Friedrich Mußgay

Friedrich Mußgay (around 1940)

Paul Emil Friedrich Mußgay (born January 3, 1892 in Ludwigsburg , † September 3, 1946 in Stuttgart by suicide ) was a German criminal adviser , SS-Obersturmbannführer and head of the Stuttgart State Police Headquarters .

Family, training, war and police service

As the son of the caretaker Georg Friedrich Mußgay and his wife Karoline Bay, he grew up in simple circumstances. On his father's side, his grandfather and great-grandfather worked as a butcher in the rural countryside. His mother's ancestors also lived in the country. After elementary and middle school, he went to high school. He aspired to a career in administration. For this purpose he went to Stuttgart to the administrative school, where he met Robert Scholl and was in contact with him later.

From July 1913 to April he prepared as an assistant for the middle administrative career, where he took part in the First World War from August 1914 to December 1918 . His training as an assistant took him to Esslingen am Neckar , Ellwangen and Mergentheim . From May 1917 he joined the police force at the police headquarters in Stuttgart. He finished his military service as first lieutenant in the reserve. In August 1920 he was promoted to administrative secretary, only to be appointed police commissioner a year later. In the police headquarters in Stuttgart, he worked at department 3 (intelligence, associations and assembly) in department II b of the political police. Its activities were directed mainly against constitutional opponents from the left political spectrum. He performed with great zeal, so that his colleagues called him "Communist hunter".

Career in the Nazi regime

After being promoted to the Police Council in May 1932, he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 ( membership number 3.227.759) and the SS on April 1, 1933 (SS number 69.594), and in the same month switched to the Württemberg political department State Police Office, which was reorganized. Here he was in charge of the intelligence department. In November 1935 he was appointed criminal councilor. In 1937 he became Head of Department 2 in the State Police Office. His duties included not only tracking down opponents of the Nazi regime by collecting reports, but also questioning those arrested by means of threats and other coercive measures. From 1938 he was also employed in the security service of the Reichsführer SS in the SD main office . In 1938 he was transferred to Brno to set up the state police station in Brno, for which he was awarded a medal in December 1939.

Use in Eastern Europe during World War II

Whether Mußgay was deployed in occupied Poland as the deputy head of the state police headquarters in Katowice between November / December 1939 and May 1940 has not been established without any doubt. In 2003, Stephen Richards published a search report by Simon Wiesenthal in his book Crime Through Time , in which an SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Mußgay was named as commander of the Security Police (SiPo) in SD-Einsatzkommandos III within Einsatzgruppe A in Russia at Army Group North . More details about this message are not known.

Head of the State Police Control Center in Stuttgart

Until May 2, 1940, SS-Sturmbannführer and Councilor Rudolf Erwin Lange was deputy head of the Stuttgart State Police Headquarters . Lange was delegated to the Berlin State Police Headquarters, so that Mußgay was to serve as a representative for the head of the Stuttgart State Police Headquarters, SS-Sturmbannführer and Senior Government Councilor Joachim Boes . Boes was drafted into the Wehrmacht on June 21 and fell in July 1941, so that Mußgay was head of the Stuttgart state police station until April 20, 1945. Up to this point Mußgay had to reckon with the rivalry of the ascended academics of the Nazi regime, who were preferred to the older Mußgay, who had come from the criminal investigation department. So he had to wait for government councilor Wilhelm Harster , SS-Sturmbannführer and government councilor Schröder to be transferred or called up , and then for Lange to get into the management level of the Gestapo in Stuttgart. Mußgay's deputy was SS-Sturmbannführer and criminal director Hans-Joachim Engelbrecht .

Execution of Polish slave laborers

The state police headquarters in Stuttgart were responsible for the Welzheim protective custody camp , to which they assigned prisoners. Towards the end of 1941 the first Polish forced laborers were executed in a quarry near Boxeiche. Ludwig Thumm , criminal secretary of the Stuttgart Gestapo, had chosen the place of execution . Mußgay was personally present at the first executions and read the orders for the execution, which were translated by an interpreter. At this point in time there was neither a preliminary judicial investigation nor a verdict for such executions.

