Asmus Jepsen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Asmus Jepsen (born October 18, 1901 in Fruerlund ; † May 6, 1945 executed near Flensburg ) was a German lieutenant captain and one of the last victims of the National Socialist naval justice system .

Life

Asmus Jepsen was born in 1901 in Fruerlund, which at that time was only a suburb of the city of Flensburg. Before the start of the Second World War , he worked as a police chief secretary. In 1939 he enlisted in the Navy for twelve years and initially acted as a naval instructor. Since June 1941 he was in command of the Auerhahn special train , the special command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Erich Raeder . His successor Karl Dönitz , who had been Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy from the beginning of 1943 , only rarely used the special train. The personal relationship between Dönitz and Jepsen was not considered tense and should not have been bad. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, Kapitänleutnant Asmus Jepsen lived with his family in emergency quarters in Neukirchen near Steinbergkirche and continued to be in command of the special train.

On April 30th, Jepsen received from Karl Dönitz, who after Hitler's death , as his successor in command of the Wehrmacht, instructed to transfer the special train, which had apparently been in Potsdam shortly before , from Plön to Flensburg. Because it was there in the Flensburg suburb of Mürwik that the last imperial government was supposed to settle. The train, which was secured with flak and hand weapons, contained not only food, Wehrmacht goods , intelligence facilities with a radio station, but also steel cabinets with secret documents from the High Command of the Navy and apparently many of Karl Dönitz's private items.

On May 1, Jepsen reached Eckernförde by train , where, as instructed, he awaited further orders. On May 2nd, it became known that Eckernförde was to be declared an " Open City " the following day . At the same time, Jepsen received the order to bring the train through to Flensburg. However, Jepsen failed to organize a locomotive to continue. In view of the expected surrender of Eckernförde without a fight, Jepsen offered his men the choice of being captured or making their way back to their hometowns on their own. Most of them opted for the second option and were given the clothes and food they needed from the train. Soon afterwards, Jepsen and the rest of the team managed to attach the train wagons to a flak train moving northwards. All German troops in northwest Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark were to surrender on May 4th . It is unclear whether Jepsen received the partial surrender report. On the day in question, the Allies carried out air raids in the Flensburg area . The special train at the small station in Sörup (which is about ten kilometers south-east of Flensburg) was attacked by British planes. The connection to Mürwik broke off and the train could no longer continue. In the course of the day, Jepsen apparently destroyed all the secret things that were on the train. He had the food that was still on the train distributed to refugees who were waiting in the train area. Asmus Jepsen, who lived not far from the train station, saw this point in time as the end of his service and then went home on foot. He left the train with only four to five men. A few hours later, the emptied remaining train finally reached the city of Flensburg. In addition to the train crew, only one naval intelligence officer from the military train crew was present. The special train with its equipment is said to have been important to Dönitz. In particular, he is said to have missed a suitcase. If captured before the total surrender was complete , he might have taken the train out of town. Meanwhile, Jepsen also reached his home. He brought six pounds of coffee and tobacco with him. Jepsen reported back to the local mayor to avoid any misunderstandings.

Of the shooting range where Asmus Jepsen was shot, only the shooting range wall remains today.

The following day, when the partial surrender came into effect as agreed, Asmus Jepsen was arrested by the secret field police in his apartment in the presence of his family. The Nazi naval judicial classified Asmus Jepsen's behavior in an emergency meeting as " desertion " and " looting " and sentenced him to death. The admiralty staff judge Joachim Rudolphi observed the process, found the judgment to be legally impeccable and reported to Dönitz that the negotiation was correct. Karl Dönitz, to whom the verdict against the officer was presented on May 5th, as head of state could have softened the death sentence with a pardon . But Doenitz saw in Jepsen's behavior a clear, inexcusable breach of trust and signed the judgment. Jepsen's father was still trying to achieve something in the last few hours by talking to relatives stationed in Mürwik. Jepsen's wife unsuccessfully asked Hans-Georg von Friedeburg for help.

