Erwin Metzner

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Metzner in Allied internment

Erwin Metzner (born July 17, 1890 in Leipzig , † 1969 [presumably in] Dießen am Ammersee ) was a German Nazi agricultural functionary and SS leader, most recently with the rank of SS Oberführer .

Life

Youth and education

Metzner was the son of the Basel university professor Rudolf Metzner . He spent his childhood in Switzerland , in the rural surroundings of Basel , where his father had built a house. He attended school at an upper secondary school in Basel, then, for health reasons, in the Swiss state educational center at Schloss Klares Eck and finally again at the upper secondary school in Basel, where he graduated from high school in 1909 . He then studied history, economics and modern languages at the University of Basel and then at the German universities of Freiburg, Berlin and Leipzig. He also worked at the International Labor Office in Basel.

In May 1914, Metzner married Lina (1887–1970), née Götz , in London , who was married to Gustav Radbruch for the first time . The marriage produced a daughter, Gela Metzner (1914–1942).

After the outbreak of World War I , Metzner was drafted as a Landsturm man. During the war he was first used as a driver in the West and then, after an illness, sent to a press office in Berlin before reporting back to the front. He then came to the Greek border in order to be sent as a sergeant to an officer preparation course in Nisch .

Weimar Republic

After the end of the First World War, Metzner briefly returned to Switzerland. He decided now to give up his studies and become a farmer. For this purpose he settled in Upper Bavaria. On the side he worked as a journalist for daily newspapers and as a freelance writer.

From 1922 Metzner lived in the St. Georgen district in Dießen am Ammersee . After his divorce there he married Johanna Margarethe , divorced Binder , née Wallenstein . After Metzner had attended an NSDAP event in Munich in 1922 on behalf of the Basler Nationalzeitung , at which Adolf Hitler spoke in the Krone circus , to report on "the new movement", he decided to join the party himself: in 1922 he joined the NSDAP for the first time and was one of the co-founders of the local branch of the party in Diessen. After the failure of the Hitler putsch and the ban on the NSDAP, Metzner became involved in the party's rescue organizations. A visit to Hitler in the prison in Landsberg led to his temporary alienation from the NSDAP, so that he did not rejoin it for the time being after it was re-established.

In January 1929 Metzner became a member of the NSDAP again ( membership number 110,974).

In Dießen am Ammersee Metzner was a local councilor from 1929 to 1930 and a local group leader of the NSDAP from 1930 to 1931 . He also participated in the establishment of the local SA . At times he also temporarily headed the NSDAP local group in Landsberg am Lech . In 1933 he moved from the SA to the SS (SS no. 55.370) and received his last known promotion to SS-Oberführer on January 30, 1938.

After Metzner had worked on a regional level for Gauleiter Fritz Reinhardt from 1930 - for whom he did archival work - from 1931 he officiated as an agricultural district consultant for the Gau Munich-Upper Bavaria . Through this position he came into closer contact with Richard Walther Darré , the chief agricultural politician of the NSDAP, who brought him into his staff in 1932: For Darré, Metzner initially worked for a few months as a clerk in the "Agriculture" department in the Brown House , the party headquarters of the NSDAP in Munich, before he was accepted into the Office for Agricultural Policy in the summer of 1932 after the Agriculture Department was raised to the status of the Office for Agricultural Policy . In August 1932 he was appointed head of the “Peasant Culture” department. In fact, Metzner was only able to take up his position in January 1933 due to a prolonged lung disease.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists and the appointment of Darré as Reichsbauernführer in April 1933, Darré and his employees, including Metzner, moved to Berlin towards the end of the month. In addition to the management of the department for peasant culture in Darré's office, after Darré's appointment as Reich Minister of Food in June 1933 until autumn of the same year, Metzner took over the processing of peasant cultural issues as a “special commissioner for peasant customs and traditions”. Within the Reichsnährstand , Metzner was head of the main department “Bauerntumskunde” in the staff office of the Reichsbauernführer until autumn 1936. During this time he participated in the founding of the SS-Ahnenerbes in early July 1935, of which he was a member of the Presidium until 1938.