Even before the violence over the slave laborers was transferred entirely to the Gestapo on November 5, 1942, Mußgay worked out a pattern of execution that was valid in his area of ​​responsibility and provided for the following:

• A suitable area was selected, which should be cordoned off to the local population at the time of the execution.
• The mayors of the surrounding communities received an order equivalent to an order to appear for the execution with the forced laborers of the same nationality employed in their community.
• For the executions outside the prison grounds, a mobile gallows was made in the carpenter's workshop of the Welzheim concentration camp, which was brought to the place of execution together with the prisoner.
• The chief of execution read an execution order in front of the prisoner and the assembled forced laborers, which was then translated by a Polish-speaking interpreter. Mußgay himself, his deputy Hans-Joachim Engelbrecht, or another police officer who was subordinate to him and delegated from Stuttgart acted as the chief of execution.
• The execution was then carried out by compatriots who were forced to do so. The gallows had a small staircase: three steps. While the noose was placed around the neck of the executed man on the third step, someone stood on the first step as a counterweight. As the height of the fall was very small, the executed died in agony from suffocation. The execution of the execution was documented photographically.
• The body was picked up by a van that took it to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Tübingen .

Mußgay used to attend executions in person: both in 1942 and after. On June 11, 1942, he attended the execution of the Polish slave laborer Stanisław Jóźwik in Oberndorf am Neckar , where Ludwig Thumm was the leader of the execution squad . On October 19, 1942, he was present at the execution of Marian Świderski, who was accused of having an affair with a German woman, in Egenhausen near Calw . Whether he directed the execution of the Polish slave laborer Czesław Trzciński in Rappach near Bretzfeld on November 11, 1942 can no longer be proven, but it is probable. Mußgay also led the execution of the Polish slave laborer Aleksander Krześciak (born March 27, 1923 in Wilkowisko ) in a quarry near Güglingen on January 8, 1943 .

Persecution and deportation of Jews

On June 10, 1941, Mußgay had issued a decree in which he announced the “undoubtedly coming final solution to the Jewish question ”. On November 18, 1941, Mußgay ordered 1,000 Jews to arrive at the Killesberg exhibition center on November 27, 1941 . The Jews were on 1 December 1941 in the Reichskommissariat east of Riga deported , for the purpose of "Entjudung", in the words of Mußgay. Just a month later, Mußgay arranged for the second transport of 278 Jews to the Generalgouvernement , in the area of Lublin . On August 22, 1942, Mußgay organized the deportation of over 900 Jews to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Further deportations took place on March 1, 1943 with 17 people, 19 people on April 16, 1943 and 23 people in June 1943. In total, over 2,600 people were deported via the Stapo control center under Mußgay, most of whom were killed.

Execution of resistance fighters and escape

Then Mußgay had a search for Jews who, according to the Nazi terminology of the Nuremberg race laws, lived in a so-called mixed marriage . He continued these actions with a decree of January 26, 1945 when he had remaining Jewish citizens sent to the Bietigheim camp for forced labor. Until then, the camp had the function of distributing forced labor across southwest Germany. Shortly before Mußgay's escape from Stuttgart on April 20, 1945 - the state police headquarters was officially closed on April 11 - prisoners who had not been evacuated were murdered by the Gestapo. Mußgay had three prisoners, Hermann Schlotterbeck (member of the Luginsland resistance group ), Gottlieb Aberle and Andreas Stadtler executed in the forest near Riedlingen on April 19, 1945 (there is a memorial at the entrance to the Riedlingen sewage treatment plant). Mußgay and his wife fled through the Neckar valley to the Swabian Alb .

The Allies had Mußgay as criminals in the September 30, 1944 under List of Potential War Criminals Proposed US Policy Directives listed. In April or May 1945 Mußgay was arrested and taken to the Stuttgart military prison. Since he was awaiting trial as a war criminal , he committed suicide there on September 3, 1946 by hanging in his cell.

SS ranks

• April 20, 1938: SS Untersturmführer
• September 11, 1938: SS-Hauptsturmführer
• April 20, 1939: SS-Sturmbannführer
• November 9, 1943: SS-Obersturmbannführer

