Georg Leibbrandt

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Georg Leibbrandt (1899–1982)
Leibbrandt in second place on the list of participants at the Wannsee Conference

Georg Leibbrandt (born September 5, 1899 in Hoffnungsthal , Cherson Governorate , Russian Empire ; † June 16, 1982 in Bonn ) was a German interpreter, bureaucrat and diplomat who was considered an expert on Russia during the Nazi era . Initially a member of the SA , he later held leading foreign policy positions in the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA) and in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO). Both authorities were under the direction of the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . Leibbrandt was a participant in the Wannsee Conference and was involved to a large extent in the systematic extermination of the Jews . In the post-war period , criminal proceedings (aiding and abetting murder) against Leibbrandt were discontinued. He made a career as a consultant in the state apparatus of the Federal Republic and was honored with a medal.

Origin and youth

Georg Leibbrandt was born in 1899 as the son of colonists in the German-Swabian settlement Hoffnungsthal near Odessa. He attended high schools in Dorpat and Odessa.

During the First World War , when German troops advanced into Ukraine with Operation Faustschlag , he served as an interpreter . Leibbrandt spoke German , Russian , Ukrainian , French and English . After the October Revolution of 1917, he fled to Berlin . From 1920 he studied theology , philosophy and economics in Marburg , Tübingen , Leipzig and London .

During his studies he joined the Tübingen and Leipzig Wingolf , of which he remained a member until his death. In Tübingen he was also a member of the Association of German Students Colonists.

Weimar Republic

In 1927 received his doctorate Leibbrandt with a thesis on the Swabian emigration to Russia in the early 19th century. One of the leading figures in this emigration movement was once his grandfather. After he undertook research trips to France, England and - on the recommendation of Clara Zetkin - to the Soviet Union, he became a Rockefeller scholarship holder and liaison officer of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in Washington .

National Socialism

Foreign Policy Office

In 1933 he joined the NSDAP . In the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA) he was head of the Eastern Department, after which he was responsible for anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda. In the APA, Leibbrandt tried in particular to get Russian Germans into office. In addition to Rosenberg, he was the APA's most important foreign policy thinker.

In 1933 the Antikomintern , “Gesamtverband deutscher Antikommunistischer Vereinigungen e. V. “, founded. This association was subordinate to the anti-Bolshevik section of the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels and was in direct competition with the Eastern Department of the APA von Leibbrandt. The conflict of competencies later went so far that all Anti-Comintern employees had to sign a commitment, not “with Dr. Leibbrandt from the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP ”.

In 1935 Leibbrandt became head of the APA's main office, with his area of ​​responsibility falling into the field of Eastern Issues. His official title was "Reichsamtsleiter". In mid-March 1935 he came back to Berlin from a trip to East Prussia, where he was studying the Ostarbeit of the Bund Deutscher Osten .

In the spring of 1938, Leibbrandt was commissioned by Rosenberg to publish a series of publications on Bolshevism that appeared in a very short time. After Rosenberg's treatise Pest in Russia was published in a shortened version in the first volume, Leibbrandt's paper Moscow's Deployment Against Europe followed in the second volume . In this book he attributed the “unsteadiness” of the “Russian soul” on the one hand to the “intrusion” of Asian nomadic peoples, whose “ instincts ” would wrestle with the “Nordic character traits” of Russians; on the other hand, Judaism is the reason that threatening Marxist ideas with imperial power claims have arisen in Russia . That is why, according to Leibbrandt, Germany's “mission” is to be the “sentinel of European culture”.

On September 24, 1939, Rosenberg noted that Leibbrandt had traveled to Rome to meet Dr. To meet Insobato, an adviser to Mussolini . On March 3, 1940, Rosenberg also noted: “ Dr. Leibbrandt goes to Rome: because of Ukrainian and other eastern problems. In Paris and [nd] in Rome there are now many politicians from Eastern Europe and [nd] in the AA it has become clear that they know little about it. Everything must also be done for the General Government. The questions there are terra incognita . "

In 1940 Leibbrandt was given a teaching position at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin. In 1941 he took part in the special staff East in the raids of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) to "rob the abandoned cultural property of Jews".

Since 1938 he was also an assessor at the People's Court .

East Ministry

On April 11, 1941, a few weeks before the military attack on the Soviet Union, Rosenberg made a drawing in which he outlined the positions for the central authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO). For Leibbrandt, Rosenberg provided for the management of a department which he had designated there as "Foreign Popularities". When Leibbrandt wanted to publish a pamphlet with the title "USSR" at the end of 1940, Hitler was initially forbidden to publish it so as not to burden relations with Russia. After the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the book was published along with a deluge of other writings.

