Albert Hartl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Albert Hartl during the Nuremberg Trials

Albert Hartl (born November 13, 1904 in Roßholzen ; † December 14, 1982 in Ludwigshafen , pseudonyms: Anton Holzner, Georg Albert) was SS-Sturmbannführer in the National Socialist German Reich and since 1941 head of Office Group IV B " Opponents of World Views " in the Reich Security Main Office ( RSHA).

biography

Albert Hartl's father was a teacher by profession, also a free thinker and strongly influenced by liberal anti-clericalism ; he died in 1916. The pious and devout mother persuaded his father to send him to a Benedictine monastery school when he was ten . In 1923 he graduated from the Archbishop's seminary in Freising , where he also studied Catholic theology . Hartl was always an excellent student with top grades and was actively involved in the Catholic youth movement . He was ordained a priest in Freising Cathedral in 1929 by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber from Munich . As a teacher and from 1931 as a prefect, he worked at the Catholic boys' seminar in Freising. At that time Hartl still appeared as a Catholic academic and model cleric, but was already unsettled about his priestly vocation.

At the security service of the SS

His support for the National Socialist state since 1929, which was initially secret, led in July 1933 with his accession to the NSDAP (membership number 3.201.046) to a final break with the Catholic official church, but also with his previous Christian view. In November 1933 he denounced the priest and director of the Freising boys' seminar Joseph Roßberger for his criticism of National Socialism . Before that, Rossberger had always been a good friend of Hartl in the seminar. On January 5, 1934, he left the church service, resigned from the church and joined the SS (membership number 107.050). As a result, Hartl was publicly excommunicated in 1934 . Temporarily active at the SS relief organization in Dachau, he joined the main office of the SS security service in Berlin in November 1935 as head of group II 113 "Confessional political currents" in the central department II 1 "ideological opponents" (head Franz Six ) employed.

On April 29, 1937, Hartl married Marianne Schürer-Stolle, who was a good twelve years his junior and a close friend of Reinhard Heydrich's wife .

In the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which was created on September 27, 1939 through the merger of the Security Police ( Gestapo and Kripo ) with the SD , Hartl was entrusted with spying on the Catholic Church as a consultant in Office Group IV B 2 "Political Catholicism". For this he built up a network of informants. “Our ultimate goal is the complete smashing of all Christianity,” Hartl declared in 1941.

In addition to lectures primarily against the Catholic Church and its head as well as the Jesuits , he also used himself to obtain expert opinions on the Church's view of the planned killing of the mentally ill and the disabled (" Action T4 "). In the post-war trial against the T4 doctor Horst Schumann , Hartl appeared as a witness in the public session of the Frankfurt am Main jury on February 24, 1970. In the court record it says:

“About the person: My name is Georg Albert Hartl, I am 66 years old, a writer, Ludwigshafen / Bodensee, with the defendant nvunv


To the point: from 1935 on I had to set up and lead the church intelligence service in the government. My task was to maintain or establish connections with high church dignitaries as far as possible. My highest superior was Heydrich. My last rank was Sturmbannführer of the SS.

One day I was summoned to see Heydrich who told me that I should report to Reichsamtsleiter Brack in the KdF . A matter that had to be kept secret for the time being would be opened to me there, and I would get a specific assignment. Brack then explains to me that the Fuehrer's office had received a whole series of requests asking for terminally ill people to be granted mercy. These applicants have stated that they cannot do anything of their own accord and they would be grateful if the state would relieve them of this serious concern. Brack also told me that Hitler had expressed great reservations about such measures, above all that the two large churches would immediately oppose it. I should give an opinion on what the principles of the Church are on this matter. I was a trained theologian and it was in this capacity that I was approached. I refused this request and suggested that a specialist should be requested or I would be willing to approach such a specialist. Brack agreed, and I turned to Himmler's cousin, Wilhelm Patin , who was a doctor of theology. He created a very short and superficial report that I was not satisfied with. I then turned to another specialist, namely the professor of moral theology Dr. Mayer in Paderborn, who was known to me and from whom I knew that he had dealt with modern problems. ... "

Since Mayer's new report did not provide any real decision-making aid for the Fuehrer's office either , Priest Josef Roth, who was employed as a ministerial advisor in the Reich Church Ministry, was commissioned to inform representatives of the German episcopate about the Fuehrer's plans. The reaction of the church contact persons to this very cautious presentation of the planned measures made Adolf Hitler come to the conviction that a fundamentally fundamental rejection by the church was not to be expected, so that the "Action T4" began in autumn 1939.

