Bruno Beger

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Beger with craniometric measurements in Tibet (1938)

Bruno Beger (born April 27, 1911 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 12, 2009 in Königstein im Taunus ) was a German anthropologist and Hauptsturmführer of the SS .

Life

Bruno Beger studied anthropology, geography and ethnology in Jena and Heidelberg . He then went to Berlin to at Hans FK Günther to graduate . From 1938 to 1939 he joined the German Tibet Expedition Ernst Schäfer . The Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler , was the patron of this expedition. In Tibet he took skull measurements on Tibetans to "prove" the origin of the "Nordic people" from Tibet. This thesis, put forward by Comte de Buffon and taken up by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach , of the migration movement of Europeans was popular and was supplemented by Beger's doctoral supervisor Günther with the thesis that people who had become "Nordic" a few millennia later had migrated back to Tibet and formed the aristocratic class there (Northern thesis ). While Himmler expected proof of this thesis, Beger failed to find it, since very few Tibetans wanted to be modeled anthropologically by him.

Bruno Beger was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 4.037.145). He joined the SS in 1934 as a student (membership number 263.712) and worked as an assistant to the race officer southeast, Erich Sparmann . From 1935 he was employed as a full-time racial consultant in the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS (RuSHA) in Berlin. Due to a reorganization according to Himmler's order of August 11, 1938, the RuSHA only had three fields of activity, one of which was the creation of a race map of Germany. All scientific employees left the RuSHA. Beger was transferred to the main office of the Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff .

After returning from Tibet, the expedition participants evaluated their results, from geomagnetism to ornithology to anthropology, in the “ Forschungsgemeinschaft Deutsches Ahnenerbe e. V. ”of the newly created“ Research Center Inner Asia and Expeditions ”. Since January 1940 the former expedition leader Ernst Schäfer has been the head of the new research facility. During the evaluation phase, Beger served as a war correspondent in Norway and the USSR. There, the German troops was Kommissarbefehl announced who ordered the murder of the "Jewish-bolschwistischen commissioners" of the Red Army. The Nazis assumed that the bearers of the Soviet ideology were all Jews who defended Bolshevism. Beger had carried out anthropological studies on Norwegians in Norway, previously on Tibetans. In order to pursue his thesis of the migration movement from Tibet to Northern Europe, he wanted to cast the skulls of the people between these regions. Not only Russians served in the Red Army and the other organizations mentioned, but also people from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, etc. That is why the prisoners of war also included people from the Middle East and the Caucasus, the land bridge between Asia and Europe. Beger saw this opportunity and suggested that these prisoners of war, who were to be murdered anyway, be retained for his research. He submitted a corresponding memorandum to Himmler, which the latter passed on to the Ahnenerbe.

On December 10, 1941, on the first day after his military service, Beger reported back to work at Sievers to suggest that the murdered "Jewish-Bolshevik commissars" of the Red Army be beheaded after the murder and have their heads sent to him. Sievers requested a memorandum and suggested that Beger seek the expertise of his former office RuSHA and August Hirt. Sievers had met Hirt a few weeks earlier in Strasbourg when the newly appointed director of anatomy was sitting next to him at the university's reopening ceremony. Hirt immediately campaigned for the Ahnenerbe to support the nuclear research work of his colleague, the geographer Georg Niemeier . Hirt himself only dealt with three research fields throughout his life: the sympathetic nervous system , intravital microscopy and, based on this, with cell damage caused by warfare agents. On January 3, 1942, Beger von Sievers received a post-doctoral scholarship for his project "The migration routes of the Indo-Europeans due to residual Nordic components" for the preparation of a race map from Asia to Europe. With his habilitation, Beger's aim was to reach the still vacant chair for anthropology in Strasbourg. According to the memorandum, the captured skulls should be kept there. Among other things, the memorandum said:

“There are extensive collections of skulls from almost all races and peoples. Only from the Jews are so few skulls available to science that their processing does not allow reliable results. The war in the East now offers us an opportunity to remedy this shortcoming. In the Jewish-Bolshevik commissars, who embody a disgusting but characteristic subhumanity, we have the opportunity to acquire a tangible scientific document by securing their skulls. After the subsequent death of the Jew, whose head must not be injured, he separates the head from the torso and sends it to its destination, embedded in a preservative liquid in specially created and easily lockable metal containers. "

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It can hardly be assumed that a scientifically trained anthropologist like Beger actually believed that the “Jewish-Bolshevik commissioners” of the Red Army were all Jews or that only Jews were allowed to become commissioners. The Lingua Tertii Imperii described by Victor Klemperer shows that such alibi words were often used. Sievers sent the memorandum to Himmler on February 9, 1942, together with a research report from Hirt, which was distinguished by a different paper, a different style of language, a different layout, etc. The addition of the memorandum by Sievers is just as indubitable as the fact that Himmler's office never responded to the memorandum, only to Hirt's research report. Ultimately, it turned out that the Wehrmacht's proposals in the memorandum were not implemented. The Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer doubted that this memorandum came from Hirt, since it not only differed externally and linguistically from all other documents from Hirt at the public prosecutor's office, but also corresponded to the style of Beger's other memoranda. Beger then put together a "Human Department" for the planned Sonderkommando K ("Total exploration of the Caucasus"). In his equipment list he ordered scalpels, large scalpels and "meat machines". In addition, he created a position for an employee directly assigned to him "to look after the ethnological collection." After the Caucasus was no longer accessible after the defeat in Stalingrad, the selected NCOs and men were reassigned to the front. The scientific participants from the Inner Asia Research Center and Expeditions were busy preparing the expedition for many months in order to suggest that the Caucasus would soon be conquered again.

As the situation on the Eastern Front became increasingly chaotic, 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war were transferred from the Wehrmacht to the SS in Auschwitz for the first time at the end of 1942. There they were supposed to set up a POW camp for 100,000 Soviet prisoners. In May 1943, Adolf Eichmann , from whom Sievers had previously tried to obtain skulls from Asians, wrote to Sievers that "particularly suitable material" was now available for beginners. Himmler gave Beger permission to select 150 people in Auschwitz for murder. Beger's preparator Wilhelm Gabel (also a member of the "Kommando K") reported: "As far as I can remember, it was Dr. Beger, who then one day told me that there was a possibility for me to come to a camp where Asian guys were too Dr. Beger also told me that it would be the Auschwitz camp. " At Sievers' request, Bruno Beger and Hans Fleischhacker traveled to the concentration camp in Auschwitz . Beger arrived there on June 7th and Fleischhacker on June 11th, 1943. When he arrived at Auschwitz, Beger did not find the 150 Asians expected to prove his thesis to Himmler.

“At the time I thought that there were many Mongols to be found in the camp. [...] Together with Dr. Then I started looking around the warehouse for Asian guys. I soon realized that I would hardly find what I was looking for in the camp. Dr. Beger was visibly surprised. I don't think he played any surprise to me. "

- Source:

Beger had asked numerous influential SS leaders for this chance and was now left with only four Asians found. In order to avoid embarrassment, he spontaneously switched to a field of research that he had never worked on or even mentioned before (with the exception of a statement on Venus de Milo ), but which enjoyed great support from leading National Socialists: Jewish research. The two anthropologists selected two Polish, 86 Jewish prisoners and four “Inner Asians”. They took anthropological measurements on them for almost a week. Beger selected a total of 115 people and began to measure them. 89 of them were put in quarantine when an epidemic broke out. 26 have been lost to this day, including those that Beger was so desperately looking for: Asians. Of the 89 three died in quarantine, the others were in a hectic improvised transport to the concentration camp Natzweiler deported where an improvised gas chamber was built by Robert Heider after their arrival. The victims were murdered there in August 1943 after Beger had carried out blood group and X-ray examinations on them. Beger left during the murders. Hirt was not in Natzweiler at that time, but went to the cure in St. Lambrecht. Beger tried to sell his commitment as a commendable success: In an enthusiastic letter to his superior Ernst Schäfer , he wrote focusing on the few Inner Asians he found: “They are good guys, transition members to Inner and East Asia. One Uzbek, a tall, healthy outdoorsman, could have been a Tibetan. His way of speaking, his movements and his way of presenting himself were simply delightful, in a word: inner-Asian. ”After his return to the Ahnenerbe, he asked Sievers to set up his own research center for race studies in the Ahnenerbe under his direction. At the same time he wanted to take over the management of the third department of this research facility. In his memorandum, the description of this department is entitled "Mongolian research (started in June 1943 in KL Auschwitz)".