In July 1941 Leibbrandt became head of the main department I (politics), the central main department in the RMfdbO. This department initially consisted of eight, later of ten departments. This included the departments for the Reichskommissariat Ukraine , Ostland , Caucasus and Soviet Union , the department General Politics under Otto Bräutigam as well as departments for cultural policy , ethnicity and settlement politics, press and education and from 1942 for women and youth. The political guidelines of Leibbrandt and his main department were implemented in administrative law by the main department II (administration) under Ludwig Runte .

On September 13, 1941, on the initiative of Rosenberg and Leibbrandt, the RMfdbO passed guidelines for radio propaganda, in which it says with regard to the Volga Germans deported to Siberia and Central Asia that in the event of a "deportation", "Judaism in the areas under German control [ ...] pay multiple times ".

On October 4, 1941, during an inter-ministerial meeting at Leibbrandt, Reinhard Heydrich complained that no one thought of paying attention to the manpower required for the war economy. There is no longer any substitute for the Jews who were previously involved in the forced labor system and now liquidated. Two days later, on October 6, 1941, Georg Leibbrandt went to the Ukraine with Major Eberhard Cranz and other people. From that day on, Otto Bräutigam represented him in the management of the “Main Political Department” of the RMfdbO, as he noted in his diary. In addition to Rosenberg and Leibbrandt, the diplomat Groom was, according to the historian Christian Gerlach , “one of the most active and fanatical perpetrators, not infrequently one of the strategists of the occupation policy and the mass murders ”.

On October 31, 1941, Leibbrandt wrote a letter to Hinrich Lohse , Reich Commissioner in the East . It reads: “ The Reich and Security Main Office complains that the Reich Commissioner Ostland has prohibited the execution of Jews in Libau. I request an immediate report on the matter concerned. On behalf of Dr. Leibbrandt. (Department Head II) . ”15 days later, on November 15, 1941, Lohse sent a reply to Leibbrandt in which he wrote that he had“ forbidden the wild executions of Jews in Libau ”“ because they were not carried out in the way they were carried out were responsible ”. And Lohse asked: “ I would ask you to inform me whether your request of October 31 is to be taken as an instruction that all Jews in the East should be liquidated? Should this be done regardless of age and gender and economic interests (e.g. the Wehrmacht in skilled workers in armaments factories)? ". On December 18, 1941, Bräutigam replied: “ In the meantime, oral discussions should have clarified the Jewish question. Economic concerns should generally not be taken into account when regulating the problem . "

On January 20, 1942, Leibbrandt took part in the Wannsee Conference to which Heydrich had invited, along with another representative of the RMfdbO, Alfred Meyer . The RMfdbO stipulated that both the Generalgouvernement and the two Reich Commissariats Ostland and Ukraine administered by the RMfdbO have to prepare independently of each other for the “final solution” of the Jewish question . On January 22, Leibbrandt invited representatives from ministries (RSHA, Ministry of Justice), the party chancellery and the OKW to the first follow-up conference, which took place in the RMfdbO on January 29, 1942 . Among others, Otto Bräutigam, Erhard Wetzel and Gerhard von Mende (RMfdbO), Friedrich Suhr (RSHA), Bernhard Lösener (Ministry of Justice), Albert Frey (OKW) and Herbert Reischauer (party office) were present. The aim of this meeting was to fill in the content of the resolutions passed at the Wannsee Conference and to make them legally more precise. The central topic of this conference was who would henceforth be considered a “Jew” so that a precise regulation could be made about who should be included in the extermination campaign. The RMfdbO took the position that the term Jew should by no means be defined “too narrowly”.

A letter dated June 3, 1942 about a "demarcation of the general districts of Estonia and Latvia " within the framework of the General Plan East indicates that Leibbrandt was working in the position of ministerial director in the RMfdbO at that time . In October 1942 Leibbrandt signed a letter “re. Jewish question "to the General Commissioner Beloruthenia in order to" bring about a settlement of the Jewish question as quickly as possible. "

In the summer of 1943 Leibbrandt reported for service in the Navy because he became a burden in the RMfdbO because of his “pro-Ukrainian attitude”. His successor in the RMfdbO was Gottlob Berger on August 10, 1943 , at the same time head of the SS main office , who had been Heinrich Himmler's liaison for the RMfdbO since April 1, 1943 . In 1943 the SS replaced Leibbrandt and carried it through.

post war period

From 1945 to 1949 Leibbrandt was in automatic arrest . During this time he was questioned as a witness in the Wilhelmstrasse trial . Regarding the Holocaust, he stated among other things: "I told the Minister [Rosenberg] at the first possible opportunity that I did not share this madness."

