Günther Venediger

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Günther Karl August Venediger (born March 2, 1908 in Berlin-Spandau ; † April 4, 1983 in Düsseldorf ) was a German lawyer with the rank of senior government councilor, SS-Obersturmbannführer and Gestapo employee .

Life

Venediger completed a law degree and graduated in 1936 from the second state examination with the grade "Good". With the dissertation The Eigentümergrunddienstbarkeit he was 1935-36 at the University of Erlangen for Dr. jur. PhD .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2.586.952) and SA in 1933 . From the SA he switched to the SS in 1936 (SS no. 290.567).

After completing his studies, he applied unsuccessfully to the Reich Ministry of the Interior , but was told that the Secret State Police would need staff. Venediger finally joined the police service in 1936 as a government assessor and was employed in the secret state police office and then with the Berlin police president. After the Munich Agreement , Venediger became deputy head of the Reichenberg state police station in the Sudetenland in October 1938 . From December 1939 Venediger represented the head of the state police station in Graudenz . From August 15, 1941, Venediger headed the Gdansk State Police Station . In November 1943 Venediger rose to SS-Obersturmbannführer and was also promoted to the senior government council. From 1944 Venediger was also the commander of the security police and the SD in Gdansk. Venediger was responsible for at least 211 admissions to the Stutthof concentration camp in Danzig and was involved in murders such as hostage shootings. At his instigation, three Poles were hanged who allegedly had sexual intercourse with a German woman. On March 26, 1945, Venediger left Gdansk and hid on a farm near this city for a week. Then he got to Swinoujscie via the Hela peninsula and from there to Schwerin , where he stayed briefly in the temporary office of the Reich Governor of Danzig-West Prussia . Then he reached the Gestapo's alternative headquarters in Flensburg . There he met Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and was appointed SS-Standartenführer . At the beginning of May 1945 he took the false name Paul Schaller and left Flensburg.

After the end of the war he called himself August Nieder and worked as a farmhand on an agricultural estate near Goslar until the beginning of July 1952 and then as a youth group leader at Kaltenstein Castle , even after his identity became known to the sponsor, Christian Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands . In October 1952, Venediger was identified and arrested. Freed again, he worked as a commercial clerk in Düsseldorf.

A case of accessory to murder against Venediger was opened five times and each time it was closed. The background to this was the executions of prisoners he carried out without a court judgment, which had been ordered by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). However, no main proceedings were opened against him because he was unable to discover the illegality of these executions ordered by the RSHA. In another trial he was charged in December 1953 with aiding and abetting fourfold murders before the Heilbronn jury court due to the shooting in March 1944 of four British aviation officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III ( Sagan case ). On the instructions of the RSHA and Heinrich Himmler , he had officers subordinate to him pick up the captured British aviator officers from the Marienburg POW camp and shot them at Groß Trampken in the course of an alleged attempt to escape. Venediger, who pleaded an imperative to order and who allegedly had not been able to prove that the warrant was illegal, was acquitted on September 3, 1954. The public prosecutor's office went into revision because, in their opinion, Venediger should have recognized the illegality of this order due to the jurisdiction of the armed forces justice and the alleged need for orders was also questionable. The prosecution had requested a five-year prison sentence. The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) referred for these reasons the case back to the Court in Heilbronn, where the case renegotiated and Venice was acquitted again in November 1955th After the public prosecutor's office went into appeal again, the case was reopened before the Stuttgart Regional Court . On March 30, 1957, the Stuttgart Regional Court sentenced him to two years' imprisonment for aiding and abetting manslaughter , since he should have been aware of the illegality of the order and because he had probably not followed the order reluctantly.

Venediger had been married to Gertrud von Billerbeck since May 1942 and they divorced at the end of September 1967. The couple had two children: Ingrid (* 1944) and Doris (* 1945).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dieter Schenk: Hitler's husband in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster and the crimes in Danzig-West Prussia. , Bonn 2000, p. 235
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 638.
  3. ↑ Günther Venediger at www.dws-xip.pl
  4. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic , Munich 2012, p. 337
  5. ^ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Jochen Böhle and Jürgen Matthäus: Einsatzgruppen in Poland: Presentation and documentation . Scientific Book Society, Stuttgart 2008, p. 102
  6. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Hitler's husband in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster and the crimes in Danzig-West Prussia. , Bonn 2000, p. 234
  7. ↑ Dieter Schenk : Danzig 1930–1945. The end of a free city . Ch.links, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-737-3 , p. 141–143 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ↑ a b Dieter Schenk: Hitler's husband in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster and the crimes in Danzig-West Prussia. , Bonn 2000, p. 236
  9. ^ Andreas Eichmüller: No general amnesty. The prosecution of Nazi crimes in the early Federal Republic , Munich 2012, p. 337ff.
  10. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Volume 55, CA Starke., 1973, p. 54
  11. ^ Institute for German Nobility Research: Press reports from the Third Reich 1935-1945. Evidence register for 2,316 printed pieces from German contemporary history
  12. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Volume 55, CA Starke., 1973, p. 56
personal data
SURNAME Venediger, Günther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Venediger, Günther Karl August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, SS leader and Gestapo employee
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Spandau
DATE OF DEATH April 4th 1983
Place of death Dusseldorf