literature

• Roland Maier: Friedrich Mußgay. Gestapo chief and organizer of the deportations of Jews. In: Hermann G. Abmayr (Ed.): Stuttgarter NS-Täter. From fellow travelers to mass murderers. Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-89657-136-6 , pp. 120-125.
• Ingrid Bauz, Sigrid Brüggemann, Roland Maier (eds.): The Secret State Police in Württemberg and Hohenzollern. Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 3-89657-138-9 .
• Heinz H. Poker, Bernhard Rolf: Chronicle of the city of Stuttgart. 1967.
• Julius Schätzle: Stations to Hell - Concentration Camps in Baden and Württemberg 1933-1945. Röderberg, Frankfurt a. M. 1974, ISBN 3-87682-035-9 .
• Jürgen Schuhladen-Krämer: The executors of terror: Hermann Mattheiss, Walther Stahlecker, Friedrich Mußgay - head of the secret state police station in Stuttgart. In: Michael Kißener , Joachim Scholtyseck (Ed.): The leaders of the province - Nazi biographies from Baden and Württemberg. Universitätsverlag, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-87940-566-2 .
• Friedrich Wilhelm: The Württemberg police in the Third Reich. Stuttgart 1989, DNB 900825480 , pp. 405-443.

Web links

• Biographical overview by Friedrich Mußgay on Zeichen-der-erinnerung.org
• Deportation order, signed by Friedrich Mußgay on August 14, 1942, for Jews from Württemberg
• Virtual history location Hotel Silber A project from the House of History Baden-Württemberg to the State Police Headquarters in Stuttgart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See: Roland Maier: Friedrich Mußgay. Gestapo chief and organizer of the deportations of Jews. In: Hermann G. Abmayr (Ed.): Stuttgarter NS-Täter. From fellow travelers to mass murderers. Stuttgart 2009, pp. 120-125.
2. ↑ Four letters have been received (two signed by Mußgay in connection with the execution of Jan Budzyń on May 27, 1942 and two signed by Hans-Joachim Engelbrecht , on behalf of Mußgay, in connection with the execution of Franciszek Gacek on April 23, 1942) . Two of these letters are addressed to the local mayors, asking them to appear at the execution site with the (in this case Polish) forced laborers. Based on statements it is known that such commands comparable to the commands were written regularly.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Schlotterbeck : The darker the night, the brighter the stars. Memories of a German Worker 1933–1945. With an afterword by Christa Wolf , Stuttgart 1986, pp. 150–154.
4. ↑ This also applied to the district of the Karlsruhe State Police Control Center , which was partially subordinate to the Stuttgart State Police Control Center. In the General State Archive of Karlsruhe in the holdings “465e Polizeikasse Karlsruhe” there are, among other things, business travel expense reports from the employees of the Karlsruhe State Police Control Center. In the brief description of the external activities of a police officer, trips to "special treatment of a Pole" can be found, which corresponded to an external execution. - Roland Maier: Gottfried Mauch. The horror of the slave laborers. In: Hermann G. Abmayr (Ed.): Stuttgarter NS-Täter. From fellow travelers to mass murderers. Verlag Hermann G. Abmayr, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 140-145.
5. ^ Konrad Wüest Edler von Vellberg: Dachau. Experiences in the concentration camp. Tübingen undated (approx. 1948), p. 16.
6. ↑ Towards the end of the war, photography was neglected. Friedrich Schlotterbeck, among others, confirmed the existence of the photo documentation. This documentation was completely destroyed at the end of the war.
7. ^ Report of the Oberndorf am Neckar Police Department from June 12, 1942
8. ↑ Jürgen Schuhladen-Krämer: The executors of terror. Hermann Mattheiß, Walther Stahlecker, Friedrich Mußgay - Head of the Secret State Police Headquarters in Stuttgart. In: Michael Kißener, Joachim Scholtyseck (ed.): The leaders of the province. Nazi biographies from Baden and Württemberg. (= Karlsruhe Contributions to the History of National Socialism, Vol. 2). Konstanz 1997, p. 436; The exact place of execution and the date can be found in the anatomy book of the University of Tübingen
9. ↑ Udo Grausam: "I did not see the manipulation of hanging because I looked away": Wilhelm Dambacher. In: Wolfgang Proske (Hrsg.): Perpetrators helpers free riders. Nazi victims from the Ulm / Neu-Ulm area. (= Perpetrator helper free rider , vol. 2). Klemm + Oelschläger, Münster and Ulm 2013, ISBN 978-3-86281-062-8 , pp. 41–49, here in particular pp. 42f.
10. ↑ Ingrid Bauz, Sigrid Brüggemann, Roland Maier (eds.): The Secret State Police in Württemberg and Hohenzollern. Stuttgart 2013, p. 20.