August Heissmeyer

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August Heissmeyer (1936)

August Heissmeyer (born January 11, 1897 in Gellersen , † January 16, 1979 in Schwäbisch Hall ) was a German SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS and Police , Higher SS and Police Leader and from 1935 to 1939 head of the SS Main Office . After the Second World War , he was sentenced to prison as a war criminal . He was married to the Reichsfrauenführer Gertrud Scholtz-Klink .

Life

After attending school, he joined the Prussian Army . During the First World War he was a lieutenant and received several awards, including the Iron Cross 1st Class.

After the end of the war, he was a member of a free corps and participated in the Kapp Putsch in 1920 . After dropping out of his studies, he worked as a driving instructor. In 1923 he first came into contact with the National Socialists , whom he rejoined in 1925 under his old membership number 21,573. At the beginning of 1926, he became a member of the SA . He built up the "SA-Gausturm Hannover-Süd" and was temporarily deputy Gauleiter there.

In January 1930, he became a member of the SS (SS No. 4,370) and in 1932 an employee of the SS office. He quickly made his career, became a member of the Reichstag in 1933 and rose to head of the SS main office in 1935 . This gave him a key position in the organizational structure of the SS . He replaced Curt Wittje as head of office and on November 9, 1936 was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer and "Inspector of the National Political Educational Institutions " .

In 1939, Heissmeyer was also appointed SS-Oberabschnittsleiter "East" and "Higher SS and Police Leader Spree" . The Berlin-Brandenburg area was thus directly subordinate to him. On November 9, 1939, Heissmeyer was appointed acting inspector of the concentration camps and the reinforced skull standards. He thus took over the provisional successor to Theodor Eicke , who was now used as the commander of the SS division "Totenkopf" . On July 31, 1940, Heissmeyer was replaced by Eicke's deputy in the concentration camp inspection, Richard Glücks .

With the beginning of the Second World War, he built the " SS-Obergruppenführer Heissmeyer Office " and was thus responsible for the military training of the students at the national political educational institutions. On August 23, 1940, he and the Reichsfrauenführer Gertrud Scholtz-Klink , whom he married in the same year, visited the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. On November 14, 1944, he was also general of the Waffen SS .

After the end of the war , he and his wife went into hiding at Leitzkau Castle and, on the mediation of Pauline von Württemberg , in Bebenhausen near Tübingen , where he lived until his death. He worked as a farm worker and, together with his wife, received false papers under the name "Heinrich Stuckenbrock" or "Maria Stuckenbrock". However, both were recognized and arrested by the French occupation police in February 1948. During the denazification he was classified as the main culprit, sentenced to a three-year prison term and his private property confiscated ex officio. He was initially a worker in a washing machine factory, then an employee of a Coca-Cola branch in Reutlingen. In 1979 he died in a Schwäbisch Hall hospital.

August Heißmeyer is buried in a family grave in the cemetery in Gellersen, Hameln-Pyrmont district.

See also

literature

  • Ruth Bettina Birn : The Higher SS and Police Leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Droste, Düsseldorf 1986, ISBN 3-7700-0710-7 (also: Stuttgart, Universität, Dissertation, 1985).
  • Tuviah Friedman : The three oldest SS generals Himmler. SS-Obergruppenführer August Heyssmayer, SS-Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Reinhard, SS-Obergruppenführer Udo von Woyrsch. A documentary collection. Ed. Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa. Compilation: Friedman. 1998.

Web links

Commons : August Heißmeyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Mark C. Yerger : Allgemeine SS. The Commands, Units and Leaders of the General SS , Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1997, ISBN 0-7643-0145-4 , p. 33.
  2. ^ SS Leadership Main Office: List of seniority of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel , status December 1, 1938 with amendment booklet of June 15, 1939, serial number 17.
  3. ^ Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann and Dieter Zinke: Germany's Generals and Admirals , Part V: The Generals of the Waffen-SS and the Police 1933-1945 , Biblio-Verlag 2005, Volume 2, p. 119.
personal data
SURNAME Heissmeyer, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stuckenbrock, Heinrich; Heissmeyer, August; Heissmayer, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS
DATE OF BIRTH January 11, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Gellersen near Hameln
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1979
Place of death Schwäbisch Hall