Under the pseudonym Anton Holzner, Hartl published an autobiography in 1939 for Nordland-Verlag Berlin under the title “The Law of God”. Further works appeared with the titles "Force life", "Ewige Front" and "Priestermacht" (see works ).

Hartl took a leading role in the raid on Poland in the actions of the security service against the Jesuits in Krakow .

In March 1941, Hartl was promoted as SS-Sturmbannführer to head of Office Group IV B of the RSHA. His office group consisted of the following units:

Hartl was thus formally the immediate superior of Adolf Eichmann, but the judgment against Eichmann stated that there was no difference of opinion that Eichmann's direct superior was actually head of office Müller.

With Einsatzgruppe C in Russia

SS disciplinary proceedings against Hartl were opened in 1941 because of the alleged sexual harassment of a bookseller. Due to the associated loss of authority, Head of Office I “Personnel” of the RSHA, Bruno Linienbach , transferred him to the task forces of the Security Police and the SD in Russia in 1942 . Here he was assigned to Einsatzgruppe C , which had to ensure the "security police pacification" of the conquered eastern region in the area of Army Group Center in Ukraine . Hartl remained on the staff of this task force until the summer of 1943 . According to his post-war testimony, he refused to take over the management of a task force without this having led to any noteworthy consequences for him.

In an affidavit dated October 9, 1947 (NO-5384), Hartl commented on his observations about the execution of over 100 people, which the commander of the Security Police and SD (KdS) Kiev, Erich Ehrlinger , himself directed. In the same affidavit and in a conversation with the British journalist Gitta Sereny, he described how he and the leader of the Einsatzkommando 4a, Paul Blobel , got to the Babi Yar gorge near Kiev in March 1942 :

“He told me that one day he was invited to a dacha , a weekend house outside of Kiev. It was inhabited by Brigade Leader Max Thomas , a senior SS and Police Leader (BdS Ukraine), who was nominally his superior. 'I went to this dinner with Standartenführer Blobel,' said Hartl. 'I hardly knew him, but since he was also invited, we drove together. It was getting late and it was getting dark. All of a sudden - we were driving through a ravine - I noticed strange movements of the earth: clumps of earth flew into the air as if of their own accord, and steam lay over the whole ravine. It was like a volcano, as if lava was burning just below the surface of the earth. Blobel laughed and made a sweeping gesture. He pointed to the road behind us and the gorge that lay ahead - the gorge of Babi Yar. 'Here are my 30,000 Jews,' he said. "

- Gitta Sereny : On the Abyss: Conversations with the Executioner, p. 110f

Hartl suffered a real or fake nervous breakdown a few months later. After hospital treatment in Kiev and several months of recovery, he returned to the RSHA in 1943, where he was used in the newly created group I “cult” of the official group VI (SD abroad).

In September 1943, after the German occupation of Rome in the Vatican , Hartl contacted Bishop Alois Hudal , who emerged as an escape helper for Nazi leaders after the war .

After 1945

After the war ended , Hartl was captured by British troops in Carinthia , but was not recognized as a relevant member of the RSHA.

In the Soviet occupation zone , Hartl's writings Priestermacht (1939), Das Gesetz Gottes (1940), Ewige Front (1941) and Zwinge das Leben (1941) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

In the middle of the 1960s, Hartl and other defendants were sentenced to four years in prison for the murder of Polish Catholic priests in a German arbitration chamber trial in the Berlin Court of Appeal . After serving his imprisonment, he was thus able to take the stand unmolested in the post-war trials against concentration camp doctors and those involved in "Operation T4".

After the war he lived as a freelance journalist in Bodman-Ludwigshafen on Lake Constance and became a member of the German Unitarian religious community in 1960 . In 1965 Hartl brought out a brochure entitled “Unitarian Religion” on behalf of the “German Unitarian eV”. Before that, he had published several Unitarian publications in the Helmut Soltsien Verlag (including "Euthanasia in a religious perspective"). In 1983 the then President Horst Prem paid tribute to him in a short obituary "as a guide and independent thinker" who was "always on the way to new shores".