In January 1950 the Nuremberg-Fürth regional court opened an investigation against Leibbrandt on suspicion of multiple murders. The investigation was discontinued on August 10, 1950. No legal proceedings were opened.

In 1955 Leibbrandt acted as advisor to Konrad Adenauer in the repatriation of German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union. Later he headed the Bonn office of Salzgitter AG . In 1966 he received the Federal Cross of Merit .

Leibbrandt's brother Gottlieb (1908–1989) also worked early as a National Socialist in Vienna. He emigrated to Canada in 1952 in order not to be convicted.

In the post-war period , Leibbrandt lived in Unterweissach in Baden-Württemberg.

"Leibbrandt Collection"

For war purposes, Leibbrandt compiled books, some historical works, some currently commissioned by him, in order to prove a previous German presence in the Soviet Union and to derive ongoing territorial claims for the Reich from this. Some of the emigrants were Mennonites . Directly commissioned drafts were e.g. B .:

  • Series: The German Settlements in the Soviet Union, 1941, Berlin
  1. Surroundings of St. Petersburg . Reich Office for Land Registration. 18 pages.
  2. Volhynia and the immediately adjacent areas (SSSR, Ukraine ). Special edition, for official use only. 59 pages. Extract "Map of Volhynia". (Mennonite places marked by Viktor Petkau).
  3. Ukraine with Crimea . Special edition, for official use only. 175 pages. Extract "Ukraine map" and extract "Krym map". (Menn. places marked by V. Petkau)
  4. Don area and Caucasus . Reich Office for Land Registration. 67 pages. Extract "Map of North Caucasus". (Menn. places marked by V. Petkau)
  5. German Volga Republic . Reich Office for Land Registration. 55 pages. Extract “Map of the Volga Republic”. (Menn. places marked by V. Petkau)
  6. Complete directory