On May 6, 1945 two days after North Germany's official surrender was completed, Asmus Jepsen was a "deserter" on the special area Mürwik lying shooting Twedter field executed and then buried. On the night of his death, Jepsen's relatives dug up the body and brought it to Adelby Cemetery . The pastor of the Adelby parish is said to have initially refused the funeral because Jepsen was a deserter and had stabbed the fatherland in the back. Just one day after Asmus Jepsen was executed, the Wehrmacht's unconditional surrender was signed. Asmus Jepsen was finally buried in Adelby cemetery on May 8, 1945, the day on which the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht was finally carried out.

Farewell letter

On May 6, Asmus Jepsen wrote a farewell letter to his wife and children from the prison cell, with the following words:

"[...] I have just been told that I will be shot at 8:50 pm today. […] I am dying as an upright German […] I am not conscious of any guilt […] My actions will be judged differently shortly after the execution. […] But I acted with honest intent and also believed that, given the current situation, I had to do it that way. I thank you for all your love. It was you, the children and my fatherland that I always fought for [...] Germany will no longer mean anything and you will know nothing but misery and worries! [...] "

- Asmus Jepsen : Farewell letter

The handwritten letter was completely preserved.

consequences

After Asmus Jepsen's death, his wife Margarete and his three daughters were left alone. In 1950, the first post-war legal proceedings regarding the execution of Jepsen were set after poor investigations. The 1954 Impunity Act partially resulted in an amnesty for perpetrators of end- stage crimes . When the case of Asmus Jepsen became known to the public, another trial followed in 1965 in which Karl Dönitz and the people involved in the judgment were investigated. In the course of the investigation, the Flensburg public prosecutor's office was apparently unable to determine who the judge was and which members the court martial was made up of. The widow Jepsen explains in the course of the proceedings: “I do not want those responsible to be punished. But we want my husband to be rehabilitated… ”. Doenitz explained his actions with regret; the approval of the judgment against Asmus Jepsen was a burden that he had to take on, in addition to everything else. The proceedings apparently did not lead to any criminal consequences.

Commemoration

Grave of Lieutenant Asmus Jepsen and his wife Margarete
Road sign from Asmus-Jepsen-Weg, with an additional explanatory sign

The lieutenant captain Asmus Jepsen is one of the most famous victims of the Nazi military justice at the end of the war. His grave in Adelby Cemetery, right in front of the church there , still exists today.

More recently, the Twedter Feld shooting range, where Asmus Jepsen was executed, has been built on with single-family houses. The new road there was named after him in 2003 and has been called Asmus-Jepsen-Weg ever since . The Personnel Committee, Justice for the Victims of Nazi Military Justice, campaigned for the nomination . Under one of the two street signs to Asmus-Jepsen-Weg a sign with the wording "Flensburg Victims of Nazi Navy Justice, executed on the shooting range Twedter Feld (* 18.10.1901 † 6.5.1945)" was placed.

The street was also named to commemorate similar fates. - During the Second World War, soldiers were convicted and executed several times on the basis of the criminal offense of undermining military strength (see list of people executed in the German Reich ). For example, on November 8, 1943, the naval officer and teacher of the Mürwik Naval School Günther Paschen . The execution of Asmus Jepsen in the last days of the war was not an isolated incident. Around Flensburg, up to 150 soldiers are believed to have been executed during this period due to armed forces court judgments. On May 5, 1945, three sailors, Karl-Heinz Freudenthal , Günther Kaellander and Willi Albrecht , who served on the Z 5 Paul Jacobi and wanted to prevent the ship from leaving the port by sabotage on May 3, were executed on the Twedter Feld firing range . In the days after the shooting of Asmus Jepsen, further executions of young soldiers who interpreted the end of the war as the end of their service were carried out on site. The sailor Fritz Wehrmann , who served with two other young sailors on board the Buéa (which lay in the Geltinger Bucht ), was executed on May 10, 1945 as a deserter. On May 11, 1945, the marine soldier Johann Christian Süß , who was accused of "undermining male discipline" and "corrosive speeches", was executed at the Twedter Feld naval firing range. The four other soldiers shot at the Twedter Feld firing range were only exhumed on March 25, 1952 and buried in the Friedenshügel cemetery. - In Flensburg several memorials were later erected for the victims of the tyranny, which with their memorial wording also commemorate the victims of the Nazi military justice.

