Egon Bönner

Egon Bönner (born December 25, 1901 in Koenitz , † April 12, 1981 in Werne ) was a German National Socialist politician and State Commissioner of Hanover .

Life

Egon Bönner interrupted his schooling in Göttingen in January 1919 and joined the Eulenburg Freikorps as a volunteer soldier . After combat missions in Courland , he was awarded the Baltic Cross. Bönner received another award, the Silesian eagle , when the Freikorps were involved in the uprising in Upper Silesia . Bönner served in the Freikorps until September 1919. He then continued his school attendance and graduated from high school in 1921.

After attending school in Göttingen , Bönner began an apprenticeship as a pharmacist and worked as an assistant pharmacist in Hannoversch Münden . He then began to study law, which he completed in 1931 with the second state examination in law.

Bönner worked as a lawyer at the district and regional court in Duisburg from 1931 to 1934.

His entry into the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( membership number 535.829) took place on May 1, 1931. He also joined the Sturmabteilung and rose to standartenführer .

From 1934 to 1939 Egon Bönner was district administrator in the Geldern district . In 1939 he became mayor and city treasurer in Essen .

From August 1941 to the end of 1942 Bönner headed Main Department II ("Politics") at the Latvian General Commissioner in Riga and was a permanent representative of the General Commissioner Otto-Heinrich Drechsler . The German civil administration in Latvia was indirectly involved in the organization and implementation of the Holocaust . Bönner's personal involvement in the Holocaust is controversial. The historian Rüdiger Fleiter sees Egon Bönner as being responsible for the mass murder of Latvian and German Jews in Latvia. In basic accounts of the extermination of the Latvian Jews, however, Bönner's name is not mentioned, and this assessment is also missing in other Bönner biographies.

At the end of 1942 Bönner was drafted into the Wehrmacht . Until autumn 1943 he was employed in Belgrade as head of the military administration for the commanding general and commander in Serbia . From autumn 1943 until the withdrawal of the German troops from France , he was the head of the military administration with the Commander Southwest France in Angers . In October 1944 he was appointed State Commissioner of Hanover to succeed Ludwig Hoffmeister . Towards the end of the Second World War, Bönner succeeded in leaving Hanover to the Americans without a fight. After the city was surrendered, he was arrested and dismissed from office with immediate effect. In the denazification process , he was classified as a follower. Bönner died on April 12, 1981.

literature

Sven Jüngerkes: “That strange Eastern uniform” - Egon Bönner in Riga. In: Bernd Bonnwetsch, Corinna Kuhr-Korolev, Matthias Uhl (eds.): The special archive of the Russian State Military Archive . Research reports from scholarship holders of the DHI Moscow (= Bulletin of the German Historical Institute No. 2.) Moscow 2008, pp. 77–87. ( Online )

Sven Jüngerkes: Assignment in Ostland - Egon Bönner in Riga. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter Neue Reihe , Vol. 62 (2008), ISBN 3-7752-5962-7 , pp. 63–90.

Klaus Mlynek: Bönner, Egon. In: Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen : Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 61 ( limited preview in the Google book search).

Rüdiger Fleiter: City administration in the Third Reich. Persecution policy at the municipal level using the example of Hanover. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 2006, ISBN 3-7752-4960-5 , pp. 248-251.

Web links

Thorsten Fuchs: "But I wasn't brown". In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of February 18, 2006. Article about Else Deuker, Bönner's secretary from 1941 to 1945, which critically deals with one of her publications. ( Newspaper article online; PDF, 477 kB ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Sven Jüngerkes: “This strange Eastern uniform” - Egon Bönner in Riga. In: The Special Archives of the Russian State Military Archives (Bulletin No. 2), Dt. Hist. Inst., Moscow 2008, pp. 77-87, here p. 79.
↑ Uwe Danker: The failed attempt to disenchant the legend of the "clean" civil administration. Public prosecutor's complex investigations into the Holocaust in the "Reichskommissariat Ostland" until 1971. In: Robert Bohn (Ed.): The German rule in the "Germanic" countries: 1940 - 1945 . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07099-0 , pp. 159-186.
^ Rüdiger Fleiter: Excursus: Mayor Bönner and the persecution of Jews in the Riga ghetto. In: City administration in the Third Reich - persecution policy at the municipal level using the example of Hanover, p. 248ff.
^ Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944 . Berghahn Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84545-608-5
^ Katrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941-1944. The Latvian Part of the Holocaust. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3-940938-84-X .
^ Dieter Tasch : Hanover between zero and a new beginning . Madsack-Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3-923976-05-4 , p. 24 ff.
↑ Else Deuker: Memories of Egon Bönner's role at the end of the war and on April 10, 1945 in Hanover. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter New Series , Vol. 59 (2005), pp. 171–180.

personal data
SURNAME	Bonner, Egon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German politician (NSDAP), State Commissioner of Hanover
DATE OF BIRTH	December 25, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Koenitz
DATE OF DEATH	April 12, 1981
Place of death	Werne

[Jüngerkes-Uniform-1] Sven Jüngerkes: “This strange Eastern uniform” - Egon Bönner in Riga. In: The Special Archives of the Russian State Military Archives (Bulletin No. 2), Dt. Hist. Inst., Moscow 2008, pp. 77-87, here p. 79.

[2] Uwe Danker: The failed attempt to disenchant the legend of the "clean" civil administration. Public prosecutor's complex investigations into the Holocaust in the "Reichskommissariat Ostland" until 1971. In: Robert Bohn (Ed.): The German rule in the "Germanic" countries: 1940 - 1945 . Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07099-0 , pp. 159-186.

[3] Rüdiger Fleiter: Excursus: Mayor Bönner and the persecution of Jews in the Riga ghetto. In: City administration in the Third Reich - persecution policy at the municipal level using the example of Hanover, p. 248ff.

[4] Andrej Angrick, Peter Klein: The "Final Solution" in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941-1944 . Berghahn Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84545-608-5

[5] Katrin Reichelt: Latvia under German occupation 1941-1944. The Latvian Part of the Holocaust. Metropol, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3-940938-84-X .

[6] Dieter Tasch : Hanover between zero and a new beginning . Madsack-Verlag, 1985, ISBN 3-923976-05-4 , p. 24 ff.

[7] Else Deuker: Memories of Egon Bönner's role at the end of the war and on April 10, 1945 in Hanover. In: Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter New Series , Vol. 59 (2005), pp. 171–180.