Carl Langbehn

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Carl Heinrich Langbehn (born December 6, 1901 in Padang-Bedagei, Sumatra , Dutch East Indies ; † October 12, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German lawyer who stood out as one of the leading lawyers in Berlin during the Nazi era for individuals Opponents of the regime used. His membership of the national-conservative group of the German resistance and his personal acquaintance with Heinrich Himmler made him a middleman between these circles and possibly also a representative of the Western powers in the search for understanding in the Second World War.However , his activity can hardly be documented and is subject to speculation . Langbehn was arrested in September 1943 for unexplained reasons and executed after severe torture and conviction by the People's Court .

The lawyer

Langbehn was born as the son of a German plantation owner in the Dutch East Indies and was raised by relatives of his mother in Germany from the age of nine. Langbehn studied law and received his doctorate under Fritz Pringsheim in Göttingen . After his legal clerkship in Celle and Berlin, he was Pringsheim's assistant.

In order to improve his previously precarious financial situation, he passed the examination to become a court assessor and chose the profession of lawyer, which he practiced until his arrest on September 22 or 23, 1943. Together with his fellow student Heinz Kleine, Langbehn opened his own law firm on Neue Wilhelmstrasse in 1932, which served him as a "springboard" in higher society, including the conservative German gentlemen's club . In the 1930s, Langbehn rose, which, according to Pringsheim on the copyright specialized on through his work for the film industry as well as a patent attorney to "one of the best-paid lawyers of his time" and lived with a villa in Berlin-Dahlem and a country estate at Walchensee in upper middle class. After the Nazis came to power, his main field of activity was the defense of people who were "excluded, accused and persecuted under the new political conditions."

After the fire in the Reichstag , Langbehn prepared himself in the spring of 1933 to defend Ernst Torgler , the group leader of the Communist Party of Germany who had been accused of arson and had been imprisoned . But he refused the mandate when the communist side insinuated that it was not about justice, but about the money he could earn with the prominent defense mandate. A short time later, Langbehn took over the defense mandate for the Reich Commissioner for Employment Günther Gereke , who was active in the Hitler government and also in Schleicher's cabinet . The Hitler regime had this representative of the Weimar Republic and members of the Christian National Peasant and Rural People's Party (CNBL) arrested on March 28, 1933, in order to remove him from the Reich government and thus to have him out of the way. They accused him of embezzlement in a political process. As in many simultaneous cases in which representatives of democracy were persecuted, the charge against Gereke was an invention of the National Socialists. Like Gereke, Langbehn had been a member of the German Men's Club in 1932.

Langbehn was a member of the German People's Party and joined the NSDAP in the spring of 1933.

The Langbehns met Heinrich Himmler personally in 1936 or 1938 when they picked up their daughter Elke, who was in the same school class with Himmler's daughter Gudrun , from the Himmler's birthday party. Himmler's wife invited the Langbehn couple for tea. From this a common dinner developed. Langbehn told Himmler of cases from his work as a lawyer, in which he often saw how politically persecuted people were treated illegally by the Gestapo and the SS. He criticized Himmler strongly. Nevertheless, Himmler took a liking to the young lawyer and invited him over to his home more often. The daughter was invited to Gudrun's family in Bavaria during the holidays. Langbehn was able to discuss the political situation with Himmler with unusual openness.

He was able to use this connection to Himmler successfully when Fritz Pringsheim was brought to the concentration camp during the Reichspogromnacht in November 1938. He obtained his release and then made sure that Pringsheim got his passport back. With this passport, Pringsheim was able to emigrate to England in April 1939. But Langbehn also stood up for other persecuted people: he succeeded in helping arrested Jews to emigrate, albeit with "great fortune sacrifices". In 1940 the farmer Kaspar Danner from Jachenau , who belonged to the Harnier district , owed his release from political imprisonment to Langbehn's direct influence. In 1940 Langbehn also managed to get his client, the resistance fighter Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff , released from the Dachau concentration camp. In 1942 he represented the cabaret artist Werner Finck, who had been arrested for his dissident satire .

Between resistance and Himmler

Although Himmler was one of the pillars of the Nazi regime and in the course of the war was entrusted with ever greater powers and tasks, including in particular the organization of the Holocaust , individual historians assume that from 1943 he had strong doubts about the "final victory" and secretly made peace contacts sought to the western allies. However, this interpretation is rejected by most historians, including the Himmler expert Peter Longerich . Himmler used Langbehn in various special orders for external material procurement and possibly also made use of Langbehn's contacts to Allied intermediaries, even if Himmler's intentions and strategies remain speculation due to the lack of reliable documents. Langbehn met Himmler's professor Bruce Hopper, who worked for the US secret service Office of Strategic Services (OSS), in Stockholm at the end of 1942 . He also spoke to an “official Englishman in Zurich”. Both conversations seemed to indicate opportunities for negotiation.

