Friedrich Wimmer (Administrative Lawyer)

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Wimmer (left), as General Commissioner in the Netherlands, The Hague June 21, 1940.

Friedrich Wimmer (* 9. July 1897 in Salzburg , † 2. August 1965 in Regensburg ) was an Austrian jurist in the time of National Socialism . Among other things, he was Austrian State Secretary in the Seyß-Inquart cabinet , President of Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate, and Commissioner General of Administration and Justice in the occupied Netherlands under Arthur Seyß-Inquart .

biography

Proclamation of the police standing, 1943.

Wimmer came from a nationally minded family. The bookbinder's son completed his school career after attending elementary school and the state high school in his hometown with the Matura . From 1915 to 1918 he took part in the First World War as a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was discharged from the army as a reserve lieutenant at the end of the war .

He began studying at the University of Vienna in April 1915 , which he interrupted three months after the start of the war for the duration of the war. After the end of the war he continued his studies with a major in art history under Josef Strzygowski , whose racial theories exerted an influence on Wimmer. In 1920 he moved from Vienna to the University of Gothenburg , where he also worked as an assistant at the museum in Gothenburg . On July 12, 1922, he was awarded a doctorate in Vienna with his work “The early Christian stone architecture in Sweden”. phil. PhD . In 1923 he passed the examination for teaching at secondary schools. From 1926 he studied law at the University of Vienna and was awarded a Dr. iur. PhD. After working as an unskilled worker at the Art History Institute of the University of Vienna, he worked as an archaeologist at the Lower Austrian State Museum from 1928 and subsequently became a Lower Austrian state archaeologist .

After completing his law degree, he joined the Lower Austrian provincial government in 1930. From February 1934 he belonged to the NSDAP , to which he was re-admitted in March 1938 ( membership number 6.330.487). In the NSDAP he made a career as a legal advisor to Josef Leopold , Edmund Glaise von Horstenau and Seyß-Inquart. In the Austrian corporate state , he also made, in spite of his illegal membership in the NSDAP career. On December 22, 1935, he became Ministerial Secretary in the Austrian Chancellery .

During the preparations for the "annexation" of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Wimmer joined the SS on March 12, 1938 (SS no. 308.221) and was appointed State Secretary to the cabinet on March 13, 1938 . In cooperation with the German administration, he worked out the law on the reunification of Austria with the German Empire . After the connection, Wimmer headed the legal harmonization department as State Secretary for the Interior, in particular organizing the adjustment of the administration and its structure to the structures of the so-called "old empire". From August 4, 1939, he was State Commissioner at Reichsstatthalter Seyss-Inquart.

Wimmer was also a member of the NSV , NSRB and RDB . In May 1939 he became Gaugruppenwalter administrative law custodian at the Gaufführung Vienna of the NSRB.

From September 8, 1939, initially on a provisional basis, from April 1, 1940, he was finally the district president in Regensburg, responsible for Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate , an office he officially held until September 14, 1943. As early as May 1940 he held a central position in the occupation administration of the Netherlands as Commissioner General for Administration and Justice under Reichskommissar Seyß-Inquart, and from 1944 he was acting as Commissioner General for Economics and Finance. He held these positions until 1945, when he handed over the business to the Dutch government on the orders of the British. In mid-May 1942 he reached his highest SS rank with the SS when he was promoted to SS Brigadefuhrer .

From May 1945 to August 1947 he was a British prisoner of war and then until March 1949 in the internment hospital Garmisch-Partenkirchen. His denazification took place on March 17, 1949 in Regensburg as a fellow traveler in Group IV.

On June 13 and 14, 1946, Wimmer was questioned as a defense witness during the Nuremberg Trials of Major War Criminals regarding the occupation in the Netherlands . In 1947 he was interviewed by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation , but the Dutch judiciary refrained from prosecuting him. In 1957 the Austrian judiciary stopped the proceedings against him due to the Austrian NS amnesty , about which he obtained a decision from a lawyer a year later.

From 1949 to 1953 he was head of the legal department in the management of Mannheim life insurance .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Graf: Austrian SS Generals. Himmler's reliable vassals. Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2012, p. 148.
  2. ^ International Military Court of Nuremberg (ed.): The trial of the main war criminals before the International Court of Justice in Nuremberg. (November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946). Official text in German. , Nuremberg 1947, Volume 16, pp. 202-232.
personal data
SURNAME Wimmer, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian National Socialist administrative lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzburg
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1965
Place of death regensburg