Friedrich Karl Vialon

Friedrich Karl Vialon (born July 10, 1905 in Frankfurt am Main ; † April 8, 1990 in Bonn ) was a German lawyer. From 1937 to 1945 and again from 1950 to 1967 he worked in various German government organizations, most recently as State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation . Becoming a member of the NSDAP in 1933, he was entrusted, among other things, from 1942 to 1944 with the "safeguarding of Jewish assets" in the Reichskommissariat Ostland .

Life

Vialon, son of a businessman, attended a humanistic high school and completed his school career in 1924 with the Abitur . He then studied law and did his doctorate with the dissertation published in 1928 The legitimation through subsequent marriage: In Rechtsvergl. Darst. M. esp. d. German, French, English u. Swiss. Right to the Dr. jur. Vialon graduated from law school in 1930 with the second state examination. He then worked as a court assessor at local and regional courts and as a public prosecutor. From 1935 Vialon was employed at the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court , where he worked as a clerk in the Organization and Personnel Department. In June 1937 Vialon moved to the Reich Ministry of Finance , where he was mainly employed in the budget department.

Vialon had joined the NSDAP in May 1933 and was also a member of the NSV , the NS-Rechtswahrerbund , the Reichsbund der Deutschen Officials , the NS-Altherrenbund and the Kolonialbund .

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War , Vialon was drafted into the Wehrmacht on September 1, 1939 . From July 1940 to December 1940 he worked again for the Reich Ministry of Finance as a representative of the Reich Finance Minister in the western reconstruction areas and then as an advisor for various state budgets. From the beginning of May 1942, he served as Councilor in Riga Director of Finance in the Reich Commissariat Ostland . In this function, Vialon was entrusted with the "safeguarding of Jewish assets". Vialon had furniture, precious metals, clothing and other valuables collected and registered and ordered in an instruction of August 27, 1942 that the "exploitation of the labor of the Jews ", [...] "counts as accumulated assets". Vialon, who was promoted to government director in 1942 and to ministerial councilor in 1944 , held this post until October 1944. On June 21, 1943, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler issued an order to “consolidate all Jews still in ghettos in concentration camps ” a secret decree:

"So z. For example, a small part of the previous Riga ghetto is expected to be converted into a concentration camp, in which workshops carry out important military orders ... The management of this concentration camp to be set up is to be taken over by General Commissioner Riga, as I wish ... The financial return should be, how so far, flow to my household. "

However, Vialon's intervention was unsuccessful. In February 1944 he stated at a conference in Riga that the Reichskommissariat Ostland was now heavily in debt:

“From the Jewish property, the Ostland had a proceeds of around four and a half million marks from the sale of furniture, etc., from the sale of Jewish labor a proceeds of five and a half million marks. Because the ghettos have now been dissolved and confiscated by the SS , there is of course no significant gain for the Ostland either. "

Then Vialon worked briefly for the Reich Ministry of Finance. In January 1945 he was reassigned to the Wehrmacht. At the end of the war, he was taken prisoner by the Americans in May 1945, from which he was released in the summer of 1945.

post war period

After his release from captivity, Vialon worked as an economic and tax consultant and from 1949 to 1950 he ran a medium-sized textile company. In March 1950 Vialon joined the Federal Ministry of Finance and initially headed various departments there. In 1951 he was promoted to Ministerial Counselor , in 1954 to Ministerial Director and in 1956 to Ministerial Director. In October 1957 he was given temporary retirement after Franz Etzel had become Federal Minister of Finance. Appointed again in 1958, Vialon was Ministerial Director in the Federal Chancellery until 1962 , where he headed Department II (including economy, agriculture, social affairs and transport). He then became State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation under Minister Walter Scheel . When Minister Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski took office , Vialon was put back into temporary retirement. In addition, Vialon was a lecturer from 1959 and honorary professor for public finance law at Saarbrücken University from 1961 . Vialon was co-editor of the trade journal Die public administration and in 1962 co- founded the administrative board of ZDF , of which he was a member until 1964.

Vialon was heard as a witness in the post-war trial against the former SS leader Georg Heuser . In these proceedings, Vialon was unaware of his previous work as head of the finance department in the Reichskommissariat Ostland and denied having heard of the Holocaust, referring to his work as a household specialist . When asked where the Jewish assets came from, Vialon et al. a. as follows: "The Jews had brought a lot of things in their suitcases into the ghetto." Afterwards Vialon received a complaint for perjury and an investigation was initiated against him. The investigations were supported by public prosecutors from the GDR , who made incriminating files available to the West German judiciary. A short vita for Vialon is also recorded in the GDR Brown Book . After years of investigation, Vialon was acquitted in 1971 by the Koblenz Higher Regional Court . The public prosecutor's office in Bonn also investigated Vialon, in this case on suspicion of being an accessory to murder - the case was closed in 1973.

Vialon lived in Bonn-Kessenich since 1950 . His grave is in the mountain cemetery there .

• 

  Gravestone in the Kessenicher Bergfriedhof

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . 2nd updated edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Dagmar Pöpping (editor): The minutes of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany , Vol. 5: 1951, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525557-58-2 .
• Alexander Friedman, Wolfgang Müller: Nazi professor in Saarbrücken. The case of Friedrich Karl Vialon (1905–1990) . In: OPUS - the culture magazine of the greater region in the heart of Europe , vol. 10, issue 60, March / April 2017, p. 137 (publication from the archive of Saarland University).

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Karl Vialon in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Dagmar Pöpping (editor): The minutes of the council of the Protestant Church in Germany. Volume 5: 1951, Göttingen 2005, p. 615.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Karl Vialon in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 640.
4. ↑ Document VEJ 7/249 in: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German military administration , Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , pp. 649–652 / Contemporary history: Vialon - Collected in the ghettos . In: Der Spiegel , edition of October 9, 1963, number 41, p. 129.
5. ^ Vialon on July 31, 1943 to the General Commissioner. Quoted in: affairs. Vialon. At the standing desk , In: Der Spiegel , issue 21 of May 21, 1965, p. 30
6. ^ Vialon in February 1944 at a conference in Riga . Quoted in: Justice - Vialon - profit of the east country . In: Der Spiegel , issue of November 6, 1967, issue 46, p. 100.
7. ↑ Hans Booms, Konrad Reiser, Federal Government, Federal Archives: The Cabinet Protocols of the Federal Government, Volume 17 - 1964. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, pp. 575f.
8. ^ Justiz - Vialon - Profit des Ostlands, Der Spiegel, issue 46/1967 of November 6, 1967, p. 100
9. ↑ Brief vita in the GDR Brown Book: Vialon, Friedrich Karl - Accountant of the SS murderers ( Memento from January 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
10. ↑ Dieter Partzsch: You once lived in Kessenich. Bonn, 1997, p. 136