Langbehn was also connected with the resistance , especially with Johannes Popitz and Ulrich von Hassell . He brought both of them together with the Swiss diplomat Carl Burckhardt in August 1941 . The three of them discussed possibilities for peace, especially since Burckhardt was about to meet Winston Churchill .

Himmler's vague knowledge of the resistance movement and the motive for his failure to intervene are also the subject of speculation due to the lack of reliable documentation. Perhaps he intended to use the resistance to eliminate Hitler and then take power in Germany himself. As evidenced by Hassell's diary, Hassell and Popitz pursued the opposite idea, albeit as a "desperate step": Himmler and the SS should let a coup d'etat happen in order to end the war. Then you would get rid of it again.

Langbehn organized a conversation between Popitz and Himmler for August 26, 1943. In it Popitz indicated to Himmler that Hitler should withdraw from active politics and that there should be peace negotiations with the Western powers . Himmler seemed to be sympathetic to this anti-Hitler action. In September 1943, Langbehn traveled to Bern on behalf of Himmler to contact the OSS under the direction of Allen Welsh Dulles . After his return he reported to Himmler.

Imprisonment, conviction and death

Shortly after the conversation, Langbehn was arrested on September 22 or 23, 1943 at Gestapo headquarters when he called on his client Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff , who had been arrested again shortly before. The reasons for Langbehn's arrest cannot be determined with certainty. Various sources report that the Gestapo allegedly managed to decipher an Allied report on Langbehn's meeting in Bern, whereupon Himmler dropped Langbehn; Himmler himself claimed in his Posen speech after July 20, 1944 that he had Langbehn arrested because of his contacts in the resistance. Langbehn's wife Irmgard and his colleague Marie-Louise Sarre had also been arrested, as Peter Bielenberg, who lives in the neighborhood, told his wife Christabel .

Carl Langbehn was probably first transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then to Ravensbrück concentration camp at the beginning of 1944 . After Popitz was arrested on June 21, 1944, charges were brought against both by senior Reich attorney Ernst Lautz on September 25, 1944. The charge was high treason and treason. The accused wanted to get rid of Hitler, seize power and make peace with the enemy in an undignified pact. The hearing before the People's Court under Roland Freisler took place on October 3rd . As Ernst Kaltenbrunner informed the Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack , it had to be carried out “in view of the facts known to you, namely the RFSS-Popitz meeting ... with the public practically excluded”. Popitz and Langbehn were sentenced to death .

Joseph Goebbels , although wrote in his diary on October 6, the execution should be "time being left out" because Langbehn had "still tell a lot of sensational news," but the execution was in already on 12 October 1944 Plotzensee the by Strand completed . Langbehn had been tortured for several days beforehand, about which the resistance fighter Rainer Hildebrandt reported in 1949:

“'Obergruppenführer' Müller , whose courtesy few Gestapo officers could match, preferred not to torture himself. Instead, he had the prisoner's hands tied behind his back and his arms raised using a pulling device attached to the ceiling. As a lawyer Dr. Langbehn, who survived this torture method in silence and was led to the execution with torn shoulder muscles, a security guard could rightly say: 'There's not much left to kill at Langbehn, Müller has already done that.' "

Fonts

  • Consent and disposition. Legal and political dissertation, University of Göttingen, 1925, DNB 570521076 .
  • Protective letter in the criminal case against the district administrator a. D. Dr. Günther Gereke. Berlin 1933, DNB 361131062 .

