Bernhard Niggemeyer

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Bernhard Niggemeyer (born June 22, 1908 in Mülheim am Rhein , † September 23, 1988 ) was a German lawyer, criminal investigator and SS leader. During the Second World War he worked in a leading position at the Secret Field Police (GFP) and was jointly responsible for war crimes . In the Federal Republic of Germany he was employed by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as the head of the Criminal Institute.

First years

Niggemeyer was the son of a railway clerk and grew up in a large family. He attended elementary school and high school in his hometown. After graduating from high school at Easter 1928 , he studied law and political science at the University of Cologne , which he completed after the minimum period of study. During his studies he was one of the co-founders of the Academic Sports Club at the University of Cologne , today's ASV Cologne. Niggemeyer was a passionate football player and was a member of various selection teams (including the West German Football Association and the German National Student Team). At the end of January 1932 he passed the first state examination in law and then followed his legal clerkship in the area of ​​the Cologne Higher Regional Court . In the course of a six-month leave of absence from the legal internship he completed his dissertation at the Law Faculty of the University of Cologne and was established in February 1933, Dr. Doctorate in law . In February 1936 he passed the major state examination in Berlin . He then immediately applied for service with the criminal police and entered the service of the criminal police in Düsseldorf at the beginning of April 1936 as a candidate for a commissioner . From May 1937 he completed the commissioner course in Berlin-Charlottenburg and passed the examination to become a detective commissioner in November 1937. He then moved to the criminal police in Karlsruhe at the beginning of January 1938 , where he was in charge of the theft, burglary and robbery. In addition, he took over the area of ​​“combating poaching ” centrally from Karlsruhe for the whole of Baden .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SA in 1933, according to the GDR Brown Book . He had been a member of the NSDAP since the beginning of May 1937 ( membership number 4,068,363).

Second World War

Shortly before the start of the Second World War, he was seconded to the Secret Field Police (GFP) at the end of August 1939. In this context, he initially headed the GFP 550 group, with which he a. a. took part in the western campaign. From February 1942 he was field police director of the 201st security division in Russia and from spring 1943 he was the chief field police director of the Army Group Center at the command of the rear army area. Promoted to the Government Criminal Police Officer and SS-Sturmbannführer in 1943 , from September of the same year he was listed as an employee of Office IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). However, he only had one post at the RSHA and was a member of the GFP in the military police until the end of the war . With Joachim Kaintzig he was one of the four highest GFP commanders in the occupied territory of the Soviet Union. Niggemeyer was subordinate to twelve GFP groups, each one hundred strong. In a service order issued by him on March 10, 1943, he carried out his area of ​​responsibility: “According to the instructions given to him by the Army Field Police Chief, the Chief of Police for the Army Group is responsible for proper use, flawless professional work, uniform execution of the executive and attitude GFP subordinate groups responsible. ”In five work overviews drawn up by Niggemeyer of the activities of the 12 GFP groups subordinate to him in the months of April, May, July, August and September of 1944, which survived the war, a. 675 executions, 32 shootings due to escape or resistance activity as well as 1,047 transfers to the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD are listed. In the work overviews he wrote, he wrote in SS style, among other things, of “agents” who were “rendered harmless” and “specially treated” people, as well as “the closest possible” cooperation with the SD . Niggemeyer shared responsibility for the war crimes committed in the Central Army Section.

In the commemorative publication of the Government Criminal Police Officer Herbert Schäfer published in 1968 in honor of Niggemeyer, Niggemeyer's mission in World War II is dealt with succinctly in two sentences: “He was drafted into the army as early as August 1939 and during the difficult years that followed, he was in the military defense in both the West and the West East his man. At the end of the war he managed to find his way through adventurous escape routes to his family, who had been evacuated to Montabaur in the quiet Westerwald. "

post war period

After the end of the war he made his living in the private sector. In 1951 he returned to the civil service and was initially chairman of a chamber of the social court in Cologne. From 1952 he was assistant officer for criminal police matters in the Federal Ministry of the Interior . In 1953 he moved to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Wiesbaden , where he founded the Criminal Investigation Institute, of which he was the first director. The departments of research and evaluation , library, archive and teaching material collection as well as training belonged to the Criminal Investigation Institute . In addition to Paul Dickopf and Rolf Holle , he was instrumental in setting up the BKA, but was in competition with both. Niggemeyer organized and moderated the international BKA autumn conferences, which enjoyed an excellent reputation among experts. He was therefore better known than Dickopf or Holle among the German police and representatives of Western European police authorities. When Dickopf became President of the BKA in 1965, he made Holle his representative, even though he had promised Niggemeyer this post.

