Bruno Tesch (chemist)

Bruno Emil Tesch (born August 14, 1890 in Berlin ; † May 16, 1946 in Hameln ) was a German chemist and entrepreneur . He was the founder and from 1942 the sole owner of the company Tesch & Stabenow , which delivered the insecticide and cell poison Zyklon B to concentration camps , among other things , during the Second World War . In 1946 he was charged with delivering Zyklon B knowing that it was being used for the mass gassing of people. A British military tribunal sentenced him to death as a war criminal .

Professional background

After passing high school, Tesch first studied mathematics and physics for one semester in Göttingen in 1910 , but then continued his studies in Berlin with a focus on chemistry . He received his doctorate in 1914 and signed up as a volunteer at the beginning of the First World War . After being injured in the war , Fritz Haber appointed Tesch to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry to develop “war chemical weapons” . After the war he stayed there until March 1920 as Haber's personal assistant.

Then Tesch took over the management of the Berlin branch of the German Society for Pest Control (short form: Degesch) GmbH. At the end of 1922 he took over the branch in Hamburg , which mainly dealt with ship fumigation. Together with the businessman Paul Stabenow, he founded the Hamburg company Tesch & Stabenow (Testa) GmbH in 1924 , from which Stabenow left in 1927. The business area was pest control , especially in the warehouses of the Port of Hamburg and on ships. Because of the experience and expertise that Tesch was able to demonstrate, the newly founded company was the only one to receive approval from the Senate to carry out fumigations with hydrogen cyanide, which is also highly toxic to humans . Tesch also trained employees of the state disinfection institute for fumigation in the so-called "vat process" and supplied the chemicals.

Tesch, member of the NSDAP (1933) and supporting member of the SS , became the “sole owner of Testa” in June 1942 when the majority shareholder Degesch GmbH left. During the Second World War, the company supplied Wehrmacht agencies and concentration camps with the insecticide and cell poison Zyklon B , which was used there in large quantities for disinfestation . Because of its high effectiveness, it was also used for genocide in the gas chambers of Auschwitz .

process

Tesch was arrested in September 1945 after an employee reported. The second managing director Karl Weinbacher and Joachim Drosihn, who is responsible for the practical fumigation work at Testa , were also arrested. From March 1 to March 8, 1946, the Testa trial against the three for war crimes took place in the Curiohaus in Hamburg before a British military tribunal . They were accused of supplying poison gas for the murder of concentration camp inmates with full awareness of what their supplies were intended for.

Several employees testified as witnesses that Tesch had written a report about a business trip in the fall of 1942, according to which people were murdered with Zyklon B. Tesch denied this. The report itself could not be delivered. The quantities delivered by Zyklon B to Auschwitz , which amounted to twelve tons in 1943 alone, were extremely important in the process . Tesch himself confirmed that he had held courses for police and SS members in Riga and Sachsenhausen . Tesch did not go into much detail about his experiences during his visits to concentration camps. He only wanted to have been to Neuengamme and Sachsenhausen concentration camps . Another important role played in court was whoever decided on Zyklon B sales at Testa . While the court admitted that Drosihn did not have this power, Weinbacher, who also contributed 1% of the turnover to Zyklon B sales, was able to make such decisions himself as an authorized signatory or from June 1943 as the second managing director with sole power of representation.

The defense argued that none of the defendants knew that the Zyklon B was used to murder people. Tesch's lawyer tried to attack the information given by witnesses about the number of people murdered. Tesch and Weinbacher were sentenced to death by hanging because they had already known upon delivery that people were to be poisoned with it. Tesch's colleague Joachim Drosihn was acquitted. Bruno Tesch was on 16 May 1946 at the prison Hameln by the hangman Albert Pierrepoint executed .

Interpretations

Jean-Claude Pressac expresses doubts about Tesch's incriminating travel report, which could not be presented at the trial: “In 1940 [false: 1946], simple malicious gossip could easily lead to someone being hung. I do not know whether the 'trip report' was produced before the Tribunal, but is if [sic = lies: but if it ] was not, then, this trial was a masquerade. "

Angelika Ebbinghaus refers to exonerating arguments and questions some of the conclusions, but comments with regard to the defendant Tesch: “In my opinion, the travel report discussed in detail at the trial clearly burdened Tesch, which is why I never as far as Pressac in the evaluation of this process, despite all the problems "Since historians should not take on the role of judges, a completely different problem arises, namely that historical research has failed to" process the entire complex of the extermination economy with its personal and institutional interrelationships, but also technological connections " .

literature

• Jürgen Kalthoff / Martin Werner: The dealers of the Zyklon B. - Tesch & Stabenow. A company history between Hamburg and Auschwitz. Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-87975-713-5 ; see also http://media.offenes-archiv.de/Kalthoff_Werner_Tesch_und_Stabenow.pdf .
• Angelika Ebbinghaus: The Trial against Tesch and Stabenow - From Pest Control to the Holocaust. In: 1999 - Journal for Social History of the 19th and 20th Century 13 (1998), no. 2, pp. 16–71 on the Internet (pdf; 2.4 MB).

Web links

• Literature by and about Bruno Tesch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography
• Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals Vol I, Case No. 9: Zyklon B Case - Bruno Tesch et al. Pp. 93-103

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 619.
2. ↑ Kalthoff et al. Werner, dealer of Zyklon B , p. 151.
3. ↑ Auschwitz. Technique and operation of the gas chambers . Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989 ( online ). Online ( Memento of the original from June 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Page 17.  
4. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus: The Trial against Tesch and Stabenow - From Pest Control to the Holocaust. In: 1999 - Journal for Social History of the 19th and 20th Centuries 13 (1998), no. 2, p. 64.