Academy for youth leadership

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Topping-out ceremony of the Academy for Youth Leadership on June 4, 1938, photo from the Federal Archives
The former "Academy for Youth Leadership" of the Hitler Youth as seen today from the southeast. On the left the "Hall of Honor" with its 12 m high columns.

The Academy for Youth Leadership in Braunschweig , also known as the Academy for German Youth Leadership or the (Reichs-) Academy for Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth , was the highest National Socialist training facility for the training of full-time management trainees for the Hitler Youth (HJ) during the time of National Socialism and should according to the will of the Nazi regime will also be their most important. However, the Second World War , which began just four weeks after the building complex was completed, thwarted these plans. The Nazi educational institution was built between 1937 and 1939. Today the Braunschweig College for Adult Education and the Braunschweig Evening High School are housed in their building .

Conception and history

The decision to set up the Academy for Youth Leadership was based on the will of the National Socialist rulers to fill the higher management level of the Hitler Youth with a trained leadership corps of professional youth leaders between the ages of 23 and 35, to institutionalize the recruitment of young talent and to close a career in the Hitler Youth to develop a full-time career. The academy was to be at the head of a training system of the Hitler Youth, which was built up with Reichsführer schools , Reichsführer camps and a leadership training center in the years after the so-called seizure of power .

Main building, with the driver's balcony, seen from the south

The training regulations for the Führer Corps were issued on February 18, 1938. The one-year training at the academy should cover all tasks related to youth leadership. In addition to athletic training, it included all areas of knowledge of political, economic and cultural life as well as the natural sciences, admittedly exclusively with a view to their "propagandistic and educational use" in the service of National Socialist ideology : biology as heredity and racial hygiene , politics as a leadership theory for true political leadership, History from the perspective of the Volkish State and so on. On the other hand, in order to give the graduates an internationally appropriate appearance, foreign languages ​​and dance courses were also on the curriculum .

Applicants had to document their Aryan ancestry with an Aryan certificate and have a high school diploma or a completed vocational training . Before entering the academy, which was accompanied by an obligation to twelve years of service in the Hitler Youth, the candidate leader had to work for four months in a HJ area management and attend an eight-week course at the Reichsführer-School in Potsdam . After the year at the academy, he had to work in industry for three weeks and spend half a year abroad before he was allowed to register for the final exam. If he successfully passed it, the so-called youth leader patent with a leader's dagger should be given to the academy student and he should be appointed to the full-time service of the HJ as a spell leader. After completing the twelve years, a change to party or state service or to business was announced.

However, this training concept has never been fully implemented in practice. The first course began on April 20, 1939 ( Hitler's 50th birthday ) in Potsdam before they finally moved to Braunschweig. Almost four weeks after the academy was officially opened on August 2, 1939 with the first course for 87 students, the Second World War began with the German invasion of Poland . Almost all students and lecturers received drafting orders, which quickly brought teaching to a standstill.

Between 1940 and 1942, the vacant rooms were used by the Association of German Girls (BDM), initially for courses at the BDM factory Faith and Beauty , and later for those for the next generation of BDM leaders. Analogous to the Academy for Youth Leadership, the establishment of a school for women leaders of the BDM near Braunschweig between Braunschweig and Wolfenbüttel in Lechlumer Holz began in 1938 , but it did not get beyond the foundations.

In 1942 the Wehrmacht seized the building and used it as a hospital . After Reich Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach had expressed an urgent wish for the Academy to be released, five-month courses were provisionally started in November 1942. Students were now disabled former Hitler Youth leaders. The teaching continued until the beginning of April 1945. In the early morning hours of April 12, 1945 troops of the 30th US Infantry Division marched into the city.

