newly created authority was to undertake. At the age of 75 he resigned from all offices in 1969 due to increasing poor eyesight. In 1993 he was referred to in the Biographical Lexicon of East Frisia as the "most important East Frisian of the 20th century".

In 1962, the Aurich public prosecutor applied for the lifting of Conring's immunity based on a complaint from Israel , but withdrew the application shortly afterwards, pointing out the need for further preliminary investigations.

In the course of the awarding of the Great Federal Cross of Merit on Conring's 70th birthday because of his “services to the reconstruction”, protests broke out in the Netherlands, which addressed Conring's role during the occupation. On July 1, 1965, the Dutch government even expressed its dismay at the Foreign Office at the decision to award the medal. Federal President Heinrich Lübke initiated an investigation into Conring, which was discontinued in August after he had returned the Federal Cross of Merit.

literature

  • Heiko Suhr: "... to be regarded as the most important East Frisian in the 20th century"? The public and legal reappraisal of Hermann Conring's Nazi past. In: Michael Hermann (ed.): The 20th century in view. Contributions to East Frisian contemporary history. Bernhard Parisius on his 65th birthday. Aurich 2015.
  • Stephan A. Glienke: The Nazi past of a later member of the Lower Saxony state parliament . Final report on a project of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen on behalf of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Published by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Revised reprint of the first edition. Hannover 2012, pp. 67–69, 73, 108, 149f ( online as PDF) .
  • Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 1: A-M. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , p. 125.
  • Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, p. 66.
  • Walter Deeters : In Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland. Article on Conring, Hermann Johannes, page 85, 1993 East Frisian landscape ISBN 3-925365-75-3 .
  • Bärbel Holtz (Editing / Editing): The Protocols of the Prussian State Ministry 1925-1938 / 38. Vol. 12 / II. (1925-1938). Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim 2004. ISBN 3-487-12704-0 ( Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences [Hrsg.]: Acta Borussica . New series .)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The grave of Hermann Conring on the website www.grabsteine-ostfriesland.de; accessed on January 11, 2014
  2. ^ A b c d e f g Walter Deeters: Entry Hermann Johannes Conring In: Biographisches Lexikon für Ostfriesland . Ostfriesische Landschaftliche Verlags- und Vertriebsgesellschaft mbH (1993), SS 85–89, ISBN 978-3925365751
  3. ↑ a b c Glienke 2012, pp. 149f.
  4. ↑ Glienke 2012, p. 67.
  5. ^ Gerhard Keller: Renazification of the Federal Republic of Germany. ISBN 978-3-739-24980-3 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  6. ↑ Henning Priet: The city of Leer and the "Third Reich". P. 22 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ a b Glienke 2012, p. 68f.
  8. ↑ Glienke 2012, p. 69.
  9. ↑ Stumbling blocks. At the port in Weener (pdf) Retrieved on March 24, 2020.
  10. ↑ 85 years of “Dr. Erich vom Bruch commits suicide ”- East Frisian Embassy on the Internet. In: botschaft-ostfriesland.de. May 7, 1933, accessed March 23, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b c d e Wolfgang Kellner: Persecution and entanglement. ISBN 3743968061 p. 1946 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  12. ↑ a b Glienke 2012, p. 73.
  13. ↑ a b c Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . tape 4.1 , p. 106 .
  14. ^ Loe de Jong : Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . tape 4.1 , p. 156 .
  15. ↑ Erwin Karel: The Second World War and its consequences for the city and province of Groningen. Lecture on September 31, 2013 . Aurich 2013.
  16. ↑ Hans-Peter Klausch : Brown Roots - Old Nazis in the Lower Saxony state parliament groups of the CDU, FDP and DP. On the Nazi past of members of the Lower Saxony state parliament in the post-war period (PDF file; 1.73 MB) p. 4.
  17. ↑ a b MPs: Large cross . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1965 ( online - 14 July 1965 ).
  18. ↑ Glienke 2012, p. 108.
personal data
SURNAME Conring, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Conring, Hermann Johannes (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), Member of the Bundestag, Member of the Bundestag
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Aurich
DATE OF DEATH February 9, 1989
Place of death Weener