Ferdinand Hahnzog

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Ferdinand Hahnzog (born March 19, 1897 in Hanau ; † January 28, 1969 in Dörnigheim ) was a German police officer and historian .

education and profession

Ferdinand Hahnzog was born as the son of a military officer of the powder factory Wolfgang in Wolfgang , today a district of Hanau. After graduating from high school , he was a war volunteer in 1914 , was wounded and began studying classical philology and German as a convalescent in 1916 . Due to his bad economic situation, he could not finish his studies. He became a policeman . According to his autobiographical notes, which were made after the Second World War , he was discriminated against and given a punishment there because of his distance from the National Socialists .

Use in World War II

Lublin

From January 1940 to April 1942 he was a major commander of the gendarmerie in the Lublin district in Germany-occupied Poland . The gendarmerie was the German civilian police, around 500 men in the Lublin district, who were subordinated to the Polish police, around 1,500 men. A German police force was also working there at the same time. The police as a whole were subordinate to the SS and Police Leader SS Brigade Leader Odilo Globocnik . He represented one of the parties in the competition between the Wehrmacht , civil administration, SS , security service and police for power in the occupied area . " I did not come to Lublin voluntarily, but with the firm intention of carrying out my office in line with the good old gendarmerie tradition and according to the principles of the Upper East Administration from the First World War ". He was confronted with the extermination and arbitrary actions against Jews , Roma and Poles : as early as 1940/41, subordinate police officers reported to him that the security police had murdered Jews with car exhaust fumes in a sealed shed. Later he was also aware of the structure of the Sobibor and Majdanek extermination camps and their functions. He tried - always according to his own account - with only limited success to keep himself and the gendarmerie under his responsibility out of the proceedings. He also thought of suicide . When proceeding against escaped Soviet prisoners of war (" Bolsheviks ") later, he was plagued by fewer scruples . He kept in close contact with Ernst Zörner , governor of the Lublin district and rival of SS Brigadier Leader Odilo Globocnik, until this was cut off by the new commander of the police, Walter Griphan , in October 1941. Ferdinand Hahnzog was positioned as an opponent of the SS in the power struggles of the various organizations. However, the role of the later Obersturmbannführer Hahnzog during and also after the time of National Socialism should be reviewed more critically. His numerous letters to his wife Hannah, which have since been (selectively?) Published, could also be helpful here.

Second half of the war

Completely surprising for him, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in April 1942 and sent to Magdeburg with the task of putting together a gendarmerie task force for the Donets Basin , with which he went to Stalino in June 1942 .

January 15, 1945, Ferdinand Hahnzog was at that time head of the gendarmerie school Mödling , Lower Austria , it arrested the Gestapo in Vienna . This was probably based on an internal police power struggle. On February 6, 1945, the Supreme SS and Police Court chaired the SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Oswald Pohl negotiates against him in Traunstein - he does not share the specific accusation. The verdict was a double death penalty , 5 years imprisonment and lifelong loss of honor . The death penalty had to be confirmed by Heinrich Himmler . Ferdinand Hahnzog was waiting for this in the Vienna prison when it came to evacuation because of the advancing Red Army . A former police colleague from Hanau simply "overlooked" him in prison, so that he was freed by the Red Army. He was questioned by the NKVD , but not arrested .

Post War and Scientific Research

After the war, Ferdinand Hahnzog worked again in a prominent position in the police. 1952 he was appointed as Chief of Police in Arnsberg in Westphalia retired .

After retiring, he moved to Dörnigheim (today Maintal-Dörnigheim in the Main-Kinzig district ), where he devoted himself to regional history as a historian . The outstanding topic for him was Hanauian India , a colonial adventure that had been attempted in the 17th century under Count Friedrich Casimir von Hanau-Lichtenberg , but failed. He fulfilled a childhood dream, traveled to the area in what is now French Guiana himself in 1957 and, according to his own admission, was the first Hanau man who consciously entered Hanau's India. The time to travel from Hanau to the destination was 25 days at that time. He is buried in the cemetery in Hanau-Wolfgang.

literature

Literature by Ferdinand Hahnzog

  • Georg II von Fleckenstein, baron of roof trusses. A Hanau administrator in the final phase of the Thirty Years War. In: Hanauer Geschichtsverein (Ed.): Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 18, 1962 pp. 223–242.
  • On the history of the royal powder factory near Hanau. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 21, 1966, pp. 224–356.
  • From Hanau am Main to Honau am Rhein. Relationship between the Wetterau and Ortenau for two thousand years . In: Hanauer Anzeiger v. December 20, 1958 - February 7, 1959.
  • The Hanau “great year” 1669. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 20, 1965, pp. 129–146.
  • Hanau-India then and now . Hanau 1959.
  • The calculation of "New Germany" or "Hanauisch India". In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 17, 1960, pp. 93–114.

Literature and sources about Ferdinand Hahnzog

  • Typewritten script from July 1962. In: Lower Saxony State Archives Hanover: Nds. 721 Hildesheim Acc. 39/91 No. 28/113, public prosecutor at the Hildesheim Regional Court (18 pages)
  • NN: Returned from a research trip. On the trail of the colonial enterprise "Kingdom of Hanauisch India" . In: Hanauer Anzeiger v. August 10, 1957.
  • KD (= Karl Dielmann), In Memoriam. Ferdinand Hahnzog . New magazine for Hanau history vol. 5 no. 3, 1969, p. 41 f.
  • W.-A. Nagel-Stiftung, Hanauer Geschichtsverein u. Magistrate of the City of Hanau (Ed.): Buried - but not forgotten. Well-known personalities at Hanau cemeteries. 2008, p. 238 f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Typewritten script, see: Literature and Sources.
  2. ↑ Typewritten script, p. 5.
  3. ↑ Typewritten script, p. 13.
  4. ↑ Typewritten script, p. 15.
  5. ↑ Typewritten script, p. 12.
  6. ↑ http://holocaust-history-archive.com/wp/category/ss-personnel/sturmbannf%E2%80%8Buhrer-major-ferdinand-hahnzog-kommandeur-gendarmerie-distriks-lublin/
  7. ↑ Typewritten script, p. 9f.
personal data
SURNAME Hahnzog, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Historian and policeman
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1969
Place of death Dörnigheim