In 2011, a memorial stone to Asmus Jepsen was erected in the Neukirchen cemetery of honor. A memorial service was held on May 8th of that year to inaugurate the memorial stone. The memorial stone was given its place in a row with fifteen other memorial stones commemorating missing war dead from Neukirchen. On the memorial stone, which is kept simple, the name of Asmus Jepsen, his date of birth, death and place of death Flensburg are mentioned.

In 2011, the songwriter Wolf Biermann composed the “ Epitaph for Asmus Jepsen in the Land of Angling” in memory of Asmus Jepsen with the following words: “He did his duty in great murders as a silent tapper. Then warned the thousand years, the game was over. Total war totally lost - that was clear to him. [...] Well, if no one whistled him, then the captors would not have dragged the brave deserter away to the very last court martial. [...] And if Admiral Karl Dönitz had not signed the dead Führer in Mürwik cowardly - the death sentence for cowardice in front of the enemy had this Asmus Jepsen stayed with us. "

Web links

Commons : Asmus Jepsen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The said Asmus Jepsen should not be confused with Asmus Jepsen from Kiskelund (in Bov Sogn , north of Flensburg ), a former master baker and National Socialist member of Poul Sommer's corps , the so-called summer corpset, who was transferred to the Danish on May 7, 1945 Brigade was abducted and shot on July 22, 1945 at the border near Frøslev , a hundred meters on the German side, was buried at Grenzstein 71, near today's federal motorway 7 . The death of Asmus Jepsen from Kiskelund was not treated as a murder case by the Danish police. Members of the Danish brigade claimed that Asmus Jepsen (from Kiskelund) had previously attempted to escape. However, there are also indications that he was liquidated as a traitor by Danish resistance fighters from the Padborg area . See JydskeVestkysten : Dansk nazist dræbt: Familien venter stadig på en opklaring , from: 29 September 2012, accessed on 26 August 2019 and JydskeVestkysten: "Grænsen er overskredet" har nået grænselandet , from: 8 December 2017, accessed on 26 December 2017 August 2019
  2. ↑ a b c d e Dieter Pust: Flensburg street names . Society for Flensburg City History, Flensburg 2005, ISBN, article: Asmus-Jepsen-Weg
  3. ↑ a b c d e Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 101.
  4. ^ Salon car of the Deutsche Reichsbahn until 1945. An overview of the special trains and the Federal Archives. Virtual exhibition. The commandant at the Fuehrer's headquarters
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Gerhard Mauz: You don't just sign something like that . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1965 ( online - 10 October 1965 ).
  6. ^ Carlo Jolly: Songwriter in the central library: Biermann remembers: Through the rib box into the heart. In: Flensburger Tageblatt . February 4, 2012, accessed October 1, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Stephan Richter: Series “Untergang in Raten”: Asmus Jepsen's fate and the Nazi military justice that knew no end. Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag , May 15, 2015, accessed on October 1, 2019 .
  8. ↑ a b Flensburger Tageblatt : aerial photo series: Fördewald: Am Grünen und im Stillen , dated: August 27, 2011, accessed on February 25, 2014.
  9. ↑ dtv atlas on world history. From the French Revolution to the present. Volume 2. Cologne 1987, p. 215, chapter: Second World War / collapse of the German Reich 1945.
  10. ^ Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History : VIMU. End of war , accessed on May 31, 2017.
  11. ↑ Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 102.
  12. ↑ Gerhard Paul: The Asmus Jepsen case in: Long shadow: End of the Nazi dictatorship and early post-war years in Flensburg. Flensburg 2000.
  13. ↑ a b Flensburg narrative locations. Asmus-Jepsen-Weg , accessed on September 18, 2019
  14. ↑ Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 101 f.
  15. ↑ Die Zeit : Inferno and Liberation: The Last Spook , p. 3, from May 4, 2005; accessed on September 17, 2019.