swell

literature

  • Allen Welsh Dulles : Conspiracy in Germany. Translation and epilogue by Wolfgang von Eckhardt. Europe, Zurich 1948 (Harriet Schieber, Kassel 1949; original edition: Germany's Underground. New York 1947). (The book contains a copy of the indictments against Langbehn).
  • Heinz Höhne : We'll end up on the gallows! In: Der Spiegel . No. 24 , 1969, p. 124 ( online ).
  • Winfried Meyer: Carl Langbehn. In: ders. (Ed.): Conspirators in the KZ (= series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation. Vol. 5). Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1999, pp. 300-307.
  • Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender - The lawyer Carl Langbehn in the resistance against National Socialism. (= Writings of the German Resistance Memorial Center. Series A: Analyzes and Representations. Vol. 8). Lukas, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86732-203-4 (preview).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This is the most frequent indication of the spelling of the place of birth, which can be found in various versions in the literature, see for Padang-Bedagei about Erich Stockhorst: Five thousand heads. Who was what in the Third Reich . Blick und Bild, Velbert 1967, p. 261; Rudolf Pechel : German resistance. Rentsch, Zurich 1947, p. 332.
  2. ^ Indictment against Popitz and Langbehn from September 25, 1944, in Dulles: Conspiracy in Germany. P. 206ff (page number according to the Swiss edition 1947). In Dulles only the indictment is reproduced, but not the statements of Popitz and Langbehn.
  3. ↑ Appreciation of Carl Langbehn by Fritz Pringsheim on January 2, 1946, when he learned of the execution of his former pupil and friend. In: Allen Dulles papers , Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, call No. MC 019, box 35, folder 25, p. 2. Pringsheim statement.
  4. ^ Indictment.
  5. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender. Lukas, Berlin 2014, p. 24 f.
  6. ^ Hans-Joachim Lang : Theodor Eschenburg and the German past. The expropriation of Wilhelm Fischbein - and what Theodor Eschenburg has to do with it. In: Indes . Vol. 2014, No. 1, pp. 133-144; Langbehn is referred to on p. 136 as a patent attorney.
  7. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender. Lukas, Berlin 2014, p. 38.
  8. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender. Lukas, Berlin 2014, p. 65.
  9. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender. Lukas, Berlin 2014, p. 66f.
  10. ↑ In detail on Langbehn's ambivalent attitude to National Socialism and his entry into the party Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender. Lukas, Berlin 2014, pp. 73–78.
  11. ↑ Elke Atcherley † 2004, see information in the English Wikipedia to en: Christabel Bielenberg and to en: Harold Atcherley
  12. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender . Berlin 2014, p. 91.
  13. ↑ Allen Welsh Dulles: Conspiracy in Germany. 1948, p. 202.
  14. ↑ so also in Bielenberg, p. 91, there also a sketch of Langbehn's political views; s. also Allen Welsh Dulles: Conspiracy in Germany. Harriet Schieber Verlag, Kassel 1949, p. 186.
  15. ↑ The Hassel Diaries. November 30, 1941, p. 285.
  16. ^ Jost Gudelius: The Jachenau . Jachenau 2008, ISBN 978-3-939751-97-7 , p. 176.
  17. ↑ Werner Finck: Joke as fate - fate as a joke. A German picture book on useful and pious. Marion von Schröder, Hamburg 1966, p. 78.
  18. ↑ Concerning the controversial loyalty of Himmler to Hitler and the Nazi regime, briefly and in particular with regard to Himmler's contacts to Carl Langbehn, see overall Claus Langbehn: Das Spiel des Defigers , Berlin 2014, pp. 122 f., 147 f.
  19. ↑ Biographical information.
  20. ↑ The Hassel Diaries. December 20, 1942, p. 341; January 22, 1943, p. 345.
  21. ↑ The Hassel Diaries. August 18, 1941, pp. 266-267.
  22. ↑ The Hassel Diaries. October 10, 1942, p. 333; June 9, 1943, p. 386.
  23. ^ Indictment, p. 220.
  24. ↑ The Hassell Diaries. September 4, 1943, p. 388; Allen Welsh Dulles, pp. 200-202.
  25. ↑ Allen Welsh Dulles, pp. 208-209. This was probably not Langbehn's first conversation with the OSS. Already on August 15, 1943, i.e. before the meeting of Popitz and Himmler, Hassell reports on a meeting between Langbehn and an American in Switzerland, cf. The Hassell Diaries. P. 382.
  26. ↑ The Hassell Diaries. October 9, 1943, p. 394; Allen Welsh Dulles: Conspiracy in Germany , p. 208.
  27. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender , Berlin 2014, pp. 135-140, with a detailed discussion of the available sources. He does not come to a clear conclusion, p. 135: "The reasons for Langbehn's arrest have not yet been adequately clarified."
  28. ↑ Christabel Bielenberg: When I was German , p. 135.
  29. ↑ Claus Langbehn: The game of the defender , Berlin 2014, p. 144.
  30. ↑ Allen Welsh Dulles: Conspiracy in Germany , pp. 208-209. The indictment is reprinted ibid., Pp. 190–207 (page number 1949 edition).
  31. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Part II: Dictations 1941–1945. Volume 14. KG Saur, Munich 1993–1996, ISBN 3-598-21920-2 , p. 46 f., October 6, 1944.
  32. ^ Rainer Hildebrandt: From the Gestapo to the NKVD. In: Der Tagesspiegel , June 19, 1949 (PDF; 323 kB).
personal data
SURNAME Langbehn, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Langbehn, Carl Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Padang Bedagei, Sumatra , Dutch East Indies
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee