Benedict Kuner

Benedikt Kuner (born March 20, 1889 in Schonach in the Black Forest ; † May 14, 1945 by suicide at Altglashütten, now part of Feldberg ) was a German politician. He was of the City of Schonach, local leader of the Nazi Party in Schonach, Mayor of Neustadt (now Titisee-Neustadt ) 1935-1937, district leader of the NSDAP in the district of Neustadt (1937-1941) and mainly responsible one in the July 21, 1944 Schollach in Hochschwarzwald committed war crimes, one of the so-called aviator murders , in which five American airmen were shot after a parachute jump.

Life

Kuner was a councilor of the German Center Party in Schonach , but left the party in 1930 to join the NSDAP. Kuner was chairman of the Schonach gymnastics club and in 1931 became local group leader in Schonach. Even at the beginning of Nazi rule, there seems to have been a strong anti-Catholic mood in Schonach. The watch manufacturer August Kuner, together with Benedikt Kuner, a partner in the watch factory Gebrüder Kuner (Benedikt Kuner had been the sole owner since 1937), campaigned in 1933 for the transfer of Vicar Waldemar Trapp, who worked in Schonach, because he “continued to use the Catholic greeting in religious instruction ". Between 1935 and 1937 Benedikt Kuner was mayor of Neustadt, today Titisee-Neustadt , then from 1937 to 1941 district leader of the NSDAP in the Neustadt district in the Black Forest, now the Hochschwarzwald district .

On November 9, 1939, Benedikt Kuner was responsible for the arrest of Vicar Karl Leisner , who was in St. Blasien for a cure. When Leisner heard from his roommate that Hitler had been assassinated and that there had been deaths and injuries, but that Hitler was uninjured, he said: “It's a shame he wasn't there.” Two hours later, Kuner appeared with two Gestapo officers - Officials in the Prince Abbot Gerbert House. The chief physician, senior medical officer Dr. med. Ernst Melzer later reported: “Mr. Leisner was called and I was there to tell him that he had been arrested for what he said and that he had to pack his things immediately. I vigorously objected, to which I felt obliged as his doctor, and stated that with the current state of tuberculosis, being transferred to prison would be devastating. Kuner (the district leader) replied: “Let that be my concern, the matter will also have consequences for you.” The word also fell about the “clerical nest” that had to be dug. Karl Leisner asked the district leader in my presence that he would like to make a confession before the transport, but Kuner harshly refused. "

On July 21, 1944, a Boeing B-17 of the US Air Forces , whose actual target was a ball bearing factory in Schweinfurt, was so badly damaged by anti-aircraft missiles over Mannheim that the pilot decided to try to reach Switzerland, which was saving Switzerland. In the erroneous opinion that they had already reached Swiss territory, the crew jumped with parachutes over the southern Black Forest, while their aircraft flew on without a driver until it finally crashed near Epfenhofen, now a district of Blumberg not far from the national border. Four crew members landed in the area of the Donaueschingen district between Neukirch and Linach , but five more in the area of ​​the Neustadt district in the Black Forest, today the Hochschwarzwald district , two of them near the village of Urach , which today belongs to Vöhrenbach, and two in the Schollach district. All of them were arrested shortly after landing by armed members of the local land guard. The Neukirchers informed the Donaueschingen district administrator, the Urach and Schollacher those in Neustadt, because according to the current legal situation, the district authorities were responsible for taking prisoners into custody for the time being.

Just one day earlier, on July 20, 1944, the assassination attempt by Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg had failed and Heinrich Himmler , the Reichsführer SS , had used this as an opportunity to transfer police violence to the NSDAP on the same day. While the Donaueschingen district administrator, possibly unaware of the new order, made sure that the four airmen who landed in his district were taken prisoners of war , which they were supposed to survive, there was a violent argument in Neustadt between the district administrator and NS district leader Benedikt Kuner. The latter prevailed - apparently with the resolution already made to liquidate the five Americans who were trapped in the Neustädter district area, in Urach and Schollach.

