Ernst Kracht

Ernst Kracht (born April 15, 1890 in Neumünster , † February 5, 1983 in Flensburg ) was a German national before 1933 , from 1933 to 1945 a National Socialist politician and SS-Sturmbannführer . After 1945 he became head of the State Chancellery in Schleswig-Holstein .

Life

The son of a cloth merchant studied law and political science in Göttingen, Berlin and Kiel. During his studies he was a member of the 1908 Schwarzenburg Bund - connection Burschenschaft Germania Göttingen . He was district chairman of the Schleswig-Holstein State Party, which until February 1919 called itself the Schleswig-Holstein Peasant and Agricultural Workers' Democracy. The Heider local group of the state party saw itself as a "national bulwark against the centralist social democracy". Similar to the DNVP , the state party was strongly anti-Semitic , but in contrast to it welcomed the Weimar Republic .

Kracht was from May 1919 district administrator of the Norderdithmarschen district , which he remained until 1932. Shortly after his election, Kracht resigned from the state party. He was distant from the Weimar Republic. During the Kapp Putsch , however, it was thanks to Kracht that power in Heide was not taken over by the putschists, because he opposed their actions. From October 1, 1932, Kracht was district administrator of the new Dithmarschen district for one year , which was dissolved again on October 1, 1933.

Kracht joined the NSDAP in May 1933 . After the election of March 5, 1933, he did not invite the KPD's district council members to the constituent meeting of the district council. At the first session of the district assembly on April 4, 1933, he greeted the district assembly members with a commemorative speech in honor of the Nazis killed in the so-called “ Blood Night of Wöhrden ” and concluded with a threefold “ salvation ” to Hindenburg and Hitler .

From October 1933 to 1936 Kracht was district administrator for the district of Süderdithmarschen . A report dated April 12, 1935, confirmed Kracht that he was “Nazi out of conviction” . In 1936 Kracht was appointed Lord Mayor of the city of Flensburg by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse . As Lord Mayor, he decided to remove the Bismarck fountain , which stood on the Südermarkt . He held the office until 1945. Kracht, a member of the SS since 1937 , was SS-Sturmbannführer and Gau representative of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle . After Hitler's suicide on April 30, 1945, Kracht invited people to a memorial service in the town hall of Flensburg.

On May 14, 1945 Kracht was arrested by the Allies and interned until March 24, 1948. He was released on pardon. In the denazification process, the British provisionally classified Kracht in Group IV as a follower . This classification was confirmed on October 15, 1948 by the denazification committee in Heide. In 1949 there was a reassignment to group V of the exonerated .

Kracht initially worked as a lawyer at the working group for the dairy industry in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and from January 1, 1950 he was deputy managing director and speaker at the German Association for Public and Private Welfare .

From October 17, 1950 until his retirement in 1958, Kracht was State Secretary and Head of the State Chancellery of the Schleswig-Holstein state government . In this function he was considered to be one of the switching points for personnel policy in the state ministries. Kracht had a particularly close relationship with Prime Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel , Hassel's predecessor Walter Bartram was a school friend of Kracht's. In 1953 Kracht expressed in writing to Werner Best , temporarily deputy head of the Reich Main Security Office , "in a friendly bond, his hope" that Best might succeed in obtaining the desired admission as a lawyer. Kracht was awarded the Great Cross of Merit with a Star .

See also

• List of the city leaders of Flensburg

Fonts

• Out of my life. Memories, adventures and experiences , Westholsteinische Verlagsanstalt Boyens & Co., Heide 1986, ISBN 3-8042-0360-4 . Edited by Kurt Jürgensen and Nils R. Nissen, with a post by Kai-Uwe von Hassel .
• Kiel Declaration and interim solution: on the minority issue in the Schleswig border region , Flensburg: Christian Wolff, 1955
• Social work in the country , Heide: Heider Anzeiger, 1925. Contributions to homeland and welfare studies, 2.
• Autonomy and self-administration (= native scripts of the Schleswig-Holsteiner Bund 2). Hamburg / Flensburg / Kiel, P. Hartung 1921. DNB
• The picket ban , Duncker & Humblot, Munich / Leipzig 1914. (Legal and state science dissertation, Würzburg 1914). DNB

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , p. 102 f. ( Online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
• Ulrich Pfeil : From the Empire to the "Third Reich" - Heide 1890-1933 , Heide 1997
• Martin Gietzelt / Ulrich Pfeil: Dithmarschen in the "Third Reich" 1933 - 1945 in the history of Dithmarschen , Heide 2000
• Marie-Elisabeth Rehn : Heider gottsleider - small town life under the swastika , reissued in 2005, Pro Business Berlin publishing house, ISBN 3-939000-31-0
• Ernst Klee : Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 333
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 153-154.
• Eckhard Hansen: Kracht, Ernst , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 322

Web links

• Newspaper article about Ernst Kracht in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Goebel (ed.): Directory of members of the Schwarzburgbund. 8th edition, Frankfurt am Main 1930, p. 95 No. 1675.
2. ↑ Pfeil, From the Empire to the "Third Reich"
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Heyde / Sawade affair. How lawyers and medical professionals covered the Nazi euthanasia professor Heyde after 1945 and remained unpunished. Nomos-Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 3-7890-7269-9 , p. 92.
4. ^ Andreas Oeding, Broder Schwensen, Michael Sturm: Flexikon. 725 aha experiences from Flensburg !. Flensburg 2009, article: Bismarck fountain
5. ↑ these assessments in Godau-Schüttke, Heyde , p. 92.
6. ↑ quoted in Godau-Schüttke, Heyde , p. 92f.
7. ↑ Ernst Klee: Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 333.