Alfred Freyberg

Alfred Freyberg (around 1938)

Bruno Erich Alfred Freyberg (born  July 12, 1892 in Harsleben , †  April 18, 1945 in Leipzig ) was a German lawyer , NSDAP politician, SS group leader and Mayor of Leipzig from 1939 to 1945 .

Life

After attending school in Harsleben and Halberstadt , Freyberg studied law at the universities of Geneva , Königsberg , Munich and Halle . In 1918 he passed the trainee exam ; In 1922 he passed the state examination in law . During the First World War he volunteered as a war volunteer in 1914 and was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve in 1917.

On July 11, 1920 Freyberg married Magdalena Schwanneke (* February 16, 1896 - April 18, 1945 in Leipzig), with whom he had two children, Wilhelm Friedrich (* September 23, 1923 in Quedlinburg ; † probably July 25, 1944 in Staryj-Bychow (today's Belarus )) and Barbara (born September 2, 1925 in Quedlinburg, † April 18, 1945 in Leipzig).

From 1923 to 1926 he was a councilor in the Reich Finance Administration , and in 1926 he established himself as a lawyer in Quedlinburg . From 1929 he also worked as a notary . In May 1925 he had already become the local group leader of the NSDAP ( membership number 5,880) in Quedlinburg. From 1929 he was city councilor and parliamentary group chairman of the NSDAP in the Quedlinburg city council.

After the NSDAP had become the strongest party in the state election of April 24, 1932 with 41.67 percent of the votes cast, Freyberg was elected the new Prime Minister of the Free State of Anhalt on May 21, 1932 . This made him the first National Socialist Prime Minister of a country in the Weimar Republic .

From 1936 Freyberg was a member of the Reichstag, which was insignificant during the National Socialist era . From 1938 he worked in the SD main office . In the SS (membership number 113,650) he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer in the security service of the Reichsführer SS on July 12, 1942 . From August 21, 1939 until his suicide Freyberg was Lord Mayor of Leipzig. Shortly before the end of the war, he lived privately in the prestigious Villa Girbardt in Leipzig's music district , not far from the New Town Hall .

On April 18, 1945, one day before US troops took Leipzig, Freyberg died by suicide in the New Town Hall, together with his wife and daughter . Kurt Lisso , city treasurer and deputy mayor, was found dead with his wife and daughter in Freyberg's actual office . This scene was photographed in large numbers by photo reporters from the US Army and at times assigned to Freyberg. There is no pictorial evidence of Freyberg himself, who killed himself in an adjoining room. His predecessor Walter Dönicke also died by suicide on April 19 in the New Town Hall.

See also

• Freyberg cabinet

literature

• Steffen Held: The Leipzig city administration and the deportation of Jews in the Nazi state , Leipzig City History Museum . Leipzig 2011.
• Robert Giesel: Leipzig's National Socialist Mayor (1937-1945) , in: Leipziger Stadtgeschichte. 2011 yearbook . Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2012, ISBN 978-3-86729-118-7 , pp. 117-132.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alfred Freyberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Alfred Freyberg in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Andreas Peschel: Alfred Freyberg (1892–1945) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
• Alfred Freyberg at the reception of foreign ambassadors , Leipzig before 1943, photographer: Max Hellrich (1908-1943), Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, Inv.-No .: F / 332/2004.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leipziger Stadtgeschichte: Yearbook 2011 "edited by Markus Cottin, Detlef Döring, Gerald Kolditz. Page 231 (at the bottom)
2. ^ Free State of Anhalt: Election to the 6th state parliament, results of the election on April 24, 1932
3. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 165.