Fritz Weitzel

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Fritz Weitzel

Friedrich Philipp Weitzel (born April 27, 1904 in Frankfurt am Main ; † June 19, 1940 in Düsseldorf ) was a German politician (NSDAP), police president and SS-Obergruppenführer .

Life before 1933

After an apprenticeship as a locksmith , Weitzel was active in the Socialist Workers' Youth . In 1924 he became a member of the SA , in 1925 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 18.833). In 1926 Weitzel was accepted into the SS (SS no. 408). Weitzel's career in the SS and NSDAP was unusually steep: at the end of the 1920s he held management positions in the SS in Hessen-Nassau and later in the Rhineland ; on November 18, 1929 he was appointed SS-Standartenführer . In the Reichstag election in 1930 Weitzel was elected to the Reichstag for the NSDAP and promoted to SS-Gruppenführer in December 1931 . On May 12, 1932, Weitzel was involved in an assault on journalist Helmuth Klotz in the Reichstag restaurant. Weitzel and three other NSDAP MPs were expelled from parliament for 30 days; the session had to be broken off as the excluded refused to leave the plenary session. On May 14, Weitzel, like the NSDAP MPs Wilhelm Stegmann and Edmund Heines, was sentenced to three months in prison for collective assault and assault by the Berlin-Mitte rapid lay judges' court.

Career from 1933 to 1940

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Weitzel was appointed police chief of Düsseldorf on May 1, 1933 . Without any adequate training, but as a staunch National Socialist, he replaced the democratic chief of police and administrative lawyer Hans Langels , who was put into early retirement by the Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Göring . As a result of Weitzel, National Socialism in the Düsseldorf area experienced a strong brutalization. From 1934 to 1940 he was the leader of the SS and SD Upper Section West and also promoted the binding of the Düsseldorf State Police Headquarters, established in 1933, to the SS and their security service (SD). From September 1933 he was a member of the Prussian State Council and had the overall management of the State Police Authority with its seat in the police headquarters . On September 9, 1934, he was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer.

Weitzel also took part personally in interrogations and torture in the phase of the "seizure of power", as described, for example, by Wolfgang Langhoff in his book Die Moorsoldaten . The “Razzia von Gerresheim” on May 5, 1933, known in local historiography, was the result of Weitzel's initiative: In the workers' quarter there were extremely brutal attacks by the police, SS and SA; numerous KPD members and social democrats were captured and publicly ridiculed. From 1935/1936 Weitzel took a clear position against Catholicism. As police president, he banned processions and public appearances by church groups in the city and published a hate speech against Catholic priests and religious in the phase of moral trials against religious and priests during National Socialism .

From 1938 he was appointed by his friend Heinrich Himmler as Higher SS and Police Leader "West" (HSSPF) based in Düsseldorf and thus had temporary access to over 200,000 police, SS and Sipo men. After the occupation of Norway by German troops, Weitzel became HSSPF "Nord" in April 1940, based in Oslo . His successor as HSSPF West was SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Berkelmann . Weitzel died in an air raid on Düsseldorf while on home leave: near Martin-Luther-Platz, the heavily drunk Weitzel was hit by a grenade after he carelessly got out of his company car. The funeral in Düsseldorf was an act of mourning staged by the National Socialists, in which the head of the Ordnungspolizei SS-Obergruppenführer Kurt Daluege , the Rhenish President Josef Terboven and NSDAP Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian took part. SS-Standarte 20 (Düsseldorf) was given the honorary name of SS-Standarte Fritz Weitzel two days after Weitzel's death, on June 21, 1940, by Führer order . Weitzel's successor as police chief was his deputy August Korreng , his successor as HSSPF Nord was Wilhelm Rediess , who had also served in the 20th SS standard in Düsseldorf.

Writings by Fritz Weitzel

  • Weitzel, Fritz: The organization of festivals in the course of the year and life in the SS family. With 5 photos and songs , Düsseldorf 1935.
  • Weitzel, Fritz: You should recognize them by their actions! 90 articles in the Rheinische Landeszeitung from November 1933 - July 1936 . Mönchengladbach 1936
  • Weitzel, Fritz: Explanations of the order laws of the SS, ed. on behalf of the SS Upper Section West . Düsseldorf / Wuppertal 1938.

Awards

See also

literature

  • Köhler, Thomas: Himmler's extended arm in Rhineland and Westphalia. The Higher SS and Police Leader West , in: Dams, Carsten / Dönecke, Klaus / Köhler, Thomas (ed.): “Service to the people”? Düsseldorf police officers between democracy and dictatorship, Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 203–234.
  • Joachim Lilla : The state police administration in Düsseldorf 1926–1945 , in: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch 73 (2002), pp. 217–294.
  • Fleermann, Bastian / Frank Sparing / Astrid Wolters: From the place of terror to the memorial. On the history of the Düsseldorfer Stadthaus , in: Gedenkstättenrundbrief, ed. by Thomas Lutz on behalf of the Topography of Terror Foundation, Volume 155 (2010), pp. 18-25.
  • Fleermann, Bastian: "... pursue until it is destroyed". Wave of arrests and violence against political opponents in the spring of 1933 in Düsseldorf , in: Rhein-Maas. Studies in history, language and culture. Edited by Jörg Engelbrecht, Simone Frank, Christian Krumm and Holger Schmenk , 1/2010, pp. 167–198.
  • Ruth Bettina Birn : The Higher SS and Police Leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1986.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Herbert Linder: From the NSDAP to the SPD. The political life of Dr. Hemuth Klotz (1894-1943). (= Karlsruhe contributions to the history of National Socialism. Volume 3) Universitätsverlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1995, ISBN 3-87940-607-3 , p. 174ff. Communication in the Reichstag session by Reichstag President Paul Löbe , see minutes of the Reichstag session of May 12, 1932
  2. ↑ 3. State Police Administration (Police Headquarters) , in the address book of the city of Düsseldorf, 1934, p. 10
  3. ^ See Fleermann, arrest wave (2010).
  4. ^ Rusinek, Bernd-A .: Raid in Gerresheim. Access to a “red” territory, in: Genger, Angela (Red.): Experienced and suffered. Gerresheim under National Socialism, 2nd improved edition 1995, pp. 52–64.
  5. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts: The morality trials against Catholic religious and priests 1936-1937. A study on the National Socialist rule technique and the church struggle . Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1971, ISBN 3-7867-0312-4 .
  6. ↑ Rheinische Landeszeitung from June 21, 1940.
  7. ↑ Various inflammatory articles from the Rheinische Landeszeitung from November 28, 1933 to July 20, 1936 against Catholic clergy, Jesuits , Pallottines , Franciscans and others. a., who because of foreign currency crimes, distribution of Marxist inflammatory pamphlets, moral offenses, high treason, etc. a. were denounced.
personal data
SURNAME Weitzel, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weitzel, Friedrich Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), police president and SS-Obergruppenführer
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH June 19, 1940
Place of death Dusseldorf