Alfred Roselieb

Alfred Roselieb (born June 3, 1891 in Hanover , † 1969 in Burgwedel ) was a German executioner at the time of National Socialism in the German Empire . From 1944 to 1945 he was employed in the “ central execution site for execution district VI ” (with the locations of the Dresden remand prison , Weimar court prison and the “Roter Ochse” penitentiary in Halle an der Saale ). During this period, Roselieb received a total of 26,433 Reichsmarks for his execution services for a total of 931 executions .

Life

Alfred Roselieb first worked as a coachman and funeral helper before he became an assistant to the Hanoverian executioner Friedrich Hehr (1879–1952) in February 1941 . There he replaced Karl Schulze, who was called up for military service. Before starting his new job, Roselieb was examined by the authority with regard to his political views. At that time Roselieb lived in the house at Düwelstrasse 9 in Hanover .

In the memories of the prison pastor in the Tegel and Plötzensee penal institutions, Harald Poelchau , Alfred Roselieb appeared as an assistant to the executioner Wilhelm Röttger , who from 1942 to 1945 was the " central execution site for Execution District IV " (with the Plötzensee prison and Brandenburg-Görden penal prison locations ) had to look after. According to this, the following were present at the executions in the Plötzensee prison (apart from the pastor himself): the overseer Schwarz, executioner Röttger, his assistant Alfred Roselieb and an old prison shoemaker whose job it was to tie the hands of the delinquents and the women before the execution to cut the hair short.

Central Execution Places and Enforcement Districts in the German Reich (1944)

In the spring of 1944, Roselieb took over the executioner's office in the " central execution site for Execution District VI " in Halle (Saale) after prior inspection by the Gestapo . On March 31, 1944, he became the new executioner in the Red Ox . In addition, in 1944 Roselieb succeeded executioner Ernst Reindel (1899–1950), the notorious "hangman and butcher of Berlin", who is said to have hung the men of the resistance in Berlin-Plötzensee on butcher's hooks on Hitler's orders .

On June 19, 1944 Claude Schmerber was at 17:12 of executioner Roselieb the Red Oxen with the guillotine executed. On that day, Roselieb had 25 such orders in the Rote Ochsen . It took him 60 minutes to complete these executions.

After the end of the war in 1945, Alfred Roselieb left for the British occupation zone in Hanover in good time . In 1946 Roselieb moved to Burgwedel near Hanover, where he also died.

After the war, the military administration and the German judiciary in the Soviet occupation zone tried to bring the executioners and their assistants to justice . In the case of the Red Ox , however, it was not possible to bring the executioners who had been working here since 1942 to justice. This was only possible with two journeyman executioners , Johannes Kleine (1890–1946) and Andreas Rose (1888–1947) from Magdeburg . These had not only served as executioner's assistants in the Halle (Saale) prison , but also in other execution sites. While their last supervisor, Alfred Roselieb, escaped any criminal prosecution due to his escape, Kleine and Rose came into custody at the end of 1945.

On June 14, 1946, the special jury court of Merseburg in Halle sentenced Kleine and Rose to death for crimes against humanity . Both were charged with participating in over 500 executions with executioner Roselieb in the Roter Ochse prison . The former Reich Justice Minister Gustav Radbruch criticized the judgment.

Two other accused, the executioner Carl Gröpler (1868-1946) , who worked until 1937, and the assistant Karl Treudler (1876-1945), had died in custody.

Johannes Kleine died before the execution of the sentence on December 22, 1946, and Andreas Rose was beheaded on June 19, 1947 in the prison in Coswig (Anhalt) .

Gotthold Leistner is wrong when he writes: “After the collapse of the Nazi regime, all executioners in Germany (Reindel, Köster, Ulitzke, Hehr, Röttger, Weiß, Roselieb, Kleine) were not put to an end by suicide executed. ”In addition to Roselieb, at least Johann Reichhart also remained alive, if not unpunished. In general, this information has never been checked, as book author Johann Dachs notes.

See also

• Central execution site
• List of people executed in the German Reich
• List of German executioners during the National Socialist era

literature

• Matthias Blazek : Executioner in Prussia and in the German Empire 1866–1945 . Ibidem, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8382-0107-8 .
• Harald Poelchau: The last hours. Memories of a prison pastor, recorded by Count Alexander Stenbock-Fermor . Volk und Welt publishing house, Berlin 1949.
• Daniel Bohse / Alexander Sperk (arr.): The Red Ox Halle [Saale] - Political Justice . Catalog for the permanent exhibitions, ed. v. Joachim Scherrieble, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-480-8 .
• Klaus Hillenbrand: Desired career as an executioner: Why men wanted to be executioners under National Socialism. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-593-39723-8 , p. 92.

Web links

• Persecuted-Schueler.org
• Peter Schulze: "Death under the guillotine", 2005, fof-ohlsdorf.de
• Nazi executioner lives undisturbed in town for 23 years , HAZ.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Koch, Tankred: History of the executioners - Scharfrichter-Schicksale aus Eight centuries, Heidelberg 1988/1991, p. 306 f., With the wrong name "Scharfrichter Klein".
2. ↑ Bundesarchiv Berlin R 3001 (old R 22), No. 1324, p. 329.
3. ^ Schmidt, Herbert : Death sentences in Düsseldorf 1933–1945 - a documentation, Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-7700-1295-4 , p. 49.
4. ↑ Cf. Evans, Richard J .: Rituals of Retaliation - The Death Penalty in German History 1532–1987, Kindler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-463-40400-1 , pp. 864, 918.
5. ↑ LHASA, MER, Rep. C134; Special Court Halle, No. 927, Vol. 6, Bl. 11. Cf. Gerhards, Auguste: Morts pour avoir dit non - 14 Alsaciens et Lorrains face à la justice militaire nazie, La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 2007, ISBN 978-2- 7165-0713-4 , pp. 91, 136.
6. ↑ Schoeps, Julius Hans ; Hillermann, Horst (Hrsg.): Justice and National Socialism: Managed - Displaced - Forgotten, Burg Verlag, Stuttgart / Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-922801-36-6 , p. 35.
7. ↑ Ebbinghaus, Angelika; Linne, Karsten: No closed chapter: Hamburg in the "Third Reich", Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-434-52006-6 , p. 228.
8. ↑ Wieland, Günther: Naziverrechen and German criminal justice, ed. by Werner Röhr, Edition Organon, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-931034-07-0 , p. 234.
9. ↑ www.verfolte-schueler.org .
10. ↑ Scherrieble; Bohse; Sperk, p. 182.
11. ↑ Scherrieble; Bohse; Sperk, p. 182.
12. ↑ Leistner, Gotthold: "Saxony and the Guillotine - A Contribution to the History of a Killing Monster", in: Sächsische Heimatblätter, 48th Jg./2002, p. 144. Ulitzke wrong for the Viennese executioner Fritz Witzka, 1943–1945 responsible for the Pretrial detention centers Vienna I and Graz. Cf. Hochhuth, Rolf: Tell gegen Hitler, Historische Studien, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig 1992, p. 140.
13. ↑ Cf. Dachs, Johann: Death through the guillotine - The German executioner Johann Reichhart (1893–1972), Regensburg 1996, ISBN 3-548-36243-5 , p. 162, note 27; Todte, Mario: The Executions in Saxony (1900–1981), housework, Leipzig 2006, p. 18; Blazek, pp. 99, 102.