In the autumn of 1936, Metzner took over the post of "keeper of the seals" of the German Council of Farmers as the successor to Richard Arauner, who had died in an accident . In this capacity he also headed the chancellery of the German Farmers' Council. In March 1939, as a result of differences with Darré, he was de facto replaced in this position by Johannes Hubertus Freiherr von Reibnitz , which he formally held until September 1939. As an alternative, Metzner was appointed acting spokesman for the Reichsbauernrat in 1939.

Metzner moved back to Dießen in 1940, where he held the position of head of the Bavarian State Association of Agricultural Cooperatives ( Raiffeisen ) until the end of the war . He also took over the chairmanship of Bayerische Warenvermittlung ( BayWa ). From 1940 he belonged to the German Labor Front (DAF).

post war period

When the war ended Metzner fell into Allied captivity. As a result, he was held in the Dachau internment camp until 1948 and heard as a witness during the Nuremberg trials .

In the course of his court proceedings in September 1948, Metzner was classified as "incriminated". A year later it was finally denazified as a follower in an appeal process . After their release from internment, the Metzner couple lived again in St. Georgen in Dießen am Ammersee.

In 1961, Metzner's family sold their property including the agricultural land for a payment of 20,000 marks and a lifelong supply to the Ammersee community. The former Metzner property was developed from the 1990s and one of the two new streets was named on February 15, 1993 after the previous owner in Metznerwiese . The Metznerwiese was renamed Am Forellenbach in spring 2008 after extensive research and discussions in the local council due to Metzner's Nazi past .

Fonts

  • The German first names. With a foreword by Richard Walther Darré , Blut u. Boden Verl. Berlin / Volckmar Leipzig 1934, 2nd edition Blut u. Boden Verl. Goslar 1939.
  • The Germanic-Nordic peasant culture as the basis of our folk culture. In: Odal. Monthly for Blood and Soil , Vol. 3, 1934, Issue 3, pp. 190–196.

literature

  • Andreas Dornheim: Race, Space and Autarky. Expert opinion on the role of the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture in the Nazi era. Developed for the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, Bamberg 2011.
  • Ernst Kopf (arrangement): Erwin Metzner (= The ancestors of German farmers' leaders, Volume 13), ed. v. Staff office of the Reichsbauernführer, Berlin: Reichsnährstand Verl.-Ges. 1936.
  • Wilhelm Lenz: The German Reichsbauernrat - Darrés political fighting community . In: Friedrich P. Kahlenberg (Ed.): From the work of the archives. Contributions to archives, source studies and history. Festschrift for Hans Booms (= writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 36), Boldt: Boppard am Rhein 1989, ISBN 3-7646-1892-2 , pp. 787-799.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Archival material

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 406.
  2. ↑ Max Weber, Mario Rainer Lepsius: Briefe: 1915-1917 , Mohr-Siebeck, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-16-149481-9 , p. 884
  3. ↑ a b c d # x5D; = 1204326000 & tx_ttnews [pL] = 2674799 & tx_ttnews [arc] = 1 & tx_ttnews [pointer] = 3 & tx_ttnews [tt_news] = 1590 & tx_ttnews [backPid] = 11 & cHashner -Meadow required new name for financial information = 4915b Erwin Metzner's past - responsibility in the Third Reich ( memento of the original from September 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Ammerseekurier of March 18, 2008 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ammerseekurier.de
  4. ^ A b c d Gerald Modlinger: The street name of Dießen is reminiscent of a Nazi functionary . In: Augsburger Allgemeine from March 12, 2008
  5. ^ SS-Oberführer Erwin Metzner on www.dws-xip.pl
  6. ^ Minutes of Metzner's interrogations in the IFZ archive (PDF; 6.8 MB).
  7. ^ Andreas Dornheim: Race, Space and Autarky. Expert opinion on the role of the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture in the Nazi era . He works for the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. Bamberg 2011, p. 76f
  8. ↑ Metznerwiese becomes Am Forellenbach . In: Augsburger Allgemeine from April 23, 2008
personal data
SURNAME Metzner, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Nazi agricultural functionary and SS-Oberführer
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH 1969