Ernst Kundt

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Ernst Kundt

Ernst Kundt (born April 15, 1897 in Böhmisch-Leipa , Austria-Hungary , † February 15, 1947 in Prague ) was a Sudeten German politician of National Socialism .

Origin, participation in the war, studies and ethnic activity

Kundt came from a working-class family and was active early on in the German youth movement in his homeland. After attending the humanistic high school in 1915, he volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War . He graduated from an Austrian officers' school and was taken prisoner by Russia in 1916. First he was a prisoner of war in Siberia and from 1919 worked as a nurse in a Czech legionnaires hospital in Vladivostok .

After the war ended, he returned to Czechoslovakia in 1920 . He then studied law and political science at the German University in Prague and Marburg . From 1922 he headed the Sudeten German youth movement, which he represented from 1925 to 1933 in Berlin at the Central Office of German Youth in Europe . From 1925 to 1939 he also represented the Sudeten Germans in the Association of German Nationalities in Europe , of which he was Vice President in 1938/39. In addition, he was secretary of the German trade associations in Bohemia and Moravia in 1925/26 and was a member of the board of the German League of Nations in Czechoslovakia. After he had previously been secretary of the “ German Political Labor Office ” (later the German Political Labor Office ) of the “ Labor and Representation Center for Germans in Czechoslovakia ”, Kundt became its managing director on April 3, 1927, and held this post until 1938.

SdP politicians and turning to National Socialism

Kundt became a shop steward for Prague at the Antikomintern . He joined the Sudeten German Home Front (SHF) in 1933 and became Konrad Henlein's confidante . Because of his political activities, he was arrested several times in Czechoslovakia. Together with Henlein he was one of the founders of the Sudeten German Party (SdP), a successor organization to the SHF, which was supported by the NSDAP . As general secretary, he was a member of the main leadership and, ultimately, of the leadership council of the party. From 1935 to 1939 he was a member and parliamentary leader of the Sudeten German Party in the House of Representatives of the Prague Parliament, of which he was also chairman from 1936 to 1938. As a member of the Comradeship Association around the Spann pupil Walter Heinrich , he belonged within the party to the wing of the SdP, which, in contrast to the National Socialist wing of the party around Karl Hermann Frank , was striving for the autonomy of the Sudetenland within Czechoslovakia, but not for the Sudetenland to be affiliated to the National Socialist German Rich . During the worsening Sudeten crisis , in 1937/38 he advocated “ Swissization ” of Czechoslovakia. He was the head of a delegation of SdP members who entered into negotiations with the Czechoslovak government regarding Sudeten German autonomy. Due to political developments, Henlein Kundt resigned from this position on September 14, 1938. After the German occupation of the Sudetenland as a result of the Munich Agreement on October 1, 1938, Kundt stayed in Czechoslovakia . He became leader of the German ethnic group and the German National Socialist deputies and senators in the Prague parliament.

After the destruction of the rest of the Czech Republic on March 15, 1939, he became a member of the NSDAP at the beginning of April 1939 ( membership number 7,077,777). He took over the management of the German employment offices and the Reichshilfe in Bohemia and Moravia. On April 25, 1939, he was sent to the Reichstag as a member of the Reichstag for the Germans in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and remained so until 1945. Kundt, who was also a member of the SA , most recently held the rank of SA Oberführer (colonel).

Second World War - District Governor Radom in German-occupied Poland

Meeting with Josef Bühler in Krakow, Kurd Eissfeldt on the left, Bühler in the middle, Ernst Kundt on the right , May 1941

After the beginning of the Second World War , his request to serve in the Air Force was not granted. In the course of the German occupation of Poland Kundt was transferred to the Generalgouvernement (GG). From the middle of September 1939 to the end of December 1939 Kundt was city commander in Tarnow and from the beginning of January 1940 to the end of August 1940 District Administrator in Tarnow. From the beginning of September 1940 to the beginning of August 1941 he was Undersecretary of State as deputy to Josef Bühler in the Generalgouvernement. In addition, in the autumn of 1940, he temporarily took over the management of the internal department of the government of the Generalgouvernement. From the beginning of April 1941 to mid-September 1941 Kundt was government commissioner responsible for the general economy in the GG and then in the same function for the Radom district. From August 1941 until the end of the German occupation of Poland, he was governor of the Radom district in the Generalgouvernement. In view of the increasing resistance of the Polish population against the German occupiers, he campaigned for a less repressive Nazi policy in the Generalgouvernement: Among other things, he advocated securing the "food" and "property" of Poles and the inconspicuous settlement of ethnic Germans on Polish soil. As a result of his rather "moderate policy" for the German occupation conditions, Kundt was able to "maintain peace and order in the Radom district, which was important for the armaments industry, relatively well until the end of the occupation". During his governorship in the Radom district, the Jews from this area were deported to the Aktion Reinhardt extermination camps and murdered. Kundt informed the district chiefs of the district under him in the summer of 1942 that the "resettlement of Jews in the Radom district would begin". From September 27, 1943 to November 18, 1943 he was also governor of the Krakow district .

The End

After the war ended, Kundt was arrested in Karlsbad . The trial against him and other former Sudeten German MPs began in December 1946 and ended on February 15, 1947 with a death sentence. Kundt was executed in Prague's Pankrác prison that same day .

Works

  • Youth leadership and popular organization , Reichenberg i. B.: Sudetendeutscher Verlag F. Kraus, 1925

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
  • Joachim Lilla: The representation of the “Reichsgau Sudetenland” and the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” in the Grossdeutsche Reichstag. In: Bohemia . Journal of the history and culture of the Czech lands. Volume 40, Issue 2, 1999.
  • Franz Menges:  Kundt, Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , pp. 291-293 ( digitized version ).
  • Bogdan Musial : German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04208-7 ; 2nd unchanged edition ibid. 2004, ISBN 3-447-05063-2 .
  • Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945 . (Publications of the Institute for Contemporary History , Sources and Representations on Contemporary History; Volume 20). Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01700-X .

Web links

Commons : Ernst Kundt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 352.
  2. ↑ Ernst Kundt , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 33/1954, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  3. ↑ a b c Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and the persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Wiesbaden 1999, p. 388
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Joachim Lilla: The representation of the "Reichsgau Sudetenland" and the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" in the Greater German Reichstag . In: Bohemia. Journal for the History and Culture of the Bohemian Lands , Volume 40, Issue 2, 1999, pp. 470f.
  5. ^ A b c Franz Menges: Kundt, Ernst . In: New German Biography (NDB) . Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, pp. 291-293
  6. ↑ a b c Werner Präg / Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939–1945 , Stuttgart 1975, p. 949
  7. ↑ Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and the persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Wiesbaden 1999, p. 301
personal data
SURNAME Announces, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), co-founder of the Sudeten German Party, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Bohemian Leipa
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1947
Place of death Prague