Niggemeyer was the founder of the Federal Criminal Police Office's series of publications in 1955. Just like his subordinates Eberhard Eschenbach and Rudolf Leichtweiß , he expressed himself positively in a further article in 1955/56 in Volume 3 of the BKA series of publications on the preventive fight against crime that was practiced during the Nazi era: "The planned police surveillance [...] was a excellent means to successfully fight against professional and habitual criminals also preventively ”. In the publication “Kriminologie - Leitfaden für Kriminalbeamte” published in 1967 in the series of publications of the Federal Criminal Police Office and unchanged in 1973, Niggemeyer used in his article “Criminal Sociology”, in addition to negative comments about “bums” and homosexuals, a “culturalist” racism: “The gypsies live in clans and hordes, have a chief to whom they owe unconditional obedience and a tribal mother who is believed to be the guardian of tribal custom. The gypsies have neither a permanent place of residence nor do they have a regular job. The tendency to an unrestricted wandering life and a pronounced work reluctance are among the special characteristics of a gypsy ”.

Niggemeyer rose to the position of senior government criminal director at the BKA . In June 1968, he retired after reaching the age limit. He took up his residence in Cologne. In the course of the investigation into the participation in mass murders by GFP units during the German-Soviet War , Niggemeyer was questioned about the units under his control in the 1960s, but stated that he had no knowledge of such incidents or denied the corresponding orders. or disciplinary violence. He was not prosecuted. At the time , no search was made for the archive documents, which were made accessible later, although the Ludwigsburg Central Office investigated the crimes of GFP groups 707 and 729. Niggemeyer's short vita was listed in the GDR Brown Book . Niggemeyer died on September 23, 1988.

Fonts

  • The importance of the suspension of payments and the opening of bankruptcy in the area of ​​criminal bankruptcy: with special consideration of the case law of the Reichsgericht . Heinr. & J.Lechte, Emsdetten 1934 (dissertation at the law faculty of the University of Cologne)
  • Modus operandi system and modus operandi technique A critical investigation based on more than 1000 cases from d. criminal police. Practice . Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden 1963
  • Bernhard Niggemeyer, Herbert Gallus, Hans-Joachim Hoeveler: Criminology: Guide for Detective Officers . Federal Criminal Police Office, Wiesbaden 1967

literature

  • Dieter Schenk : Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-462-03034-5 .
  • Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner : Shadows of the Past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic . Edited by the Federal Criminal Police Office, Criminalistic Institute. (Police + research, special issue). Luchterhand, Cologne 2011, ISBN 978-3-472-08067-1 . ( Download as PDF ).
  • Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Criminology , Volume 4: Criminological Accents. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c life data according to Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 436 and place of birth according to the curriculum vitae in Niggemeyer's dissertation at the law faculty of the University of Cologne: The importance of suspension of payments and opening of bankruptcy in the area of criminal bankruptcy: with special consideration of the case law of the Reichsgericht , Heinr. & J. Lechte, Emsdetten 1934, p. 53
  2. ^ Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Kriminalistik , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 8ff.
  3. ^ Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Kriminalistik , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 10f.
  4. ↑ a b National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany - Documentation Center of the State Archives Administration of the GDR (ed.): Braunbuch - War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and in West Berlin , State Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1968 (reprint of the 3rd edition of 1968), ISBN 3-360-01033-7 , p. 374.
  5. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 336
  6. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 85
  7. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, pp. 182, 186
  8. ↑ Quoted from Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 189
  9. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 188ff.
  10. ↑ a b Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the Past , 2011, p. 107
  11. ↑ Quoted from: Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Kriminalistik , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 11.
  12. ^ Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Kriminalistik , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 11.
  13. ^ A b Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Criminology , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 12
  14. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 17
  15. ↑ Personnel continuities after 1945 in the police (BKA) Lecture as part of the series 60 years after the end of the war - The long shadow of the Nazi regime and German society , Tuesday, October 25, 2005, Topography of Terror, Dieter Schenk
  16. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 181
  17. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 301.
  18. ^ Niggemeyer in: Bundeskriminalamt (Ed.): Problems of the police supervision (security supervision) . In: Series of publications by the Federal Criminal Police Office Wiesbaden , year 1955/56, Volume 3, p. 81 (published with restrictions, cf. Dieter Schenk: Blind on the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 200 and 339)
  19. ↑ Quoted from Imanuel Baumann, Herbert Reinke, Andrej Stephan, Patrick Wagner: Shadows of the Past. The BKA and its founding generation in the early Federal Republic , Cologne 2011, p. 266
  20. ^ Monthly for Criminology and Criminal Law Reform , Volumes 51–52, C. Heymann, 1968, p. 135
  21. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 187
  22. ^ Herbert Schäfer: Fundamentals of Kriminalistik , Volume 4: Kriminalistische Akzente. Dr. Bernhard Niggemeyer on his birthday , Steintor Verlag, Hamburg 1968, p. 11.
  23. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 184ff
personal data
SURNAME Niggemeyer, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, criminal investigator and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim am Rhein
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1988