Eberhard Eschenbach

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Eberhard Eschenbach (born March 28, 1913 in Königsberg ; † April 10, 1964 ) was a German lawyer, criminal investigator and SS leader at the time of National Socialism . In the Federal Republic of Germany he worked at the Federal Criminal Police Office as head of the training department at the Criminal Investigation Institute.

time of the nationalsocialism

Eschenbach finished his school days in Lübeck in 1932 with the final examination . He then completed a law degree at the universities of Berlin and Munich . In the course of the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SA in 1933 . In October 1937 he became a member of the SS (SS No. 367.159).

After completing his studies and serving in the military, he joined the Berlin criminal police at the beginning of March 1938 and completed the commissioner course in Berlin-Charlottenburg . From June 1940 he worked as a probationer at the criminal police in Gdansk , where he headed the 1st Commissariat (capital crimes, death investigations, fire and abortion). He was “the SD informant ”. He was a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 8.995.683) from the end of September 1941. From 1944 he headed the branch of the criminal police in "Gotenhafen" and was appointed criminal inspector in April of this year. In January 1945 he was promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer , the highest rank he achieved within this Nazi organization. A few weeks before the end of the Second World War , he left for Flensburg (see Rattenlinie Nord ).

post war period

After the end of the war he was able to quickly return to the police force despite his Nazi burden. In the British zone of occupation he headed the murder commission of the Lübeck criminal police from September 1945 and from mid-April 1947 as chief inspector of the criminal police in Flensburg . After a court hearing he was denazified as exonerated , but was questioned again in November 1949 due to false information. Eschenbach had u. a. his SA membership, his accession to the SS in 1937 and activities for the SD remained silent. The court proceedings against Eschenbach, which had been resumed, were discontinued in January 1950 after the law on impunity of December 31, 1949 came into force . According to his own statements, Eschenbach was never present in the Stutthof concentration camp and claims to have been ignorant of executions involving criminal police officers in the Stutthof concentration camp.

As a government criminal officer, he headed the training department in the criminal investigation institute in the Federal Criminal Police Office from 1954. His superior was Bernhard Niggemeyer . Eschenbach was regarded in the BKA as a highly respected, personable, intelligent and hard-working colleague from a "good home". He advocated the preventive fight against crime practiced during the Nazi era and in 1955, together with his colleague Rudolf Leichtweiß, published an article in Volume 3 of the Federal Criminal Police Office's series of publications entitled “The implementation of scheduled surveillance according to the circular of the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior from 14. December 1937 ”, in which these measures were rated as meaningful without going into the connection with the admission to concentration camps . During his presentation at a BKA conference on the subject of “Theft, burglary and robbery” in April 1958, Eschenbach showed himself to be a hardliner arrested in the tradition of Nazi injustice and expressed himself as follows: “Hang, state, and professional criminals - the same whatever you want to call them - can no longer be improved. The repeated commission of criminal offenses leads to criminal habituation, the risk of recidivism increases with the number of convictions, and the recidivism intervals become shorter and shorter. For these perpetrators, the crime is part of the personality, rooted in it and has become nature in such a way that the crime no longer requires further activation by the environment ”.

Eschenbach was killed in a traffic accident on April 10, 1964.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to: Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . , P. 140; With Dieter Schenk: blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 328 is given as the date of birth as March 18, 1913
  2. ↑ a b c d Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 129 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 328.
  4. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 108.
  5. ↑ Cf. the print of the "Basic Decree" dated December 14, 1937 in: Wolfgang Ayaß (arrangement), "Community foreigners". Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945 , Koblenz 1998, no. 50.
  6. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 198f
  7. ↑ Quoted from Dieter Schenk: Blind in the right eye. The brown roots of the BKA , Cologne 2001, p. 130
  8. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . , P. 140
personal data
SURNAME Eschenbach, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, criminal investigator and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1964