The district leader, his son Fritz Kuner, district leader deputy Heinrich Birnbreier, three other NSDAP members and the gendarme on duty immediately set off for Schollach to shoot the prisoners in the forest as agreed. For this purpose, the two arrested in Schollach's schoolhouse were first picked up and murdered with several pistol shots on the way to Schwärzenbach by the deputy of the district leader and his accomplice. Then the Urach police station, the Fürstenberg district forester and two land riflemen were ordered to pick up the three planes held in the Urach sister house. This under the pretext that the prisoners would have to be brought to Neustadt in order to be able to hand them over to the Air Force. Instead, after crossing the wooded ridge between Urach- and Schollachtal on the Kirchweg, the detainees were intercepted by the district leader's son and NSDAP members Gottlieb Werner and Max Matthes and shot from behind. As a member of the Wehrmacht, Fritz Kuner had just been on leave from the front .

While fleeing the Americans, Benedikt Kuner committed suicide on May 14, 1945 at Windgfallweiher by shooting himself. His son Fritz died as a soldier in the Wehrmacht on the Western Front . Heinrich BIRNBREIER and Gottlieb Werner were greeted by a US - military court sentenced to death and on December 5, 1947 in Landsberg executed , Max Matthes to life imprisonment sentenced in 1954 released conditionally and amnestied 1957th

Memory of those who were shot

On July 19, 2014, in the forest between Urach and Schollach, a memorial cross made from North American Douglas fir wood by wood sculptor Wolfgang Kleiser was erected for the five US soldiers Leonhard A. Kornblau, Meredith M. Mills Jr., Charles E. Woolf, Bernhard A. Radomski and Frank L. Misiak inaugurated.

literature

• Oded Heilbronner: Catholicism, Political Culture, and the Countryside: A Social History of the Nazi Party in South Germany. University of Michigan 1998.
• Otto Pies, Hans-Karl Seeger, Karl Leisner, Gabriele Latzel, Christa Bockholt: Otto Pies and Karl Leisner: Friendship in the Hell of the Dachau Concentration Camp. Pies, 2007.
• Roland Weis: Dignities and Burdens: Catholic Church under National Socialism , Rombach, 1994.
• Ulrich von Hehl : Priests under Hitler's terror: a biographical and statistical survey. Matthias-Grünewald, Mainz 1984, ISBN 3-7867-1152-6 .
• Rolf Ebnet: Jump into the unknown: contemporary witnesses report; Documentation about a German-American story about the crashes of two American Air Force bombers in 1944 near Dittishausen and Schollach, Black Forest; Factual report , Ebnet 2005, ISBN 3-00-015654-2 .

Web links

• [1]
• Review of Proceedings , documents for the review of the judgments in the aviation trials by the review boards of the US Army

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Summary of the verdict ( memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) for justice and Nazi crimes
2. ^ Burkhard Krupp: Interview with witnesses. March 12, 1981, archived from the original on October 15, 2012 ; accessed on February 21, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Oded Heilbronner p. 143
4. ↑ Oded Heilbronner p. 289
5. ↑ Roland Weis, p. 81 and Ulrich von Hehl, p. 333
6. ↑ parish newsletter Neundettelsau No. 23 2010: Untitled. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; Retrieved July 25, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Detlef Herbner: Titisee-Neustadt. The urban historical development of a Fürstenbergisch-Baden administrative center with special consideration of the economic and social historical aspects . Dissertation, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg i. Br., Freiburg 1995. p. 268.
8. ^ Nazi Crimes on Trial: 'Dachau Trials', Trials by US Army Courts in Europe 1945–1948, File Number: US056, Review Date: 470623, Case Number: 12-779 (US vs. Heinrich Birnbreier et al.) ( Memento of February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
9. ↑ It is the 70th anniversary of the Nazi crimes against 5 US soldiers . Badische Zeitung, July 17, 2014.
10. ↑ Eisenbach (Hochschw.): Commemoration of the murder of five US airmen. Badische Zeitung, July 17, 2014, accessed on March 25, 2016 .