Anton Kohnen

Anton Kohnen (born February 20, 1889 in Lindern (Oldenburg) , † March 9, 1985 in Oldenburg (Oldenburg) ) was a politician and NSDAP functionary.

Anton Kohnen, born as the son of a main teacher in Lindern in southern Oldenburg, derived his origins from an old Hümmling peasant family and felt closely connected to Hümmling and his history throughout his life. His mother, Maria Anna Cloppenburg, was a sister of the co-founder of the German-Dutch textile company Peek & Cloppenburg. After attending elementary school in Lindern and the higher middle school in Hümmlinger Werlte, he moved to the Catholic high school Antonianum in Vechta in 1904 . After graduating from high school in 1910, Kohnen studied in Marburg, where he joined the CV connection “Rhenania”. From Marburg he moved to Berlin and Münster, where he completed his teaching degree in German, history, French and Latin. In Munster he made friends with Hermann Löns. In 1913 Kohnen received his doctorate with a thesis on regional history. He had the faculties for German, history and French, and in 1918 he made up for his teaching qualification for Latin. When the war began, Kohnen volunteered and was deployed on the Eastern Front, which had a lasting impact on his life. In 1915 he was dismissed as unfit for service because of an injury. His later opponents claimed that he had suffered a nervous shock in the first battle and that he had pulled out all the stops to avoid having to go to the front. In 1916 in Vechta he published a collective work "Oldenburg War and Homeland Book" that glorified war and the fatherland in large parts. Kohnen completed his resumed teacher training in 1917. After working for two years in Rüstringen, he switched to the Catholic teacher training college in Vechta and, in 1925, to the Antonianum grammar school. Health reasons and his many extracurricular activities left him little time for his already less pronounced pedagogical inclinations.

Kohnen was a restless person who was active in many areas. After the war he got involved in the gymnastics club, youth hostel and adult education movement, but especially in the home movement. In 1919 he became the second chairman of the newly constituted "Heimatbundes für das Oldenburger Münsterland". Here, too, the patriotic point of view was the linchpin of his work. Consequently, in 1919/20 he was at the head of a Vechta Home Guard, belonged to the "Escherich" organization, probably also the "Black Reichswehr", was a member of the Vechta Warrior Association and became second chairman of the Vechta Official Warrior Association. Kohnen was also active in the Oldenburg State Warrior Association. He was a co-founder of the Vechta local group of the steel helmet and in 1923 became second chairman of the new steel helmet district of Südoldenburg. In September 1933 he became the second deputy leader of the Oldenburg-Bremen regional association of the Kyffhäuserbund .

Political activity

Kohnen has been politically active in the Catholic Center Party since his time in Rüstringen. In Vechta, the ambitious Kohnen quickly made a career in the party after the revolution. He came to the community committee for the center and soon became chairman of the Vechta center. His growing alienation from the party as a result of his activities in right-wing, anti-republican organizations was probably the reason for his resignation in 1921. Kohnen then switched to the DVP . He called for the founding of a Catholic committee within the DVP and entered the Oldenburg state parliament for the party in 1923 . He belonged to two legislative periods, until 1925 for the DVP, then from 1925 to 1925 for the so-called land block " LB ", a merger of DVP and DNVP. Kohnen, now a sharp opponent of the center, became the ultimate exponent of the national right in the Catholic Oldenburger Münsterland during the Weimar Republic. He showed his first sympathy for National Socialism as early as 1926. The founder of the Vechta NSDAP was local group leader there from March 28, 1931 to May 31, 1933, from July 26, 1932 to January 4, 1933 the first district leader of Vechta. Due to his political activities, because of which he neglected his school work, he left school voluntarily in March 1932.

In September 1933, the National Socialist government appointed him to the Oldenburg Ministry of Churches and Schools. He carried out this work in the spirit of the party, specifically to discipline the previously reluctant Catholic teachers and to bring them onto the Nazi course. As a result, he resigned from the Catholic Church in 1938 and has since called himself “a believer in God”. In 1940 Kohnen switched to the Prussian school inspectorate and was transferred to the government school department in Katowice, where he rose quickly. Relocations to Kassel and Wiesbaden followed. On July 1, 1940, he joined the SS , membership no. 414782. His promotion to SS-Hauptsturmführer took place on December 12, 1941. Kohnen was run as a volunteer employee for the security service of the Reichsführer SS in the east as well as in Kassel and Wiesbaden.

After the end of the war in 1945 he worked briefly in the Ministry for Churches and Schools in Oldenburg, was soon arrested and interned in Esterwegen from June 6, 1945 to July 22, 1946. In November 1945 he rejoined the Catholic Church there. For the next few years, Dr. Kohnen was able to obtain an unreduced payment of his pension in front of the courts, with which he was largely successful in 1950. Through targeted lies and numerous exonerating witnesses, he was able to successfully disguise his role in the Nazi era. Now financially secure, Kohnen lived in Oldenburg. There he dealt with journalistic and local history work, for which he published a wealth of articles on the history of Oldenburg and Emsland - often in newspapers - which made him widely known. Therefore he was appointed to the “Historical Commission for Lower Saxony” in 1954, was an honorary assessor at the State Administrative Court of Oldenburg and was involved in the Oldenburg landscape. When he died in high honor in 1985 at the age of 96, his Nazi activities were almost completely forgotten.

Fonts (selection)

• The Counts of Oldenburg-Wildeshausen (inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from a high philosophical and natural science faculty at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster), Oldenburg 1913.
• Publisher of: Oldenburg War and Homeland Book, Vechta 1916.
• Wilhelmshaven and the German Navy. History from the time of its creation, in: Die Tide. Northwest German monthly books, 1st year, Wilhelmshaven 1917/18, pp. 50–57.
• Our U-Boats and England, in: The Tide. North-West German Monthly Issues, 1st year, Wilhelmshaven 1917/18, pp. 249–261.
• The Heimatbund movement, a path to national recovery, in: Lower Saxony, 26th year, Bremen 1920/21, pp. 6-7.
• Vechta's liberation in 1654. Vechta home game in memory of the Swedes' departure from Vechta on the evening before Ascension Day 1654, Vechta 1928.
• On the history of the national movement in the Oldenburger Münsterlande, in: [Festschrift for the] 3rd district assembly of the NSDAP on Sunday, July 12, 1936 in Vechta. Edited by the NSDAP district leadership Vechta, (Vechta 1936), pp. 11-14.
• Im Emslandmoor, in: Wild und Hund 46th Jg., Singhofen 1940/41, p. 168.
• History of the Hümmlings, Papenburg (1950).
• To the freedom of the Hümmlings, in: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatverein vol. 1, Meppen 1953, pp. 93-99.
• Levin Schücking. A forgotten Low German poet and journalist, in: Lower Saxony, 53rd year, Hildesheim 1953, pp. 193-195.
• From Lindern's past. Local history study, Cloppenburg [1954].
• In the mirror of history. From the yearbooks of the House and Landowners Association Oldenburg eV, in: 50 Years House and Landowners Association Oldenburg eV 1904–1954. Review and Outlook, Oldenburg (1954), pp. 9–35.
• Albert Trautmann. The poet of the Hümmlings, in: Lower Saxony, 54th vol., Hildesheim 1954, pp. 7–8.
• Albert Trautmann, Hümmlinger sketches. From days gone by. A selection of works from the poet's estate, 3rd edition, no. [1968], pp. 154–158 [afterword].
• Levin Schücking, poet and journalist. On the 75th anniversary of his death on August 31, 1958, in: Yearbook of the Emsländischer Heimatverein Vol. 6, Meppen 1959, pp. 88–95.
• The Hünengräberstrasse des Hümmlings, in: Lower Saxony, 59th year, Hildesheim 1959, pp. 273-274.
• Brief outline of the history of the Hümmlings, in: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatverein Vol. 9, Meppen 1962, pp. 20–33.
• Co-editor of: Linderner Chronik. With sketches and pictures from the past of the municipality of Lindern. 2nd, expanded edition, Cloppenburg 1963.
• The Hümmling's free farmers certificate from 1394, in: Emsland-Jahrbuch Vol. 2, Osnabrück 1965, pp. 70–74.
• Johann Theodor Peek and Heinrich Anton Adolph Cloppenburg, in: Niedersächsische Lebensbilder. 7. Vol. Edgar Kalthoff (Publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony 22), Hildesheim 1971, pp. 184-195.
• Hümmlinger Jugenderinnerungen, in: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbund Vol. 21/1974/75, [Meppen o. J.], pp. 9-21.

literature

• Willi Baumann: Art. Kohnen, Anton Dr., in: Studiengesellschaft für Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Ed.), Emsländische Geschichte, Vol. 9, Haselünne 2001, pp. 221–233.
• Willi Baumann: “Hard-working and ambitious, a strong opponent of the center for a long time. Reliable National Socialist ”. The career of the Catholic school councilor Dr. Anton Kohnen under the National Socialist government in Oldenburg, in: Christenkreuz or Hakenkreuz. On the relationship between the Catholic Church and National Socialism in the state of Oldenburg. Edited by Willi Baumann and Michael Hirschfeld (sources and contributions to the church history of the Oldenburger Land, vol. 4), Vechta 1999, pp. 71–147.
• Willi Baumann: Dr. Anton Kohnen (1889–1985). Homeland friend, historian and National Socialist school councilor in the state of Oldenburg, in: National Socialism in the Oldenburger Münsterland. Contributions to the 2nd study day of the history committee in the Heimatbund for the Oldenburger Münsterland. Edited by the Heimatbund for the Oldenburger Münsterland (The Blue Series, Issue 5), Cloppenburg 2000, pp. 67–86.
• Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 222). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , pp. 199-200.
• Michael Rademacher: The district leaders of the NSDAP in the Gau Weser-Ems , p. 410, Tectum Verlag, Marburg, ISBN 3-8288-8848-8