Commanders

  • Kurt Petter (1909–1969), commander from August 16, 1938 until the outbreak of war
  • Ernst Schlünder , until July 1, 1942 immediately after the start of the war
  • Kurt Budäus , until October 10, 1944

Nazi architecture

The "Hall of Honor" with a mosaic ceiling, twelve meter high columns and two monumental reliefs.
Relief "Loyalty" on the south side.
Relief "Honor" on the north side.
Residential buildings from the northwest

The political leadership of the Free State of Braunschweig , in the form of NSDAP Prime Minister Dietrich Klagges , made great efforts to bring this prestigious NS institution, which was equivalent to an elite university, into the city. The city acquired from the Guelphs , the former dukes of Braunschweig , a huge area in the south, a little above the Oker , just a few meters north of the old parks of Richmond Castle on Wolfenbütteler Strasse, and gave it to the party as a gift. In addition, most of the construction costs were taken over. This and the fact that the deputy Reichsjugendführer, staff leader Hartmann Lauterbacher , had attended the drug school in Braunschweig and had been HJ Gauleiter there, may have contributed to the fact that the choice fell on Braunschweig when it came to the question of location. Lauterbacher had also played a key role in setting up a "Hitler Youth's Leadership School" at Campen Castle in nearby Flechtorf before the " seizure of power " ; after Baldur von Schirach the first of its kind. Hitler initially suggested Munich for the Academy for Youth Leadership , Schleißheim Palace was also under discussion .

The buildings for the academy were carried out between 1937 and 1939 based on designs by the architect Erich zu Putlitz . The design provided for a functional tripartite division into teaching, residential and sports areas for the entire facility.

The actual academy consisted of a main building axially divided by two structures: the lecture hall and library , reading and administration rooms were connected to the left and right of an open “hall of honor” divided by four columns. It was dominated by two larger-than-life, stone-carved high-relief groups above the entrances to the north and south wings. Created by Emil Hipp from Kiefersfelden , they should embody loyalty and honor and symbolize "the strength, unity and confidence of the National Socialist youth". In addition, four "reminder boards" plastered after the end of the Third Reich were attached. One contained the closing lines of Baldur von Schirach's hymn to the youth , the others the names of members of the so-called “immortal followers” ​​of the Hitler Youth, including that of Herbert Norkus , the most prominent victim of the Hitler Youth stylized as a “ martyr ”. The foundation stone for the Academy had been laid on the fourth anniversary of Norkus' death, January 24, 1936. In addition to the architect Erich zu Putlitz, the Reich Youth Leader von Schirach, the Prime Minister of the Free State of Braunschweig Dietrich Klagges , Staff Leader Lauterbacher and Lord Mayor Wilhelm Hesse were also present . The topping-out ceremony took place on June 3, 1938. One above the portico there was fencing hall . The classrooms were housed in a second building set at right angles, in front of which one of five “student houses” encircled the roll call area for the academy students extends.

The construction of planned extensive sports facilities came to a standstill during the war. Only the outdoor kennel pool, which is still used today, was completed in the post-war period . Nor was it possible to erect an oversized bronze sculpture by Emil Hipp on the main building - two striding youths who are supposed to symbolize the idea of ​​"camaraderie above all" -. The individual parts of the plastic were still delivered, but no longer assembled and disappeared during the war or shortly afterwards.

On the facade of the main building above the portico, the name “AKADEMIE FÜR GERMAN YOUTH LEADERSHIP” should appear in bronze capital letters. This was approved on March 21, 1939, but was no longer carried out by the war. In party official documents, the institution is usually briefly referred to as the "Academy for Youth Leadership".

In contrast to the Braunschweig city center, which was destroyed by up to 90% by bombing , the academy buildings survived the war almost undamaged. The main building has housed the Braunschweig College for Adult Education since 1959 and the Braunschweig Evening Gymnasium since 2001; In the meantime, the German Milling School Braunschweig had its domicile there. The "student houses" were converted into apartments for up to 45 students.

