Engelhard of Nathusius

Engelhard Friedrich Wilhelm von Nathusius (born July 18, 1892 in Freienwalde (Oder) , † March 16, 1975 in Hamburg ) was a Hamburg councilor, state councilor and SS-Oberführer .

Nathusius was the youngest of four children from the second marriage of his father, the politician Philipp von Nathusius with Agnes, née. Holtz. An older half-sister was the writer Annemarie von Nathusius .

Youth and military service

He spent his childhood in Potsdam and Berlin. After his father died in 1900, the mother moved with her two children (Nathusius's older two brothers had already died young) to Lochwitz near Crossen (Oder) . Here he received his basic school education from his mother, a teacher, and from private tutors.

In 1902 he entered the cadet institute in Potsdam , and then graduated from the Prussian main cadet institute in Berlin Groß Lichterfelde . He spent the last year of war school in Bad Hersfeld . This was followed by the call-up to the infantry regiment "von Alvensleben" (6th Brandenburgisches) No. 52 in Cottbus .

During the First World War , Nathusius was used in Belgium , France , Serbia and Russia . He was wounded twice and was awarded the Iron Crosses II and I classes. After his assignment in Russia after the end of the war, he became a member of the Freikorps "von Randow" in Lithuania and fought together with other volunteer organizations, composed of members of the old imperial army, against the troops of the Bolsheviks . After the end of these fighting and the formation of the new Lithuanian state, he was discharged from the army as a captain at the age of 28 in 1920.

Time in National Socialism

As a civilian, Nathusius first completed an apprenticeship in freight forwarding and insurance in East Prussia, as a result of which he became chief accountant and travel agent in the main office of a Königsberg company in Berlin. In 1926 Nathusius joined the NSDAP ( membership number 31,944) and shortly afterwards switched to the Cologne cigarette factory Haus Neuerburg . He was to work for this company - with interruptions - for over thirty years. In 1927 he was granted power of attorney. First he was used in Berlin; there he was also the local group leader of the NSDAP. Since 1929 he was the sales manager of the Haus-Neuerburg branch in Hamburg-Wandsbek . After Haus Neuerburg was taken over by the Reemtsma cigarette factories in 1935 , its new boss was Philipp Reemtsma .

State Councilor and SS member

After 1933 Engelhard became Hamburg councilor and councilor (the council of state [ councilors' assembly ] consisted of 45 honorary officials with an advisory function as mediator between administration, industry, the population and the party. He included all the NSDAP district leaders in the Hamburg area, industrialists and representatives of culture at) appointed in the aligned citizenship. At times he headed the party court of the NSDAP in the Hanseatic city and had been a member of the SS since 1935, most recently with the rank of SS-Oberführer (membership no. 250.071). Nathusius was a close friend of the SA chief of staff Viktor Lutze and the Hamburg district leader Karl Kaufmann . He obviously used these connections for his employer. For his services as a broker of business between the companies Haus Neuerburg / Reemtsma and the SA / SS (presumably in connection with the SA's own cigarette brands) he received a donation from his employer in the amount of 244,000 Reichsmarks . Nathusius was carrier of the usual higher in SS circles awards such as the honor sword , the skull ring and the Golden party badge .

It was reactivated - presumably only briefly - during World War II. According to his own statement later, he worked as a major and department commander in a replacement department in Vienna. According to other sources, he was put as UK business leader afterwards . In Vienna he got to know the Gauleiter Josef Bürckel , who was in office there at the time and who was the highest NSDAP leader in the Ostmark until he was transferred to Lorraine . At the same time as Bürckel's transfer, in 1942 Nathusius was placed under the SS upper section Westmark, and in the same year he bought an “Aryanized” chamotte and silicone factory in occupied Lorraine (in Hagendingen near Metz ), in which he invested most of his assets. He was also managing director of a mechanical weaving mill in Mörchingen in the Saarburg district .

Divorce problems

Nathusius' second wife, Marie, was a staunch National Socialist and in the 1920s she was part of Adolf Hitler's female entourage in Munich's artist and coffee house circles. Even in the 1930s she had the right to speak personally in the party and Reich Chancellery . These relationships exacerbated Nathusius' difficulties in divorcing her. Controversial alimony payments for her and her daughter from their first marriage were finally regulated in such a way that Nathusius' employer Reemtsma took over the alimony payments at the request of the Führer from 1938 in order not to expose the then Hamburg State Council in public. Nathusius' wife was supported by the SS and police leader Udo von Woyrsch .

