Friedrich Tillmann

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Friedrich Tillmann (born August 6, 1903 in Mülheim am Rhein ; † February 12, 1964 in Cologne ), was director of welfare orphan care in the city of Cologne in the National Socialist German Reich and from 1940 to 1942 also head of the office department of the "euthanasia" Action T4 “ central service point T4 .

Life

Friedrich Tillmann was born the son of a master blacksmith; he had two younger brothers. After attending elementary school for four years, he entered the state high school. After a year he moved to a secondary school , later to a private school, where he obtained secondary school leaving certificate in 1921. In the same year he began a commercial apprenticeship.

Like his parents, Tillmann was deeply influenced by the Catholic faith . Politically, he felt connected to certain national directions: During his apprenticeship he turned to right-wing youth organizations; In 1923 he joined the NSDAP . He was seriously injured by a knife in a politically motivated brawl. After the NSDAP ban of November 1923, Tillmann joined the “ Schilljugend ” founded by the former Freikorpsführer Gerhard Roßbach and became a “Gauführer” in this organization.

After the re-admission of the NSDAP, he rejoined on June 27, 1925 ( membership number 13,351). He worked in National Socialist youth organizations and got to know many party members who promoted his career in their later leadership positions; including Viktor Brack , who as SS-Obergruppenführer in 1936 became the chief officer of the Führer’s office .

Tillmann's professional career was initially unsuccessful. He hired himself in changing job opportunities in an uncle's candy factory, as a photo demonstrator in schools, as a commando leader of an amateur play group for the "Ekkehard" games and as an employee for the 14th German archery. His poor financial situation obviously prevented him from paying the dues for his party membership, so he was expelled in August 1928. A short-term job as editor for the "Niederrheinische Tageszeitung" ended in July 1931 when the German banking crisis worsened the economic crisis in Germany .

After the National Socialists came to power , he rejoined the party on May 1, 1933 and was able to begin his professional career with the city of Cologne: first he was a temporary employee, then a consultant in the youth welfare office, then (probably because of his extraordinary organizational talent) on May 1 October 1933 director of welfare orphan care with the salary of a senior government councilor .

Johann Peter Mauel (1873–1944) was the first director of welfare orphan care and Tillmann's predecessor . He had not joined the NSDAP and was released at the age of 60. All homes of the administrative district of the city of Cologne and some private institutions were subordinate to Tillmann. Tillmann had his official residence in the orphanage in Cologne-Sülz .

At that time and later, Tillmann was not a comfortable party member ; despite the sharpest reprimands, he kept clashing with party officials. This was also due to his deeply devout Catholic attitude: So he succeeded against considerable opposition that crucifixes remain in the rooms or that church services could and were carried out in the orphanage. Once Tillmann took part in a Corpus Christi procession in his party uniform; therefore he was banned from uniforms by the NSDAP. To reassure NSDAP functionaries, Tillman resigned from the church in early 1943.

To the Ministry of the Interior with the organization of the Nazi "euthanasia" program, the targeted killing of sick and disabled (in the parlance since 1945 "T4"), commissioned Ministerialdirigenten Herbert Linden learned Tillmann end of 1939 to know at a meeting in Dusseldorf. Linden caused Tillmann to create a mobilization plan for the evacuation of children's and infant homes. At that time, Tillmann had already planned an evacuation of the Cologne-Sülz municipal children's home to the Steinfeld monastery and had made initial preparations.

In February or March 1940, Tillmann was recruited as the successor to Gerhard Bohne to head the office department of the T4 central office . He carried out this activity in addition to his office in Cologne by moving into a room on the top floor of the T4 headquarters and commuting between Berlin and Cologne every two weeks and inspecting individual gassing plants in between.

He described his duties as follows:

“Initially, the office department was only responsible for supervising the registry offices. Later the supervision of the office work in the institutions, which followed the killings that had already taken place, was added. This included, in particular, the supervision of the so-called consolation letter departments [they had to inform the surviving relatives of those killed by means of standardized letters of condolence] and the dispatch of urns. "

On the occasion of the monthly meetings for the office managers of the individual gassing plants, Tillmann also personally watched the killings. In order to avoid that an accumulation of death reports aroused suspicion, he set up a so-called "staking department", the activities of which he described as follows:

"Since the [d. H. remarkably high death toll from an institution] was, as experience shows, capable of endangering the secrecy of the entire operation, I ordered that large cards be affixed to the walls in each of the registry offices, on which everyone could use a colored needle, similar to the general staff cards own notarizations ... were recorded ... [So] one could immediately determine whether another death had occurred recently in the vicinity of the homeland of this person who had been killed. If so, the death was recorded as having occurred at a different time and possibly even at a different location. "

As thanks for his repeated efforts after the bombing raids (evacuation of infants and children from several children's homes), Tillmann received the War Merit Cross, 2nd class without swords , on November 7, 1943, and on December 22, 1943 , after he had left the central office T4 in 1942 for his services as office manager of the T4-Aktion the decoration of honor for German people care presented by the head of the main department IIa of the chancellery of the Führer, Oberführer Werner Blankenburg .