The complex is now a listed building . Many structural details have been preserved; The ceiling fresco in the lecture hall by Hermann Wilhelm Berger, completed in 1941 and painted over after the war, has been restored . It shows a representation of constellations and figures from Greek mythology as well as the ancient Roman god Jupiter as Lord of Heaven, all however, in accordance with the National Socialist sense of art, executed in the style of pseudo-Germanic heroic mysticism and framed by verses by Friedrich Hebbel and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe .

literature

  • Manfred Bültemann: Architecture for the Third Reich. The Academy for German Youth Leadership in Braunschweig. Ernst, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-433-02023-X (history of architecture, preservation of monuments, environmental design ), (At the same time: Hanover, Univ., Diss., 1986: The architect Erich zu Putlitz and the academy for German youth leadership. ).
  • Eyke Isensee (Ed.): German Art 1933–1945 in Braunschweig. Art under National Socialism. Exhibition catalog. Exhibition from April 16 to July 2, 2000 in Braunschweig in the Braunschweig Municipal Museum . Municipal Museum and in the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum (exhibition center Hinter Aegidien). Published by the Municipal Museum and the University of Fine Arts . Olms, Hildesheim et al. 2000, ISBN 3-487-10914-X .
  • A. Ponzio, Shaping the New Man. Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany , Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.
  • Jürgen Schultz: Academy for Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth. In: Luitgard Camerer , Manfred Garzmann , Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf (eds.): Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon . Joh. Heinr. Meyer Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-926701-14-5 , p. 11-12 .
  • Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig. Orphanage book printing and publishing house, Braunschweig 1978, ISBN 3-87884-011-X ( Braunschweiger Werkstücke. Series A, Vol. 15 = The whole series, Vol. 55).
  • Bernhild Vögel: ... and in Braunschweig? Materials and tips for exploring the city 1930–1945. 2nd updated edition. Jugendring Braunschweig, Braunschweig 1996, ISBN 3-9801592-2-1 ( JURB materials 2).
  • Helmut Weihsmann : Building under the swastika. Architecture of doom. Promedia Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85371-113-8 , pp. 309-310.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Official news sheet of the youth leader of the German Reich VI / 4 of February 4, 1938, p. 61 ff .; quoted from: Schultz, Jürgen, The Academy for Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig, Braunschweiger Werkstück 55, Braunschweig 1978, 31.
  2. ^ Stünke, Hein, The Academy for Youth Leadership, in: Westermanns Monatshefte, July 1944, p. 431; quoted after Bültemann, Manfred, Architecture for the Third Reich. The Academy for German Youth Leadership in Braunschweig, Berlin 1986, p. 60
  3. ↑ Camerer, Garzmann, Schuegraf, Pingel: Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon , Braunschweig 1992, p. 12
  4. ↑ Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig. Pp. 212-214.
  5. ↑ Braunschweig Municipal Museum and University of Fine Arts (ed.): German Art 1933-1945 in Braunschweig. Art under National Socialism. Catalog of the exhibition from April 16, 2000 - July 2, 2000. Braunschweig 2000, p. 184
  6. ↑ Schirach, Baldur von, Die Hitlerjugend. Idea and Shape, Berlin 1934, p. 135.
  7. ↑ cf. Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig . In: Braunschweiger Werkstücke , Volume 55, p. 104.
  8. ↑ Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig , in: Braunschweiger Werkstücke , Volume 55, p. 275.
  9. ↑ Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of youth leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig , in: Braunschweiger workpieces , Volume 55, pp 276th
  10. ↑ Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig , in: Braunschweiger Werkstücke , Volume 55, p. 283.
  11. ↑ For example on the letterhead, printed by: Jürgen Schultz: The Academy of Youth Leadership of the Hitler Youth in Braunschweig . In: Braunschweiger Werkstücke , Volume 55, p. 247 or in the foundation stone certificate, p. 275.

Coordinates: 52 ° 14 ′ 32.9 "  N , 10 ° 31 ′ 36.8"  E