Günther Niethammer

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Günther Theodor Niethammer (born September 28, 1908 in Waldheim , † January 14, 1974 in Morenhoven ) was a German ornithologist and a member of the Waffen SS , who was temporarily part of the security team at the Auschwitz concentration camp .

origin

Niethammer was born as the eighth of nine children of the paper manufacturer and Saxon member of the state parliament Konrad Niethammer .

Study and start of an academic career

In April 1927, Niethammer first matriculated in Leipzig . In May of that year he went to the former German South West Africa ( Namibia ) as a “car driver” for six months . His uncle, Rudolf Böhmer, who was friends with the ethnic writer Hans Grimm , had worked in the German colonial administration until 1915 and had invited Niethammer to accompany him and Hans Grimm on their journey to the former German colony in 1927. Returned from Namibia, joined Niethammer in November 1927 by Leipzig to the University of Tübingen , where he was enrolled for four semesters in the subject of General Zoology and member of the connection Saxonia was. From 1929 to 1932 he continued his studies again in Leipzig, where he met Hans Kummerlöwe , an old fighter and since 1925 a member of the NSDAP , with whom he was to become a lifelong friend. In Leipzig, Niethammer received his doctorate in 1933 with the thesis anatomical-histological and physiological studies on goiter formation in birds . From 1937 he was a curator at the Zoological Museum and Reichsinstitut (A. Koenig) in Bonn . Erwin Stresemann entrusted him with the creation of a handbook of German ornithology , which appeared in three volumes from 1937 to 1942 and which became the standard ornithological work for the next few decades. In 1937 Niethammer joined the NSDAP; his membership number was 5613683.

Riveting hammer in World War II

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 and again in early 1940, Niethammer volunteered for service in the Air Force . Despite having a license to fly sport aircraft, he was not accepted because of his age. In April 1940 he became - according to his own statement "at the instigation" of his friend, the later director Hans Kummerlöwe - department head in the Natural History Museum Vienna . In the spring of 1940 Niethammer made another attempt to be accepted into the Wehrmacht , and was again rejected. At the end of May 1940 he finally volunteered for the Waffen SS (SS no. 450730) - he had already joined the General SS in mid-May 1940 - and in September 1940 received a position order for the SS in Oranienburg . There he was immediately transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp , which was followed by brief basic military training until November 1940. Contrary to his expectations, Niethammer did not join an SS front-line unit, but rather, as a member of the SS-Totenkopfsturmbann Auschwitz, belonged to the SS-Totenkopfverband for the guarding and administration of the concentration camps established by the SS. Niethammer remained stationed at Auschwitz from October 1940 to October 1942 with interruptions. On October 16, 1940, the SS man became a member of the 3rd guard company that was deployed at the main gate of the concentration camp. Niethammer, who obviously regretted that his "service with the Waffen SS in the autumn and winter months and also in early spring (...) had given him little time for ornithological observations", submitted an application to the camp commandant Rudolf Hoess to the assignment of other official duties. In June 1941 he was released from guard duty and was assigned "special ornithological tasks" in the vicinity of the concentration camp by Höß. From mid-1941 onwards, completely ignoring the events in the concentration camp, Niethammer investigated the "bird world of Auschwitz", described the "biotope design" of the area between the Vistula and Soła , compiled overviews of individual bird species and prepared bird hides for the local school. The passionate hunter, who in 1941 referred to himself as “a kind of KL SS-Jägermeister” in a letter from Auschwitz, received permission from Höß on June 9, 1941 to shoot “birds and robbery” at the ponds near the camp to deliver the game to the SS guards, but also to Höss personally. A joint hunt with Höss and several hunts with his son Klaus are also documented. On July 1, 1941, he was appointed SS-Sturmmann . Niethammer's approximately 3500 hectare “hunting and investigation area” included the village of Birkenau . Niethammer thus belonged to "that initially extremely exclusive group of SS members who directly witnessed the construction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp from October 1941, the first attempts in the gas chambers and finally the beginning of selection and mass extermination in summer 1942." As early as 1942 published by Hans Kummerlöwe, Niethammer's essay Observations on the Birds of Auschwitz in the Annals of the Natural History Museum Vienna , which was followed by an addendum in 1943 and the title of which inspired Arno Surminski to write his novella Die Vogelwelt von Auschwitz . At the beginning of the article, Niethammer expressly thanks the camp commandant Höß and his adjutant Erich Frommhagen for their "great understanding", which they "always showed towards the scientific development of this area and the research tasks that the German East places on science." After Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945, a bound copy of the special edition of the Niethammer essay was found in Höß 'former office.