The Wittje dispute

In addition to his function as authorized signatory at Reemtsma, Nathusius was also chairman of the supervisory board of an explosives and ammunition factory founded in 1937, which built a factory at Dragahn in Wendland under the name WACO ( Waaren-Commissions-AG ) based in Hamburg . In 1944, WACO produced 1,100 tons of TNT per month, had its own siding and employed around 200 to 300 workers, mainly forced laborers from the East since 1942 . WACO shareholders included a. the Commerzbank and the SS. Managing Director since 1937 was the SS top section leaders Northern and temporary head of the SS Main Office in Berlin curt wittje . Because of his way of life and his alleged homosexuality, but also because of bitter disputes with Nathusius in connection with the WACO. a. was about embezzlement of Jewish property but also about the private life of the two SS leaders, Wittje was released from the SS in 1938 at Heinrich Himmler's instigation , even if the latter also accused Nathusius of incorrect behavior in a statement.

SS conflict

After the American occupation of Lorraine and the loss of his company, Nathusius went into hiding because his UK position had now become obsolete and he was even wanted by the SS High Command West because the SS leadership also accused him of having the Lorraine company received too cheaply and also feigned a World War II injury to underpin the UK position. The search for him remained fruitless until the end of the war.

post war period

The background and course of a trial against Nathusius in connection with the employment of forced laborers, the 1946/47 against him in the context of the British military court trials on war crimes that took place in the Hamburg Curiohaus (from 1946 to 1948 the Curiohaus trials of the British took place in the largely undamaged Curiohaus Military government) are still unexplored. From the end of the 1940s and after the temporary revocation of his civil rights , he continued his commercial activity at Reemtsma and only left there in 1961 at the age of 69. In an obituary from the company it later said: “ With his open-mindedness, his helpfulness and his straightforward nature, he won recognition and friends.” In 1962, he founded a dry cleaning company in Hamburg. A few months before his 83rd birthday, Engelhard died in Hamburg in March 1975 as the last of his father's fourteen children.

family

During his military service in Lithuania, Nathusius had his first marriage in November 1919 in the district town of Raseinen to the Lithuanian Katharina Pancerna. After the expulsion of the Freikorps units still stationed in Lithuania, Engelhard first lived in Eydtkuhnen near the border , and later in Königsberg. The marriage, which had remained childless, was divorced in 1924 under German law because the wife did not want to follow her husband to Germany. On September 15, 1926, he married Maria, geb. Schad von Mittelbiberach (* 1900), daughter of Hans Schad von Mittelbiberach and Maria Magdalena, b. Sweeper. This marriage also remained childless and was divorced in late 1932. On November 13, 1933, Engelhard married Wilhelmine, geb. Hoffmann (* 1907). In 1940 his son was born.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erik Lindner: The Reemtsmas. History of a German family of entrepreneurs , Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2007, p. 132.
2. ↑ Tino Jacobs: Smoke and Power. The Reemtsma company 1929 to 1961 , Göttingen, 2008.

literature

• Federal Archives in Berlin-Lichterfelde (special collection Berlin Document Center), collection SSO / SS-Führer 343A / 344A , as well as OPG G 0115 (party jurisdiction )
• Federal Archives Koblenz (holdings General Inspector for the Arbitration Courts in the British Zone 1947-55, BArchZ 42-274) on the proceedings against Engelhard von Nathusius
• Genealogical manual of the nobility , volume 57 of the complete series, noble houses B, volume XI, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg a. d. Lahn 1974, p. 313
• Hamburg State Archives (holdings ZAS A 763 )
• Jochen von Nathusius and Christine Keßler: Johann Gottlob Nathusius (1760–1835) and his descendants up to the sixth generation as well as his nephew Moritz Nathusius (1815-1886) and his descendants up to the fifth generation. Ed .: Association of the families of Nathusius and Nathusius eV (Kassel): Hanover (print), Meschede and Mülheim an der Ruhr 2010 (pp. 153–156), updated new edition by: Lilly von Nathusius, Johann Gottlob Nathusius and his descendants as well his nephew Moritz Nathusius with his descendants (family chronicle), Detmold 1964
• Wolfgang Ollrog (adaptation): Johann Christoph Gatterer, the founder of scientific genealogy. An examination of the previously known sources and publications about his origins, his life and work as well as his descendants . In: Archives for kin research and all related areas with practical research assistance . 47th year, issue 81/82. Starke, Limburg ad Lahn 1981, p. 76, no. 3.4.4.1.14