The corpses were brought from the Natzweiler concentration camp to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Strasbourg and preserved in the cellar there. Hirt was no longer able to realize the original plan of making a collection of skeletons from them and exhibiting them as evidence of an alleged Jewish race. The plan to build a museum to exhibit the skeletons of Jews in order to substantiate racial theories first appeared at the end of 1944, when an employee of Hirt reported the plan to a French military court. Neither this nor any other investigative authority could find documents about the construction, operation, (rationed) material for the construction of a museum, not even a scientific concept. August Hirt was probably the only Nazi anatomist who had never published anything on the subject of Jews. Hirt's colleague Henry Henrypierre reported this plan from a museum as a witness during the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial . Henripierre, celebrated as a resistance hero, said as a witness that Hirt had spoken to him as Peter. It is obvious. The "resistance fighter" had tried to obtain German citizenship after the German invasion and was on the SS payroll until the spring of 1945 under the name "Heinrich Heinzpeter", which was changed at his request. The accomplice Hirts thus distracted himself and his involvement. The accused Sievers confirmed that the already dead shepherd wanted to build a museum with dead Jews, which proves that he Sievers and the Ahnenerbe had nothing to do with it, since no Jewish research was carried out there.

Until the end of the war, Beger and his employees (in addition to front deployments) exclusively dealt with the measurement of prisoners of war Asians, but also those from the substitute departments of the Vlasov Army and the Turkmuselman SS division in the Balkans. But even there he did not lose sight of the local population, where he started thinking about the "dinarier problem" and the "Alpine belt":

"This transition area to the Near Eastern race has always appealed to me"

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With the German troops he withdrew from the Balkans in the direction of northern Italy.

Beger was arrested by American troops in Italy in April 1945. After stays in several Italian and American prisoner-of-war and internment camps, in which he was classified as an incriminated Nazi functionary, he received a certificate from a German denazification committee in 1948 with the note “ less encumbered” . His academic career came to an end, however, and he worked as a lecturer at a school book publisher and in the paper industry. In 1960 he was remanded for four months but was released again.

Bruno Beger was indicted in 1970 together with Hans Helmut Fleischhacker and Wolf-Dietrich Wolff before the Frankfurt am Main regional court for aiding and abetting murder. The court sentenced him on April 6, 1974 for aiding and abetting murder of 86 times to a minimum of three years. Taking into account his internment after the war and pre-trial detention, he was released from the remainder of his sentence for leading a good life.