  16. ↑ a b Die Zeit : Shot on May 6, 1945 , from: September 10, 1965; accessed on September 18, 2019.
  17. ↑ Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 102 f.
  18. ↑ a b c d e The fall of 1945 in Flensburg. (PDF) (No longer available online.) State Center for Civic Education Schleswig-Holstein , p. 14 f. , archived from the original on October 20, 2016 ; accessed on January 18, 2019 (talk on January 10, 2012 by Gerhard Paul ).
  19. ↑ NABU nature reserve Twedter Feld . Idyll at the gates of Flensburg , accessed on January 18, 2019
  20. ↑ a b Gerhard Paul, Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg. Flensburg 2015, p. 103.
  21. ↑ The notorious People's Court was not in Flensburg at that time . The successor to the President of the People's Court Roland Freisler was Harry Haffner . In the last days of the war he tried to establish the People's Court in Bad Schwartau . The People's Court was apparently no longer relocated to Flensburg as the front approached. However, this did not mean that the Nazi military justice system there did not pass harsh judgments.
  22. ↑ See Admiral Staff Judge Dr. jur. Joachim Rudolphi
  23. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt : Bus tour through Flensburg: In the footsteps of contemporary history , from: January 30, 2012; accessed on September 18, 2019
  24. ↑ In the Dutch documentary Die Tage nach Hitler from 2014, one of Asmus Jepsen's daughters was interviewed. In said documentary (about minute 25) she suspects that her father knew something significant. She suspects that her father's execution was a kind of act of revenge by Dönitz.
  25. ↑ Gerhard Paul: The Asmus Jepsen case in: Long shadow: End of the Nazi dictatorship and early post-war years in Flensburg. Flensburg 2000
  26. ↑ Akopol. Still Wrong , dated: January 19, 2013; accessed on September 18, 2019
  27. ↑ a b c Flensburg-Mobil: Flensburg time travel to places of perpetrators and victims in the Nazi era. Former naval firing range / now the Tremmerup development area , from: March 19, 2012; accessed on August 26, 2019
  28. ↑ a b The fate of Asmus Jepsen: The Nazi military justice that knew no end , accessed on August 26, 2019
  29. ↑ Die Zeit : Inferno and Liberation: The Last Spook , p. 4, from: May 4, 2005; accessed on September 16, 2019
  30. ↑ a b Victim of a merciless military justice. In: Flensburger Tageblatt . May 9, 2011, accessed October 1, 2019 .
  31. ↑ The West : Sentenced to death for deserting at the last minute , dated May 4, 2015
  32. ^ A b Association Personal Committee Justice for Victims of Nazi Military Justice. Memorial signs in Germany , accessed on August 26, 2019
  33. ↑ Cf. Flensburger Tageblatt : Nazi Victim Günther Paschen: "I went to death without fear" , from: January 26, 2012; accessed on January 18, 2019
  34. ↑ Gerhard Paul u. Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg , Flensburg 2015, p. 111.
  35. ↑ Gerhard Paul u. Broder Schwensen (Ed.): May '45. End of the war in Flensburg , Flensburg 2015, p. 97 ff.
  36. ↑ a b p. Currently shot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1965, p. 30th f . ( online ).
  37. ^ Executions by the Nazi military justice system for desertion took place on May 13th in Amsterdam . With the approval of the Allies, soldiers Rainer Beck and Bruno Dörfer were shot there. The High Command of the Navy in Meierwik confirmed death sentences in northern Germany and Norway until May 15, with the subsequent demand that they be carried out.
  38. ↑ At Carlisle Park , the Friedenshügel cemetery and the youngest at the Alte Post , next to the Flensburg Police Department .
  39. ↑ Flensburger Tageblatt : Victims of Merciless Military Justice , dated: May 9, 2011 as well as: Flensburger Tageblatt : Songwriter in the central library: Biermann commemorates: Through the rib box into the heart , dated: February 4, 2012; each accessed on October 25, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Jepsen, Asmus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German marine and victim of the Nazi tyranny
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Flensburg
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1945
Place of death near Flensburg