He dedicated the last years of his life to the artistic work of his wife, who became widely known as a “Lake Constance painter” under the pseudonym Maria Elisabeth von Uderwangen, also through his books. Hartl finally died in Ludwigshafen on December 14, 1982.

In Volker Schlöndorff's film “ The Ninth Day ” from 2004, Hartl obviously served as a model for the fictional SS-Untersturmführer Gebhardt, who acted as an opponent for Abbé Henri Kremer imprisoned in the concentration camp (based on the model of Jean Bernard from Luxembourg ).

Works

  • Anton Holzner [di Albert Hartl]: The law of God. Nordland publishing house, Berlin 1939.
  • Anton Holzner [di Albert Hartl]: Eternal front. Nordland-Verlag, Berlin 1940.
  • Anton Holzner [di Albert Hartl]: Priestly power. Nordland publishing house, Berlin 1941.
  • Anton Holzner [di Albert Hartl]: Force life. Nordland publishing house, Berlin 1941.
  • Ways to create a happy life. - Volume 1, Wohlmuth, 1953.
  • Carpet art. Kulturverlag Kunst und Leben, Emden 1957.
  • Fridtjof Nansen . From his life and his thoughts. Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln approx. 1960.
  • Fridtjof Nansen. Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln 1962 (series: Leitbilder. Gestalten und Ideen. Ed. By Albert Hartl and Helmut Soltsien, vol. 1).
  • Unitarian religion. Edited by the religious community of German Unitarians, 1965.
  • Unity in diversity. (The good gift, vol. 4). Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln o. J.
  • Non-Christian Europe and its religious tradition. Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln 1963 (series: The encounter. Lectures and reflections. Ed. By Albert Hartl and Helmut Soltsien, vol. 1).
  • The individual and the community. Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln 1964 (series: The encounter. Lectures and reflections. Ed. By Albert Hartl and Helmut Soltsien, vol. 3).
  • with Helmut Soltsien: Albert Schweitzer . Mission statements. Gestalten und Ideen, Volume 2, Helmut Soltsien Verlag, Hameln 1968.
  • ME from Uderwangen. Life and work . Friedrich Stadler publishing house, Konstanz 1979.

literature

  • Helmut Krausnick / Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm: The troops of the Weltanschauung war. The Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD 1938–1942. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-421-01987-8 .
  • Gitta Sereny : On the edge. Conversations with the executioner. Piper-Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-492-11867-4 , especially pp. 72-88 and 110f.
  • Roman lead stone : defectors in the pay of enemies of the church. Joseph Roth and Albert Hartl, priestly careers in the Third Reich. In: Contributions to the old Bavarian church history. Vol. 42, 1996, pp. 71-111.
  • David J. Alvarez / Robert A. Graham: Nothing sacred: Nazi espionage against the Vatican 1939–1945. Frank Cass Publishers, London 1997, ISBN 0-7146-4302-5 (English).
  • Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition , 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 .
  • Wolfgang Dierker: Himmler's religious warriors. The SS Security Service and its Religious Policy 1933–1941. Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-506-79997-5 . With short biography, p. 554.
  • Thomas Forstner: Priests in Times of Change: Identity and Environment of the Catholic Parish Clergy in Upper Bavaria 1918 to 1945. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013, ISBN 3525550405 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c D.J. Alvarez, R. Graham: Nothing sacred: Nazi espionage against the Vatican 1939-1945. Frank Cass Publishers, London 1997, p. 51 f.
  2. ^ MISC interrogation protocol Hartl, pp. 2 and 7.
  3. Quoted from: Michael Grüttner : Das Third Reich 1933-1939 (= Gebhardt. Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte , Vol. 19), Stuttgart 2014, p. 426.
  4. Wildt: Generation des Unbedinges, p. 361, footnote 232.
  5. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. Berlin, 1946.
  6. a b c unitarian sheets, issue 1 (January 1983), inside back cover
  7. Silke Steinberg: ... and always boats. We introduce: The writer and painter Maria Elisabeth Hartl from Uderwangen. The Ostpreußenblatt, June 25, 1983, p. 9.