Günter Peis

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Günter Alexander Peis (born July 23, 1927 in Leoben ; † July 19, 2012 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian journalist and historian . He was one of the pioneers of investigative journalism . As a central research method, Peis used the systematic questioning of contemporary witnesses ( oral history ).

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Günter Peis was a student at a national political educational institution . At the age of 17 he was drafted into the Volkssturm . He spent ten months in captivity. As part of an American re-education program, he came to a journalism school in Munich under the direction of Erich Kästner . From there he was delegated to the Nuremberg Trials as an observer .

As the youngest journalist (19) at the Nuremberg Trials, on the night of October 16, 1946, Peis observed the execution of the main war criminals sentenced to death from a skylight. One hour ahead of the other eight hundred reporters, he was the first to report the execution of Joachim von Ribbentrop , Wilhelm Keitel and eight other convicts, which had been carried out in the greatest secrecy .

In 1951 his report Behind the Walls of Spandau appeared in the Revue . His detailed information from the prison in Berlin-Spandau and his photos, u. a. by Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer , went around the world.

In 1952 Peis tracked down the former SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks , who had gone into hiding in Hamburg under a false name . He had already met him at the Nuremberg Trials and initially thought his testimony about the attack on the Gleiwitz station was a propaganda lie by the Allies.

In 1952 Peis married the Austrian skier Dagmar Rom .

In 1958 his book Hitler's Spies and Saboteurs appeared in New York , which he had written with Charles Wighton. It revealed secret landing and espionage operations of the German Abwehr in the United States.

In 1959, his series I was Hitler's Secret Lover went around the world. Through Adolf Hitler's sister Paula , who lived in Berchtesgaden under the name Paula Wolf, Peis had found the trace of Hitler's secret lover Maria Reiter . The love letters he discovered from Hitler are - in contrast to the Hitler diaries published by Stern in 1983 - recognized as authentic.

At the end of 1959 - twenty years after the citizen brewery attack - Peis published a large 8-part series about Georg Elser in the weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag under the title “Zieh 'dich aus, Georg Elser!” . Peis opposed the prevailing opinion of traditional historical research, which at that time still assessed the Bürgerbräuattentat as a self-portrayal of the National Socialists and Georg Elser as their tool. Georg Elser Research has now confirmed Peis' research results at the time.

In 1960 his biography of Alfred Naujocks appeared under the title The Man Who Started The War . The book was first published in London, but was also a sales success in the USA, Canada, France, South America and Japan. To this day, no publisher has been found for a German edition of this time document. In this book, Naujocks also reports on his role in the Venlo incident , which is related to Georg Elser.

In 1964, Peis and the journalist Ernst Petry published in Stern the protocols of the Gestapo interrogation of the civic brew bomber Georg Elser , which the historian Lothar Gruchmann had just discovered . At the same time he put forward the theory that Elser was a member of a communist troika .

In the 1960s, Peis wrote children's books about a Tyrolean boy named Mario. With a 12-part television series Mario , Peis achieved international film success as a screenwriter and producer . His new career as an opera singer - after studying singing with Apollo Granforte in Milan , Peis a. a. heard on ORF as Othello - but ended after a failed throat operation.

In 1976, in his book The Mirror of Deception , published in London, Peis exposed a German double spy who had supplied the German defense system from Great Britain with false reports for years. This book was published in Germany in the same year, albeit under the pseudonym Günter Alexander (the two first names of Peis) and the title So Germany went into the trap . In 1981 the book was reprinted, this time under its real name and the title Mirror of Deception .

In 1995 Peis put forward a theory in Focus about the murder of Georg Elser, according to which the order of the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller to liquidate Elser, discovered by Sigismund Payne Best in 1945, was a forgery.

Honors

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Günter Peis at georg-elser-arbeitskreis.de. Retrieved July 7, 2015.
  2. ^ Peter Koblank: Was Georg Elser a member of a communist troika? , Online edition Myth Elser 2006.
  3. Peter Koblank: Is the order to liquidate Georg Elser a forgery? , Online edition Myth Elser 2007.