Karl Overhues

Karl Overhues , also written Carl , (born September 17, 1886 in Rheine , † June 21, 1972 in Linz am Rhein ) was a high-ranking National Socialist functionary.

Life

Overhues attended the grammar school in Rheine up to the subprima. In 1904 he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman , from which he resigned as a lieutenant captain after the First World War in 1919 . The trained watchmaker then worked as a businessman in the automotive industry. Until 1932 he was managing director of the US Packard agency in Cologne. Oberhues was politically active in the German national paramilitary organization Stahlhelm until the early 1930s .

In 1931 Overhues joined the NSDAP . He left the church and became a "believer in God". In January 1932 he became the full-time managing director of the NSDAP in the Düsseldorf Gau , and from April 1933 to 1945 he was deputy to the Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian . During the Second World War he was also a mobilization officer in the Gauleitung. Overhues had been a member of the SA since 1934 (so the self-testimony) and since 1942 as SA brigade leader . At times he actively led the Düsseldorf Marine SA standard. He was a holder of the golden party badge.

After the NSDAP and its German national alliance partners came to power, Overhues was a member of the Prussian State Council for a few months in 1933 . In 1941 he joined the politically insignificant "Greater German Reichstag" , of which he was a member until the end, as the successor to the late Ernst Schwarz .

With the end of National Socialism, Overhues was arrested by the US military authorities in Siegerland , where he was hiding. Because of his stress, he was interned in various camps, such as Esterwegen and Staumühle. However, he was already released from work in Esterwegen, the first place of detention, and housed in the infirmary. His release in November 1947 was followed by a criminal case before the Allied verdict court in Hiddesen . The German judges sentenced Overhues to five years in prison. In June 1948 he was released from prison on grounds of illness. In the subsequent revision, the now German court reduced the sentence in 1949 to two years and seven months, which were considered to have been served, because of "very little knowledge of the crimes". According to the legal historian Volker Zimmermann, Overhues, like Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian and Gaupropagandaleiter Hermann Brouwers, "had no severe punishments to expect". In its reasoning, the court "reiterated that Overhues [although] had precise knowledge of the persecution of the Jews, but mainly followed his defense strategy."

Since Overhues was classified in category III in his denazification proceedings , the most unfavorable category in the mass proceedings , which forbade him to accept positions in the public and semi-public service or an honorary position, but also because of reduced pension payments, he tried to revise this too. He declared that he "dealt" very little with ideological matters ", that he had always been a cosmopolitan, an" absolute follower of the theory of harmony "and" absolutely Christian ". Therefore he also represents the "knowledge that the different races come from one creator's hand". He learned nothing of the crimes and knew nothing. He did not improve his classification, but he did improve his pension.

literature

• Wolfgang Krüger: Denazified! On the practice of political cleansing in North Rhine-Westphalia , Wuppertal 1982
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
• Michael Rademacher: Handbook of the NSDAP Gaue 1928–1945 , Vechta 2000
• Volker Zimmermann: Nazi perpetrators in court. Düsseldorf and the criminal trials for violent National Socialist crimes (Juristic Contemporary History NRW, Vol. 10), Düsseldorf 2001

Individual evidence

1. ↑ All information, unless otherwise stated, according to the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland Dept., based on the denazification file.
2. ↑ See the portal Rheinische Geschichte des LVR : Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
3. ↑ Ernst Kienast (ed.): The Grossdeutsche Reichstag . R. von Deckers Verlag, Berlin 1943, p. 80.
4. ^ Volker Zimmermann: Nazi perpetrators in court. Düsseldorf and the criminal trials for violent National Socialist crimes (Juristic Contemporary History NRW, Vol. 10), Düsseldorf 2001, pp. 67, 70.
5. ↑ Wolfgang Krüger, Denazified! On the practice of political cleansing in North Rhine-Westphalia, Wuppertal 1982, p. 145.
6. ^ Regional dictionary of persons on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein, article by Karl Josef Overhues .

Web links

• Regional personal lexicon on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein, article by Karl Josef Overhues