Arthur Greiser

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Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser and his second wife Maria Körfer (1937)

Arthur Karl Greiser (born January 22, 1897 in Schroda , Province of Posen ; † July 21, 1946 in Posen ) was Senate President of the Free City of Danzig from 1934 to 1939 and Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the Reichsgau Wartheland annexed by the German Reich from 1939 to 1945. He was charged as a war criminal with hundreds of thousands of murders, the mass deportation of Poles for forced labor and the pillaging of the Polish people . He was sentenced to death and executed in Poland in 1946 .

Life

Origin, participation in the war and employment

Greiser's father was a bailiff . From 1903 Greiser attended elementary school, the two-year middle school and the Royal Humanist High School in Hohensalza , which he left without a degree in August 1914. He learned the Polish language in his childhood and youth and was fluent in it.

On August 4, 1914, at the beginning of the First World War , Greiser volunteered for the Imperial Navy . From 1917 he served as an observer at the Flanders I seaplane station in Zeebrugge, Belgium . After a brief activity - now lieutenant in the reserve of the sailors' artillery - as leader of the Coast Guard Squadron 1, Greiser switched to the single-seater combat school in Danzig-Langfuhr from January to August 1918 . In October 1918, he was shot down at the Flanders II air flight station in Ostend, Belgium , and was seriously wounded. His recovery dragged on into the spring of 1919; war damage of 50 percent remained.

From 1919 to 1921 he was part of the Border Guard East as a free corps fighter and was used in the fighting in the Baltic States . Finally demobilized in May 1921 , he tried to gain a foothold in civilian life as a volunteer in an export business and as an independent sales representative for the Stettin oil works in Danzig . Prior to the global economic crisis Greiser went 1928 bankruptcy ; until 1930 he was the captain of a motor boat for passenger tours in Gdańsk Bay . In the 1920s, Greiser was a member of the Danzig Masonic lodge to the permanent castle in the east , where he took on the role of a so-called “caretaker”, who had the task of supporting the family of a deceased Masonic brother. He officially resigned from the box at his own request, which is also known as "cover". The lodge had to be closed on April 11, 1933 under pressure from the National Socialists , but presumably still existed in secret until around 1939. After the war, the lodge was reopened in Lüneburg in 1953 and existed there until the death of the last member of Danzig in 1970.

Greiser was married twice. Their first marriage in 1919 resulted in three children. In December 1939 his only son Erhardt, born in 1925, was killed in a car accident. The fourth child comes from his marriage to the pianist Maria Körfer in 1934.

As a politician in Gdansk

Opening of the 27th German East Fair in Königsberg on August 20, 1939; during a tour of the exhibition v. r. To the left: Harry Siegmund, Arthur Greiser, Hans Pfundtner , Friedrich Landfried , Erich Koch

Greiser was a member of Richard Kunze's German Social Party (membership no. 520) in 1922 and 1923 . From 1924 to 1926 he was a member of the German national steel helmet .

On November 1, 1929, Greiser also joined the NSDAP ( membership number 166.635) and the SA . On June 30, 1931, he transferred from the SA to the SS (SS No. 10.795). He was promoted steadily in the SS and on January 1, 1935, he achieved the rank of SS brigade leader . In October 1930 briefly acting Gauleiter of the Gaues Gaues , he then worked full-time as a Gau manager for the NSDAP until June 19, 1933. From October 1933 to October 1939 Greiser was deputy Gauleiter of Danzig.

According to the Treaty of Versailles , the Free City of Danzig did not belong to the German Empire . Elected to the Danzig People's Day in November 1930 , Greiser was the party leader of the NSDAP until June 1933 . During this time there was a conviction by the Elbing Regional Court for "insulting the Republic Protection Act " with a fine of 200 Reichsmarks or a week's imprisonment. Greiser was released from the sentence as part of an amnesty . On May 28, 1933, the NSDAP achieved an absolute majority in the People's Day; Greiser became Vice President of the Senate and at the same time Senator for Home Affairs. On November 28, 1934, he replaced Hermann Rauschning as President of the Senate and thus became de facto head of government of the Free City of Danzig. His cousin Harry Siegmund followed him as a personal advisor and later head of the management team.

As early as 1930, internal party competition developed between Greiser and Gauleiter Albert Forster . Subordinated to the Forster party, as President of the Senate he ranked above the Gauleiter in terms of state policy and was judged as follows: “Greiser was more of an intellectual. He was far superior to Forster in the art of knowing people and treating people, as well as in all economic questions. Greiser was of a much harder nature than Forster, purposeful, consistent, thoughtful and deliberate. "

Since January 30, 1938 Greiser was the holder of the golden party badge of the NSDAP .

In World War II

Arthur Greiser in Poznan on October 2, 1939
Greiser's ordinance on the German People's List
Arthur Greiser (right) and Heinz Reinefarth greet the millionth resettler in Litzmannstadt (Lodz) on March 17, 1944
Greiser's villa on Mariensee

After the German invasion of Poland , Arthur Greiser became head of civil administration in the military district of Poznan on September 8, 1939 . On October 21, 1939 he became Gauleiter and, with effect from October 26, 1939, Reich Governor for the Reichsgau Posen, which was renamed Warthegau on January 29, 1940 . His representative for all racial questions was Erhard Wetzel , who later wrote the so-called gas chamber letter . In addition, Greiser held a large number of other functions: from October 21, 1939, he was also Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District XXI, from November 15, 1941, District Housing Commissioner under Robert Ley and, from April 6, 1942, Graubünden Commissioner for Fritz Sauckel . In October 1939 he was appointed to the Prussian State Council, from July 7, 1940 he was a member of the German Reichstag, which was insignificant during the Nazi era .

Greiser maintained close contact with Himmler . In the SS he was promoted further during the Second World War and reached the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer on January 30, 1942 . Greiser's office as regional representative of Himmler became particularly important in his function as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Volkstum (RKFDV): The newly created Reichsgau consisted only of areas that had been Polish territory before the German attack. The population was made up of a strong Polish majority (85%) and roughly equally large Jewish (8%) and German-born (7%) minorities. Greiser tried to achieve a " Germanization " of the Warthegau with various measures :

  • The population was recorded in the German People's List and then divided into four groups according to their ability to Germanize.
  • Large parts of the Gau's Jewish population were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto in Łódź.
  • On Greiser's initiative, at least 150,000 Jews unable to work were murdered in the Kulmhof extermination camp near Chełmno from December 1941 .
  • On May 1, 1942, Greiser turned to Himmler with the suggestion that 35,000 Poles with open tuberculosis should be killed, which he described with the term “ special treatment ”. Polish intellectuals and priests were particularly the target of murders and deportations to concentration camps .
  • About 500,000 Poles were deported to the Generalgouvernement .
  • Around 350,000 ethnic German resettlers were settled in the Warthegau, who were mainly resettled from areas annexed by the Soviet Union (Romania and Eastern Poland) and the Baltic states according to the agreements of the German-Soviet border and friendship treaty . After 1941, more ethnic Germans came from the conquered Soviet territories, especially from the Ukraine. The settlement in Greisers Gau was organized by the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle of the SS and the Immigrant Central Office in what was then Litzmannstadt .
  • The Poles who remained in the Warthegau were exposed to various forms of discrimination . Numerous churches, but also schools and universities, were closed. Private contacts between Poles and Germans were banned, as was the use of the Polish language in public.

The East German observer served as the "organ of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and the proclamation sheet of the Reichsstatthalters in Reichsgau Wartheland and its authorities" , in which Greiser also regularly published leading articles he wrote himself .

In the spring of 1940, Greiser appropriated a large piece of land about 18 km southwest of Posen. The lake, called Jezioro Góreckie in Polish, was renamed Mariensee , just like the country estate itself , after the first name of his second wife. At the suggestion of Albert Speer, the Potsdam architects Otto von Estorff and Gerhard Winkler built a large villa in the style of the Nazi era, which has been preserved to this day. The road leading to the country estate is still called “Greiserówka” in Poland today.

In the final phase of the war , Arthur Greiser was also the leader of the " German Volkssturm " in the Gau Wartheland from September 25, 1944 . When the Red Army launched its major offensive on January 12, 1945, there were no evacuation plans for the civilian population. On the evening of January 20, 1945, Greiser fled from the city of Posen, which had been declared a "fortress", to Frankfurt an der Oder and left the fortress garrison and townspeople to their fate in the battle for Posen that followed . Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann viewed his escape as "cowardice"; a deployment as leader of a Volkssturm battalion, initially considered as a punishment, did not materialize, however, because other Nazi leaders held their protective hand over him. Instead, Greiser was sent to Karlsbad for a cure , from where he settled in the Bavarian Alps in March 1945.

