Gau Cologne-Aachen

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Party headquarters of the German Reich (1944)

The Gau Köln-Aachen was an administrative unit of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

History and structure

The Gau existed since 1931, when the Gaue Köln-Aachen and Koblenz-Trier emerged from the previous "Gau Rheinland" , which were initially subject to severe restrictions due to the Allied occupation of the Rhineland .

As early as 1919 in Duisburg, the " German Völkische Schutz- und Trutzbund " (DVSTB) was established, the nucleus of the right-wing extremist and revanchist movement in the Rhineland, to which later Rhenish National Socialists like Josef Grohé or Heinz Haake belonged. After Hitler's release from prison in December 1924, many members of the “ National Socialist Freedom Movement ” joined the “newly founded” NSDAP in February 1925 and formed the “Gau Rheinland-Süd” with Heinz Haake as Gauleiter appointed by Adolf Hitler and Josef Grohé as “Gau manager”. Haake was elected to the Prussian state parliament in December 1924 with ten other “ethnic” members of the parliament , so he had to be in Berlin. His Gauge managing director Grohé refused to obey Haake's instructions, so that by the beginning of June 1925 Dr. Robert Ley asked to take over the management of the new "Gaues Rheinland-Süd" in his place.

Gauleiter in the "Gau Rheinland-Süd", from 1926 "Gau Rheinland"

The "Gau Rhineland-South" - have taken place since the beginning of 1926 Association of the "Gau Rhineland-North" with the "Gau Westfalen" only referred to "Großgau Ruhr" "Gau Rhineland" - encompassed in the north of the Region of Cologne and Aachen , to parts of the administrative district Dusseldorf with Solingen , Opladen (now Leverkusen) and Wermelskirchen and south to Koblenz and Trier and the Oldenburg country Birkenfeld (Nahe) and part of the province of Hesse-Nassau . Although in February 1927 Nassau was transferred to the " Gau Hessen-Nassau-Süd " and in October 1928 the district of Solingen was transferred to the NSDAP- "District Bergisches Land / Niederrhein", the Gau remained confusing and inconsistent. That is why the Koblenz NSDAP "district" leader Gustav Simon urged a division of the "Gau Rhineland" according to the rule "Reichstag constituency equals Gau", ie the "Gau Rhineland" along the two Reichstag constituencies Cologne-Aachen No. 20 and Koblenz-Trier No. 21 to share. After Ley's “severance payment” as a newly institutionalized “district inspector” within the Munich Reich organizational leadership headed by Gregor Strasser , this was implemented on June 1, 1931.

Josef Grohé was appointed Gauleiter of the new "Gau Cologne-Aachen". The Gau had 2.3 million inhabitants and an area of ​​around 7,100 km². The Gauleitung sat from 1934 to 1944 in Claudiusstrasse 1 in Cologne, the building of the old university and the former Cologne commercial college . The Catholic rural district of Cologne-Aachen ranked 31st in terms of party membership before January 30, 1933, and thus the penultimate place of all NSDAP districts. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Hermann von Lüninck was appointed Upper President of the Prussian province of Rhineland , who was replaced on February 5, 1935 by the Gauleiter in the Essen Gau, Josef Terboven , and thus also became the superior of the regional presidents in Düsseldorf, Cologne and Aachen. Thus the levels of state and party merged in the Gau.

District economic advisor was Kurt Freiherr von Schröder , the IHK President of Cologne. Kuno von Eltz-Rübenach was an agricultural district consultant . The later district president Franz Vogelsang was district inspector and, as district manager, headed the important office for local politics . Richard Ohling was the head of propaganda from 1937. The Gauzeitung was the West German observer under editor-in-chief Peter Winkelnkemper . Gaufführer schools existed in Bad Honnef in the Feuerschlößchen (from 1934) and in Engelskirchen Haus Mühlenberg (also Villa Risch).

From 1933 Gauleiter Grohé pushed his plans to develop Cologne into the “Gau capital” and the “Metropolis of the West”, whereby Hitler had already declared Cologne (together with Leipzig) as the “capital of German trade” in 1933 and from October 1935 the title of a “ Hanseatic City Cologne ”became official, which was to serve as the“ gateway to the west ”. As a "Grenzgau", he was given the task of redesigning the areas occupied in the west from 1940 onwards via Eupen-Malmedy , which was annexed in 1940. When Gauleiter Grohé was appointed " Reich Commissioner for the Occupied Territories in Belgium and Northern France " by Hitler in the summer of 1944 , he was supposed to promote this. Shortly before the end of the war, the Reichsgau Flanders and the Reichsgau Wallonia were proclaimed with the help of collaborators .

Circles

The Gau had 18, from 1940 20 NSDAP districts

  • Aachen city and country,
  • Bergheim,
  • Bonn,
  • Düren,
  • Erkelenz,
  • Euskirchen,
  • Eupen (from 1940)
  • Geilenkirchen,
  • Jülich,
  • Cologne on the left bank of the Rhine north and south,
  • Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine,
  • Cologne-Land,
  • Malmedy (from 1940)
  • Monschau,
  • Oberbergischer Kreis,
  • Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis,
  • Schleiden
  • Siegkreis.

literature

  • The struggle for the Rhenish hearts. [The Cologne-Aachen district]. In: The book of the German Gaue. Five years of National Socialist development work. Bayreuth 1938.
  • Peter Hüttenberger : The Gauleiter. Study on the change in the power structure in the NSDAP. Stuttgart 1969.
  • Horst Matzerath : Cologne in the time of National Socialism 1933-1945. (History of the City of Cologne 12), Cologne 2009.
  • Thomas Müller: The Gau Cologne-Aachen and border country policy in the northwest of the German Empire. In: Jürgen John / Horst Möller / Thomas Schaarschmidt (eds.): The NS-Gaue. Regional middle authorities in the centralized “leader state”. Munich 2007, pp. 318–333.

See also

Web links