Ernst Müller (SS member)

Ernst Konrad Müller (also called Müller-Altenau) (born September 17, 1893 in Fulnek , North Moravia, † July 18, 1976 in Kreiensen ) was a German SS leader.

Live and act

Early life

Müller was born in what was then Austria-Hungary in 1893 . In his youth he attended elementary and middle school in his home town of Fulnek and the teacher training college in Teschen , where he passed his Abitur in 1912. He then studied at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna with the intention of becoming an agriculture teacher. In the meantime he also worked as an assistant teacher.

On the occasion of the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914, Müller joined the k. and k. Army one. In March 1915 he was promoted to sergeant and officer cadet for bravery . In the same year he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage when buried , which led to a three-month hospital stay. In June 1916, Müller became a Russian prisoner of war, from which he was able to flee after a few months: after fleeing the prison camp, he reached Persia with the help of insurgent Azerbaijanis and returned from there on adventurous routes through the enemy lines in Mesopotamia via Turkey Austria back. After his reactivation as a soldier, he experienced the collapse of the Habsburg Empire as a first lieutenant and leader of an MG company. By the end of the war in autumn 1918, he was awarded several Austrian and Turkish war awards.

In the first months after the war, Müller took part in the border battles against the Czechs and was finally deployed as a liaison officer of the new Austrian Armed Forces to Austrian border protection formations that had defected to German soil in Silesia.

In 1919 Müller acquired the 86 hectare Altenau estate in the Militisch district in Silesia, which he managed from then on. In addition, he dealt with ethnicity issues: He worked as a frame officer in the Reichswehr and, on behalf of the 2nd Cavalry Division, set up a shop steward system in the border area to collect news about the ethnic struggle. At the request of the Reichswehr, which did not want leading men in their intelligence service to be bound by party politics, Müller resigned from the German National People's Party , which he had joined, as early as 1924 . As early as 1920, he and other personalities founded the Sudeten German Club in Breslau, which dealt with border issues and wanted to promote the cohesion of the Silesians on both sides of the imperial borders.

Career in the Nazi state

In 1933, the Sudeten German Club was forcibly transferred to the Federation of German East, in which Müller was elected staff leader for Silesia. In this position he got into trouble with the NSDAP . In order to be able to maintain his beloved activity in the Federation of the German East, he therefore sought connection to a party organization. He came into contact with Heinrich Himmler through the Saxon SA leader and Prime Minister Manfred von Killinger . Because of his knowledge of intelligence services, Müller offered to work in the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD), which was being expanded at the time. After the defense service of the Reichswehr had suggested that he join the SD, he joined the SS (SS No. 107.096) as a candidate in the spring of 1934 and was immediately commissioned to manage SD Section VI in Breslau.

In the days from June 30 to July 2, 1934, Müller, as regional SD chief, together with the SS commander of Silesia, Udo von Woyrsch , led the actions of the SS and the state police in Silesia in the context of the Röhm affair : Zu For this purpose he sat down on the morning of June 30, 1934 in the Breslau police headquarters, where he took over the command with the help of the SS and set up a command center to direct the mass arrests carried out in Silesia. In the course of June 30th, Müller was appointed by the Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring instead of the Breslau Police President Edmund Heines, who was accused of participating in the alleged putsch of SA chief Röhm, as acting Police President of Breslau. In the course of the SS operations in Silesia supervised by Müller, 21 people were shot and several hundred arrested by July 2. After the end of the action on July 2, Müller was promoted out of turn and skipping four ranks from simple SS man to SS Untersturmführer .

In August 1934 Müller, who was also a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 450.601), was entrusted full-time with the management of the SD upper section south-east in Wroclaw. He was relieved of this position on July 1, 1937 due to official differences and transferred to the SD main office as leader z. b. V. assigned.

During the Second World War , Müller was briefly deployed as a major in the Air Force . At the turn of the year 1940/1941 he was appointed staff leader to the Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Volkstum, who was mainly responsible for the resettlement of German ethnic groups from the eastern states, and was responsible for the Sudetengau . He remained in this office until December 1944, when he was called in by the Wehrmacht for defense duties. In January 1945 Müller was promoted to SS-Oberführer .

post war period

At the end of the Second World War, Müller was taken prisoner by the Americans. However, he managed to get his release after ten days with the help of forged papers that were still available to him from his defense work. He first went to Munich and then to the British zone of occupation .

In 1946, Müller founded a store for fire-fighting equipment in Kreiensen. After the law on impunity was passed in 1954, Müller took on his real name again in December 1954.

From 1956 to 1957, Müller and Udo von Woyrsch were indicted before the Osnabrück District Court for some of the murders committed in the context of the Röhm affair . While Woyrsch was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in six cases for aiding and abetting manslaughter on August 2, 1957 , Müller was acquitted.

literature

• Detlef Brandes : “Umvolkung, Umsiedlung, racial inventory”: Nazi “Volkstumsppolitik” in the Bohemian countries . Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71242-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Müller at www.dws-xip.pl
2. ^ Walter Greiff: The Boberhaus in Löwenberg / Silesia 1933-1937 . 1985, p. 126.
3. ^ Carsten Schreiber: Elite in Hidden . 2008, p. 34.
4. ^ Heinz glasses: The Jews in Germany, 1951 / 52-1958 / 59. An almanac . 1959, p. 520.