After bombs destroyed 90% of the children's home in Cologne-Sülz on the night of February 21, 1943, Tillmann and his family moved to Steinfeld Monastery, where most of the evacuated children lived. Tillmann hid two Jewish girls there. Tillmann also took in sisters from the poor child Jesus (founded by Clara Fey ) who were expelled from Luxembourg in the Cologne orphanage.

Many party leaders did not agree with Tillmann's arbitrariness. Alfons Schaller, who is responsible for the "left Rhine south" district :

"After the war was won, he could run away with the" black nuns ", then there would be no more use for them and their" black brother in disguise "in the orphanage."

Finally, in the late summer of 1944 - although retired - Tillmann was drafted into the military and sent to the Eastern Front , where he was deployed as a flak helper .

After the end of the war, Tillmann was interned by the Allies and released in July 1946. An application for reinstatement from the city of Cologne on September 17, 1949 failed because of the ongoing denazification proceedings . On March 28, 1950, the city of Cologne determined that he was no longer entitled to the office of director of welfare orphan care. In 1951, Tillmann withdrew a lawsuit against this decision at the Cologne Administrative Court . On September 22nd, 1953, however, the city of Cologne granted him the title of “Director of welfare orphan care z. Wv. ”(For reuse). However, this never happened. Tillmann initially worked as an employee at “Heimstatt e. V. “in Opladen . From November 1951 until the end of 1956 he worked as the home manager of the youth hostel of the city of Wolfsburg and then took over the management of the home “St. Barbara ”in Castrop-Rauxel .

On 15 July 1960 he was in custody arrested and accused of "having promoted the killing of about 70,000 adult inmates of hospitals and nursing homes," the. By order of the Dortmund Regional Court on June 29, 1961 (10 Js 38/60), he was granted exemption from detention . In March 1963 the proceedings against him were combined with the proceedings pending at the Limburg Regional Court against the medical director of Aktion T4, Werner Heyde , Hans Hefelmann , the former head of the main department IIb of the Führer’s office, and against Gerhard Bohne, his predecessor in the office department the T4 central office. The main hearing was scheduled to begin on February 18, 1964. A week earlier, on February 12, 1964, Tillmann fell from the eighth floor of the Federal Administration Office , which had been completed in 1962 on the Habsburgerring .

It has never been possible to determine whether Tillmann committed suicide or died in an accident without external interference. Tillmann was a diabetic and asthmatic. On the day he died, he complained of shortness of breath and heartache. It was then suspected that he had a sudden asthma attack, opened a window, and leaned out too far. A suicide note was never found.

When one day later the main defendant Heyde committed suicide in the Butzbach penal institution despite tightened safeguards , Attorney General Fritz Bauer expressed the "suspicion of a tacit agreement between those involved not to allow this trial to take place." The proceedings against the two remaining defendants did not lead to a verdict either: it was no longer continued against Hans Hefelmann from September 1964 and against Gerhard Bohne from October 1968 due to incapacity to stand trial. Bohne died on July 8, 1981, Hefelmann on April 12, 1986.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state . 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
  • Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
  • Ernst Klee: "Friedrich Tillmann" , entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 12.
  • Klaus Schmidt : I acted out of pity. The Cologne orphanage director and NS “euthanasia” commissioner Friedrich Tillmann (1903-1964). Metropol, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-940938-71-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schmidt, “I acted out of pity” , p. 20; Laurenz Kiesgen : Johann Peter Mauel "A memorial sheet" p. 19
  2. ↑ Schmidt, “I acted out of pity” , p. 23.
  3. ^ Letter from Paul Hermesdorf (religion teacher in the orphanage) of September 19, 1960 to Tillmann's lawyer Robert Servatius
  4. ↑ Schmidt, “I acted out of pity” , p. 26.
  5. ^ Carl Dietmar and Werner Jung : Cologne. The great city history . 1st edition. Klartext, Essen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8375-1487-2 , p. 416 .
  6. ↑ Testimony of March 21, 1961 before the examining magistrate of the Dortmund Regional Court (10 Js 38/60, StA Dortmund), quoted from Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became , p. 35.
  7. ↑ Testimony of March 21, 1961 before the examining magistrate of the Dortmund Regional Court (10 Js 38/60, StA Dortmund), quoted from Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became , p. 36.
  8. ↑ Schmidt, “I acted out of pity”, p. 84.
  9. ^ Letter from Paul Hermesdorf (religion teacher in the orphanage) of September 19, 1960 to Tillmann's lawyer Robert Servatius.
  10. ↑ Schmidt, “I acted out of pity” , p. 60.
  11. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 8/1964
personal data
SURNAME Tillmann, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German head of the office department of the National Socialist murders, director of welfare orphan care in Cologne
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim am Rhein
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1964
Place of death Cologne