Felix Brucks

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Felix Brucks (born June 1, 1874 in Berlin, † June 8, 1938 in Berlin-Tegel) was a German civil servant (prison director). Brucks was best known for several mysterious deaths - including his own - in connection with the investigation into the Reichstag fire of 1933.

Life

Brucks studied in Jena . There he joined the Landsmannschaft Suevia Jena (today Landsmannschaft Saxo-Suevia Erlangen in the Coburg Convent ) in the summer semester of 1894 , to which he was a lifelong member.

After a lengthy career in the civil service, Brucks was appointed "prison director" of the Tegel prison in 1916 , which he headed through all political upheavals until 1938. Among the inmates who were subordinate to him during his time as director was the writer Carl von Ossietzky . From 1933 the prison pastor Harald Poelchau was one of Bruck's employees .

In 1932, the writer Alfred Polgar drew the following portrait of Bruck in the essay "Ossietzky goes to prison" published on the occasion of Ossietzky's imprisonment in the Weltbühne :

“The head of the Tegel prison is the chief penitentiary director of Brucks. Those experienced in Tegel report that the director of the penal institution did not allow the human dignity of his inmates to be rewarded for having lost their civil dignity, and did not see his office as that of an earthly angel of vengeance. And the lawyers who were there say that the director's first meeting with Ossietzky went in such a way that everyone who worries about the fate of the excellent writer can have confidence that he will not experience more harm as a prisoner than in the one Fact of being a prisoner is included. "

Confrontations with the Nazi state

Brucks, whom Klaus Harpprecht described as a "gnarled-conservative official", had a distant relationship with the National Socialists who came to political power in 1933: According to Liebchen, they were able to work under Bruck's aegis in the Tegel asylum, unlike in most other parts of the penal system , "Never really gain a foothold".

He often summed up his detached attitude towards the new state and his will to oppose the more questionable practices of the new rulers with the words:

"If it is necessary, I not only raise my hand, but also my leg like dogs."

In 1933 the petty criminal Adolf Rall was admitted to Bruck's institution. In September 1933, Rall contacted Brucks and stated that he had to provide important information in connection with the Reichstag fire. In an interrogation by Brucks, Rall only gave information that could be reconstructed according to their rough salary, in which he claimed that the Berlin SA , of which he was a member until 1933, was responsible for the burning of the Reichstag building in February 1933. He referred, among other things, to exercises with time-delayed self-igniting chemicals, in which he was involved in 1932 as a member of the SA.

Brucks sent the minutes of the interrogation to the senior Reich attorney in Leipzig in order to suggest that Rall be called in as a witness in the Reichstag fire trial. Since the recorder Karl Reineking - also a member of the SA - informed the leader of the Berlin SA, Karl Ernst, about this, the protocol could be intercepted in time. Rall was a short time later at the instigation of Ernst and the Gestapo boss Rudolf Diels transferred to the Secret State Police Office and shot in the night of 1 to 2 November 1933 outside of Berlin by SA members. Investigations were closed on November 3rd at the personal order of Hermann Göring .

From then on, Brucks tried repeatedly to clarify the matter: As early as December 12, 1933, the Exilanten-Zeitung Pariser Tageblatt published an article entitled “Uncomfortable confidants eliminated” about the murder of Ralls, which Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel assumed to be Bruck's information was based. Since December 1933, Brucks tried again and again to get the files on the Rall case into his possession, apparently to demand that the case be clarified on their basis - and with their possession in hand with leverage. To this end, he repeatedly sent letters to the Oberreichsanwalt and other government agencies, in which he requested documents or information. Some of these inquiries went unanswered and some of them were given negative responses due to the fact that they cannot be found and similar reasons.

On April 22, 1938, Brucks researched the Rall files again with a letter, this time formulated extremely critically, to the senior Reich attorney:

"At the end of October 1933, on the occasion of the criminal trial against van der Luppe [rightly Marinus van der Lubbe ], who was convicted of arson on the occasion of the fire in the Reichstag , I sent messages from local prisoner circles to the Upper Government Council, which contained revelations by prisoner Rall, according to which the NSDAP was suspected of being close to the arson. I would ask you to notify us as quickly as possible whether the Rall personnel files are there, and in the affirmative, to send them back quickly. "

The letter finally ended up in the Secret State Police Office, whose processing notes last until the beginning of May 1938 ("Answers that the Rall personnel files could not be identified in the criminal cases against van der Lubbe").

The death of Felix Bruck

On May 2, 1938, Brucks officially took a vacation. As Kugel / Bahar found in their research, a councilor Hansen informed the court on the same day that he had taken over the management of the Tegel prison in Berlin, which they describe as "an unusual way of indicating a vacation replacement". They also note that there is no vacation application in Bruck's personnel file, although such applications were otherwise filed there very carefully.

On June 7, 1938, Brucks was unable to work for four weeks due to circulatory disorders after the noticeably long vacation time of five weeks. On June 8th, he died as an active civil servant without leaving a will. The cause of death is unknown as no death certificate has been obtained.

On June 11, 1938, an obituary by his staff was published in which it says:

“Shortly after his return from the summer vacation, which had not brought him the improvement in his long-standing suffering that he was looking for in a health resort, our board member, Senior Government Councilor Felix Brucks, died on June 8, 1938. He headed the Tegel Institute for 22 years. Cheerfulness and humor, imperturbable justice and benevolent kindness distinguished him and made him a truly fatherly superior. The deceased will and will remain unforgettable in the future. The followers of the Tegel prison. "

Fonts

  • "The internal organization of the prison facilities in Germany", in: Erwin Bumke [Hrsg]: German prison system , 1930.

literature

  • Alexander Bahar / Wilfried Kugel: The Reichstag Fire , o. O. 2001.
  • Jörn Petrick: Memorial book of the Saxo-Suevia Erlangen Landsmannschaft in the Coburg Convent , Erlangen 2009.

Individual evidence

  1. Heike Jung: Prison execution in the "Third Reich". Using the example of Saarland , 1996, p. 296.
  2. ^ Tegel registry office: death register for the year 1938: death certificate no. 107/1938 ( digital copy at the Landesarchiv Berlin (P.-Rep. 100, no. 368: list of names for the Tegel death register 1874-1940, p. 64) ).
  3. Petrick: Gedenkbuch , p. 15.
  4. Carl von Ossietzky: 227 days in prison: letters, documents, texts , 1988, p. 94f.
  5. Klaus Harpprecht: Harald Poelchau: a life in resistance , 2004, p. 80.
  6. ^ Günther Liebchen: "Prison Tegel - 1898 bis", in: Justizvollzugsanstalt Tegel (Ed.): 100 Years of Justizvollzugsanstalt Tegel , Berlin 1998, p. 57f.
  7. ^ Bahar: Reichstag fire , p. 537.
  8. ^ Bahar: Reichstag fire , p. 536.
  9. ^ Bahar: Reichstag fire , p. 539.