From the end of 1941 to the end of August 1942, following an intervention by Fritz von Wettstein , Niethammer was assigned to the High Command of the Wehrmacht Science Department and worked as a zoologist in occupied Greece and Crete . Niethammer published the results of his "biological research trip to the Peloponnese and Crete in 1942, carried out on behalf of the High Command of the Wehrmacht and the Reich Research Council" under the title Contributions to the knowledge of the breeding birds of the Peloponnese . From September to October 1942 he was deployed to Auschwitz concentration camp again, where he continued his “special ornithological tasks”. On October 12, 1942 he was transferred to the “Sven Hedin Reich Institute for Inner Asia and Expeditions” or Sonderkommando K (Caucasus) in Munich under Ernst Schäfer ; in December 1942 appointment as SS-Untersturmführer (F) ( "Fachführer" ). He took part in expeditions of the German Ahnenerbe Forschungsgemeinschaft , which was tasked with finding scientific evidence for the Nazi race theory . In May 1944 he was transferred as a zoologist to the hygiene institute of the Waffen SS in Berlin. Research stays in Bulgaria and Trieste took place in 1944 . Niethammer was promoted for the last time in June 1944 and retrospectively received the rank of SS-Obersturmführer (F) as of May 1, 1944 . From April 22 to May 8, 1945 he was a soldier in the 269th Infantry Division and took part in combat operations in Saxony .

Internment and detention

Niethammer fled to the western occupation zones with civilian clothes and a bicycle belonging to ornithologist Richard Heyder and initially settled in Marburg with his family . Until early 1946 he had various jobs, including as a guard in an orphanage and as a worker in agriculture. When he reported to the British 320th Field Security Section in Bonn in early February 1946 , he was arrested. He was extradited to Poland on November 22, 1946 via two internment camps in Recklinghausen and Neuengamme . There he was sentenced to eight years imprisonment in the first instance by a court in Kraków for membership in the Waffen SS, guard duty in the concentration camp and aiding and abetting crimes there, further loss of public and civil rights for eight years and confiscation of his Condemned property. Niethammer immediately tried to obtain a revision of the judgment. British ornithologists had contacted the Judge Advocate General of the British Army for information on the case. He asked the United Nations Commission to Investigate War Crimes (UNWCC) about individual allegations of guilt. On December 7, 1948, the first judgment was revised. Niethammer has now been sentenced to three years in prison. The court files are archived today at the Institute for National Remembrance in Warsaw . He was imprisoned in Mokotów Prison in Warsaw. He was expelled from Poland between November 10 and 12, 1949.

Academic career in the Federal Republic

At the beginning of 1950 Niethammer became head of the ornithological department at Museum Koenig and in the same year editor of the Bonn Zoological Papers . In 1951 he received his habilitation at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and in 1957 he was appointed professor for ornithology and animal geography. From 1968 to 1973 he was president of the German Ornithological Society and from 1962 to 1970 editor of the journal Journal für Ornithologie . During this time Niethammer was considered one of the most important West German ornithologists.

Since 1971 Niethammer lived in Meckenheim- Merl near Bonn. He retired in 1973 in Bonn and died of heart failure on January 14, 1974 during a hunt in the Morenhovener part of the Kottenforest .

Niethammer's time in the Waffen-SS and his conviction and imprisonment in Poland were, although known, masked in the Federal Republic by companions and specialist colleagues with military service or Polish prisoners of war . A critical and historical reappraisal of Niethammer's NS and SS past did not begin within the German Ornithological Society until the end of the 1990s and sparked fierce internal controversy.

Publications

  • Anatomical-histological and physiological examinations of goiter formations in birds: With esp. Berücks. d. Umbildgn. in the head of brooding pigeons, dissertation (Leipzig), 1933 (published in: Journal for Scientific Zoology , Dept. A, Volume 144, 1933).
  • with Walter Hoesch: The bird world of German South West Africa, namely the Damara and Namaland. In: Journal für Ornithologie, Volume 88, 1940, special issue (Berlin, Verlag Friedländer, 404 pages).
  • as editor and co-author: Handbuch der deutschen Vogelkunde. Leipzig, Akad. Verl.-Ges., 3 volumes, 1937, 1938, 1942, reprint in Aula Verlag.
  • Observations on the bird life of Auschwitz. In: Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Volume 52, 1941 (issued May 1942), pp. 164-199; ( Digital version , PDF 4.6 MB, from the Upper Austrian State Museum , Linz).
  • Contributions to the knowledge of the breeding birds of the Peloponnese . In: Journal für Ornithologie , 91st year, issue 2/3, April / July 1943, pp. 167–238; ( Digitized , PDF, of the Upper Austrian State Museum, Linz).
  • The Naturalization of Mammals and Birds in Europe: Results and Prospects. With the participation of Jochen Niethammer, Josef Sziji, Parey Verlag 1963
  • On the taxonomy of European birds naturalized in New Zealand. In: Journal for Ornithology , Volume 112, 1971, pp. 202-226.
  • as editor of Vols. 1 and 2, continued and edited by Urs Glutz von Blotzheim, Kurt M. Bauer: Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas. 14 volumes in 22 sub-volumes + 1 register volume, Wiesbaden, Aula Verlag 1966–1997 (= 2nd edition of the three-volume handbook of German ornithology from 1938–1942).
  • with Helmut Kramer, Hans Edmund Wolters : The birds of Germany: species list. Frankfurt, Academic Publishing Company 1964