Trial and execution in Poland

Arthur Greiser was arrested by US troops in Upper Bavaria on May 17, 1945 . His trial took place on June 21, 1946 before the Polish Supreme Court in Poznan. Greiser was for crimes against the Polish population of one hundred thousand times the mass murder , the mass deportation of Poles for forced labor in the " Old Reich ," the pillage and plunder of the Polish people and the state and crimes against peace indicted and on 9 July 1946 death by condemned the strand . Pope Pius XII appealed to the Polish government not to impose the death penalty. On July 21, 1946, Greiser's public execution took place in front of the Poznan Citadel .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Albert Forster , Hjalmar Schacht : Three speeches that are highly significant for every Gdansk native. Müller, Danzig 1935.
  • Danzig as a political problem (special print from: University and abroad ). May 1935.
  • with Albert Forster: Danzig's struggle for life (= writings of the Adolf Hitler School, Volume 3). Hanseatic. Verl.-Anst., Hamburg 1935.
  • The political position of Danzig in relation to the League of Nations, Poland and the Reich (special print from: National Socialist Manual for Law and Legislation ). Munich 1935.
  • The structure in the east (= Kiel lectures, volume 68). Fischer , Jena 1942.

literature

  • Catherine Epstein: Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-954641-1 .
  • Mark A. Drumbl: “Germans are the Lords and Poles are the Servants” - The Trial of Arthur Greiser in Poland, 1946. In: Kevin Jon Heller , Gerry Simpson (Eds.): The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-967114-4 , pp. 411-429.
  • Peter Hüttenberger : The Gauleiter. Study on the change in the power structure in the NSDAP (= series of quarterly journals for contemporary history ). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1969.
  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
  • Dieter Schenk : Hitler's husband in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster and the crimes in Danzig-West Prussia. Dietz, Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-8012-5029-6 .
  • Harry Siegmund : Review - memories of a civil servant in turbulent times. Ostsee-Verlag, Raisdorf 1999, ISBN 978-3-9802210-7-8 .
  • Ernst Kienast (ed.): The Greater German Reichstag 1938, fourth electoral period. R. v. Decker's Verlag, G. Schenck, June 1943 edition, Berlin.

Web links

Commons : Arthur Greiser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Letter in Greiser's SS personnel file from June 27, 1942, at the Simon Wiesenthal Center ( archived copy ( memento of the original from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and Archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. Link no longer available, 11 August 2012) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / motlc.specialcol.wiesenthal.com
  2. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon. 5th, revised edition, Herbig Verlag, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 .
  3. ↑ Schenk: Hitler's husband in Danzig. 2000, p. 70 f.
  4. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The golden party badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944 (= studies of the history of awards , volume 4). Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 69.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 673.
  6. ↑ Ingo Loose: "Collective Creatures". The Berlin Jews in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1941–1944. In: insight. Bulletin of the Fritz Bauer Institute 1/2009, ISSN  1868-4211 , p. 25; s. a. Rolf-Heinz Höppner
  7. ^ Greiser's letter to Himmler dated May 1, 1942 in the facsimile ( memento of the original dated June 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Nuremberg Document NO-246), a copy of Himmler's answer ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of June 27, 1942 (Nuremberg Document NO-244) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu
  8. ↑ Miriam Y. Arani: Photographic self- and external images of Germans and Poles in Reichsgau Wartheland 1939–45. Publishing house Dr. Kovač, Diss., 2008, p. 339.
  9. ↑ Catherine Epstein: Model Nazi. Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford 2010, p. 269.
  10. ↑ Donald M. McKale: Nazis after Hitler - how perpetrators of the Holocaust cheated justice and truth. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 2012, ISBN 978-1-4422-1316-6 , p. 196.
  11. ↑ Mark A. Drumbl: “Germans are the Lords and Poles are the Servants” - The Trial of Arthur Greiser in Poland, 1946. In: Kevin Jon Heller, Gerry Simpson (ed.): The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, ISBN 978-0-19-967114-4 , pp. 411-429.
personal data
SURNAME Greiser, Arthur
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greiser, Arthur Karl (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, Senate President of the Free City of Danzig, Reich Governor and Gauleiter of the NSDAP
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Schroda , Poznan Province
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1946
Place of death Poses