literature

  • Christopher Hale: Himmler's Crusade. The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race . John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ 2003 ISBN 0-471-26292-7 .
  • Michael H. Kater : The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich . 3. Edition. Unchanged reprint of the 2nd edition with a detailed afterword. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56529-X , ( Studies on Contemporary History 6), (At the same time: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1966).
  • Julien Reitzenstein : The SS-Ahnenerbe and the "Strasbourg skull collection" - Fritz Bauer's last case . 1st edition. Berlin 2018, ISBN = 978-3428153138.
  • Wolfgang Kaufmann: The Third Reich and Tibet. The home of the "Eastern Swastika" in the Nazis' field of vision . 2nd corrected and supplemented edition, Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, Ludwigsfelde 2010, ISBN 978-3-933022-58-5 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003 ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : The names of the numbers. How it was possible to identify the 86 victims of a Nazi crime Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2004 ISBN 3-455-09464-3 , (also: Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16895- 8 ).
  • Heather Pringle: The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust , Hyperion, New York, 2006, ISBN 978-1-401-38386-2
  • Measure for measure . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1970 ( online ).
  • German spirituality . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1970 ( online ).
  • JUDGMENT . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1971 ( online ).
  • Not recorded . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1972 ( online ).
  • Hans-Joachim Lang: Skeletons for Strasbourg . In: The time. No. 35/2004 of August 19, 2004.

Web links

Commons : Bruno Beger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The trail of the skeletons. One day, accessed January 8, 2010 .
  2. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 176.
  3. ↑ Bruno Beger | skull-collection.com . In: skull-collection.com . ( skull-collection.com [accessed January 25, 2018]).
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Kaufmann: The Third Reich and Tibet: the home of the "eastern swastika" in the field of view of the National Socialists . Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus, Ludwigsfelde 2009, ISBN 978-3-933022-58-5 .
  5. ↑ Reitzenstein, skull collection, p. 177
  6. ↑ Reitzenstein, skull collection, p. 178
  7. ↑ BArch NS 2, Findbuch, foreword by Hans Booms, p. VII
  8. ↑ Reinhard Otto: Wehrmacht, Gestapo and Soviet prisoners of war in the German Reich territory 1941/42 . Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3-486-64577-4 , pp. 52 ff .
  9. ↑ HStA Wiesbaden Dept. 461, No. 34145 Beger trial file, Schmitz statement of November 23, 1960, HStA Wiesbaden Dept. 461, No. 34145 Beger trial file, Schmitz statement dated November 23, 1960, HStA Wiesbaden Dept. 461, No. 34151 , Schmitz-Kahlmann statement from June 12, 1967.
  10. ^ BArch NS 21/127 Sievers service diary, entry from December 10, 1941.
  11. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 69
  12. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 11
  13. ↑ BArch DS G 113 Beger personnel file, letter from Sievers to Beger dated January 5, 1942.
  14. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 291
  15. ↑ Josef Ackermann: Heinrich Himmler as an ideologist . Göttingen 1970, p. 214 .
  16. ↑ cf. Kater (1997), p. 245
  17. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 293 f.
  18. ↑ HStA Wiesbaden Abt. 461, No. 34155 Beger trial file, indictment of May 8, 1965, p. 81, signed by Dr. Fritz Bauer
  19. ↑ cf. Kater (1997), p. 253
  20. ↑ BArch NS 135/44 p. 164289
  21. ↑ BArch ALLPROZ6 / N1497 TON-10-C, Eichmann's statement on the skull collection.
  22. ↑ HStA Wiesbaden Abt. 461, No. 34164 Beger trial file, pp. 12a and 12b
  23. ↑ HStA Wiesbaden Abt. 461, No. 34145 Beger trial file, testimony of Gabel of November 23, 1962, p. 50.
  24. ^ Statement by Gabel of July 25, 1960, p. 50
  25. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 143 ff.
  26. ↑ cf. Kater (1997) p. 251.
  27. ↑ BArch R BArch R 135/52 p. 162729
  28. ↑ cf. Reitzenstein (2018), p. 263 ff.
  29. ↑ BArch R 135/44, letter from Beger to Sievers dated July 26, 1944
  30. ↑ Hatred of Jews to the end . In: between tibet, auschwitz & dachau . July 12, 2013 ( hausdernatur.net [accessed April 12, 2018]).
  31. ↑ Werner Renz: Auschwitz Trial: Murder for the skull collection . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . May 3, 2018 ( fr.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Beger, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anthropologist and "racial researcher"
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH October 2009
Place of death Königstein im Taunus