He edited the German edition of Peterson / Mountford / Hollom ( The Birds of Europe. Parey Verlag), of Parey's Vogelbuch , of Die Vögel der Meere (by Wilfrid Alexander) at Parey and the Readers Digest book of the birds of Central Europe (the originals appeared in English).

literature

  • Killy, Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia
  • Susanne Heim: The pure air of scientific research . Research program "History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism", Berlin 2002 online version (PDF; 349 kB)
  • Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. A dictionary of persons. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-039333-3 , p. 300.
  • Ernst Klee: Of German fame. In: The time. September 25, 2003 No. 40 ( online version )
  • Arno Surminski: The bird world of Auschwitz. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7844-3126-0
  • Eugeniusz Nowak: Memories of ornithologists I knew. (= Lecture before the 130th DO-G annual meeting in Neubrandenburg on September 28, 1997). In: J. Ornithol. 139 (1998), pp. 325-348; on Niethammer here p. 338 ff; Online at vdocuments.mx .
  • Eugeniusz Nowak: Scientists in turbulent times. Die neue Brehm-Bücherei Vol. 676, Westarp Sciences, Hohenwarsleben 2010, ISBN 978-3-89432-248-9
  • Swen Steinberg: "Birding" in the concentration camp. Biography, networks and interpretations of the ornithologist and SS-Obersturmführer Günther Niethammer. In: Jan Erik Schulte / Michael Wildt (ed.): The SS after 1945. Debt narratives, popular myths, European memory discourses. Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8471-0820-7 ; here pp. 229–266.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on Niethammer  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the database of the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej .@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / pamiec.pl  
  2. ↑ Jan Erik Schulte / Michael Wildt (eds.): The SS after 1945. Debt narratives, popular myths, European memory discourses. Göttingen 2018; here Swen Steinberg: "Birding" in the concentration camp. Biography, networks and interpretations of the ornithologist and SS-Obersturmführer Günther Niethammer. P. 231.
  3. ^ Association of Old Lüneburgers and Saxony: Directory of addresses. 1969, p. 23.
  4. ↑ Cf. Kummerlöwe's obituary for Niethammer: Hans Kumerloeve: Günther Niethammer, the friends and colleagues, for memory , in: Bonner Zoologische Posts , Heft 1–3, 25 (1974), pp. 17–22; Digitized version (PDF)
  5. ↑ Eugeniusz Nowak: Memories of ornithologists I knew (= lecture to the 130th DO-G annual meeting in Neubrandenburg on September 28, 1997). In: J. Ornithol. 139 (1998), p. 340.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2nd updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 436.
  7. ↑ According to Klee, Niethammer also became a member of the SS in 1937; Niethammer's SS leader card in the Berlin Federal Archives does not prove this.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Eugeniusz Nowak: Scientists in turbulent times. Westarp Sciences, Hohenwarsleben 2010, pp. 69–82.
  9. ↑ Cf. Günther Niethammer: Observations on the bird world of Auschwitz. In: Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Volume 52, 1941 (issued May 1942), p. 164.
  10. ↑ Jan Erik Schulte / Michael Wildt (eds.): The SS after 1945. Debt narratives, popular myths, European memory discourses. Göttingen 2018, p. 230.
  11. ↑ Norbert Frei (Ed.): Representations and sources on the history of Auschwitz. Location and command office orders for the Auschwitz concentration camp 1940-1945 , Berlin, New York, de Gruyter 2000, p. 41.
  12. ↑ Norbert Frei (Ed.): Representations and sources on the history of Auschwitz. Location and command office orders of the Auschwitz concentration camp 1940-1945 , Berlin, New York, de Gruyter 2000, p. 51.
  13. ↑ Swen Steinberg in: Jan Erik Schulte / Michael Wildt (eds.): The SS after 1945. Debt narratives, popular myths, European memory discourses. Göttingen 2018, p. 240.
  14. ^ Günther Niethammer: Observations on the bird world of Auschwitz. In: Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Volume 52, 1941 (issued May 1942), pp. 164-199.
  15. ^ Günther Niethammer: Contributions to the knowledge of the breeding birds of the Peloponnese . In: Journal für Ornithologie , 91st year, issue 2/3, April / July 1943, pp. 167-238.
  16. ↑ See the obituary for Günther Niethammer 1974, in: Die Vogelwarte (27) 1974. (PDF)
  17. ↑ Eugeniusz Nowak: Memories of ornithologists I knew. (= Lecture before the 130th DO-G annual meeting in Neubrandenburg on September 28, 1997). In: J. Ornithol. 139 (1998), pp. 325-348; here p. 338 ff .; Online at vdocuments.mx
  18. ↑ The list of species listed 434 species, further subspecies, migratory movements, occurrences in Germany, literature.
personal data
SURNAME Niethammer, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Niethammer, Günther Theodor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Waldheim
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1974
Place of death Morenhoven