literature

primary
  • Jewish world politics in personal testimonies. Einf. Alfred Rosenberg. Eher-Verlag , Munich 1938. Series: Bolschewismus, 5
  • Georg Leibbrandt: The German-Canadian Aid Organization was founded 40 years ago. Canada Courier, January 15, 1987 ISSN  0712-8894 pp. 30-32
secondary
  • Eric J. Schmaltz: Georg Leibbrandt. In: Ingo Haar , Michael Fahlbusch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften. Saur, Munich 2008 ISBN 978-3-598-11778-7 pp. 370–373
    • First version, in English: Eric J. Schmaltz, Samuel D. Sinner: The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine, and its North American Legacy, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, 1, 2000, pp. 28-64
  • Martin Munke : On the failure of an expert. Georg Leibbrandt in National Socialism , in: Osteuropa , 67, 2017
  • Hans-Christian Jasch, Christoph Kreutzmüller Eds .: The participants. The men at the Wannsee Conference. Metropol, Berlin 2017 (detailed therein on Leibbrandt)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 364, ISBN 978-3-596-16048- 8 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89667-148-0 , pp. 290, 535.
  3. ^ Complete directory of Wingolfs, 1991.
  4. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 290.
  5. ^ Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 316; after Piper, the Antikomintern was not founded until 1935.
  6. ^ Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 316 (source: memo from November 3, 1936, BDC Rosenberg personnel file).
  7. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 52. Incorrectly listed as "Werner Leibbrandt" in the register.
  8. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen u. a. 1956, p. 76.
  9. ↑ a b c Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, pp. 427, 600.
  10. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen u. a. 1956, p. 76.
  11. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen u. a. 1956, p. 124.
  12. ↑ a b c Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, pp. 514, 518.
  13. ^ Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 536.
  14. ↑ Martin Vogt: Autumn 1941 in the "Führer Headquarters" . Werner Koeppens reports to his minister Alfred Rosenberg, Koblenz 2002, p. 35. (Cited source: BArch, R 6/109 f. 11-13.); see. also the diary entry of Otto Bräutigam from September 14th, HD Heilmann: From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam . In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk . Materials on the German perpetrator biography, Institute for Social Research in Hamburg: Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy 4, Berlin 1987, p. 144.
  15. ↑ Doc. VEJ 7/199 In: Bert Hoppe, Hiltrud Glass (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 7: Soviet Union with annexed areas I - Occupied Soviet areas under German Military Administration, Baltic States and Transnistria. Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-58911-5 , pp. 550–553 as well as Gerald Reitlinger: The final solution . Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe 1939–1945, 7th edition, Berlin 1992, p. 96 f., ISBN 3-7678-0807-2 .
  16. ↑ HD Heilmann: From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam . In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk . Materials on the German perpetrator biography, Institute for Social Research in Hamburg: Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy 4, Berlin 1987, pp. 123–187.
  17. ^ Christian Gerlach: Calculated murders . The German economic and annihilation policy in Belarus 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1999, p. 225; Quote in: Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg . Munich 2005, p. 794.
  18. ↑ a b c The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Court of Nuremberg November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946 , Vol. XI, Munich / Zurich 1984. P. 609; Serge Lang / Ernst von Schenck: Portrait of a human criminal based on the memoirs of the former Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg , St. Gallen 1947, p. 131.
  19. ^ The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Court of Nuremberg November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946 , vol. XI, Munich / Zurich 1984. p. 611; Serge Lang / Ernst von Schenck: Portrait of a human criminal based on the memoirs of the former Reich Minister Alfred Rosenberg , St. Gallen 1947, p. 131. Letter.  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.ghwk.de  
  20. ^ Joe J. Heydecker / Johannes Leeb : The Nuremberg Trial . With a foreword by Eugen Kogon and Robert MW Kempner, revised. New edition, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-462-03240-2 ; Kurt Pätzold / Erika Schwarz (ed.): Steps to the gallows . Life paths before the Nuremberg judgments, Leipzig 1999, pp. 40–43.
  21. ↑ Peter Longerich: The unwritten order . Hitler and the way to the "final solution". Munich 2001, pp. 145 f., 148.
  22. ↑ a b c Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 592 (source: list of participants BArch R 6/74, p. 76.); Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburg 2002, p. 641. (Minutes of the meeting: Deployment in the “Reichskommissariat” Ostland, 1998, p. 57 ff.); HD Heilmann: From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam . In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk. Materials on the German perpetrator biography. Berlin 1987, p. 180 f.
  23. ↑ Czeslaw Madajczyk (Ed.): From the General Plan East to the General Settlement Plan . Documents. Saur, Munich a. a. 1994, p. 474, ISBN 3-598-23224-1 Documentation.- Also in: "Salzburger Volksblatt: independent daily newspaper for the city and province of Salzburg", May 12, 1942, p. 4
  24. ↑ Doc. VEj 8/202 In: Bert Hoppe (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 8: Soviet Union with annexed areas I I. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3 -486-78119-9 , p. 468
  25. ^ A b Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 563.
  26. ↑ Joachim Scholtyseck : The "Swabian Duke" Gottlob Berger, SS-Obergruppenführer . In: Michael Kißener / Joachim Scholtyseck: The leaders of the province. Nazi biographies from Baden and Württemberg (= Karlsruhe Contributions to the History of National Socialism, Volume 2). Universitätsverlag, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-87940-566-2 , p. 89 f .; Gerhard Rempel: Gottlob Berger - "A Swabian General of Action". In: Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring (ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 résumés. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, ISBN 3-506-78562-1 , p. 52.
  27. ^ Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 316.
  28. ↑ Quoted in: Ernst Piper: Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist. Munich 2005, p. 634. Source: Robert MW Kempner : Eichmann and accomplices. Zurich 1961, p. 156 f.
  29. ↑ HD Heilmann, From the war diary of the diplomat Otto Bräutigam . In: Götz Aly u. a. (Ed.): Biedermann and desk clerk . Materials on the German biography of the perpetrators, Institute for Social Research in Hamburg: Contributions to National Socialist Health and Social Policy 4, Berlin 1987, p. 167 (Source: Ks3 / 50 = Nuremberg State Archive , holdings of the Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court, filed in 1983, No. 2638 .)
  30. ↑ Hoe recommended . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1966, pp. 62 ( online - September 19, 1966 ).
  31. ^ "Bundesverdienstkreuz 1966" without further details from: Bert Hoppe (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933-1945 (source collection) Volume 8: Soviet Union with annexed areas I I. Berlin 2016, ISBN 978- 3-486-78119-9 , p. 199, note 2
  32. ↑ source
  33. ↑ Leibbrandt Coll , as far as known. 12 tracks in total
  34. ↑ The sheet was published in Winnipeg 1970 - 2010. It was a reservoir for emigrated National Socialists. It is noticeable that Leibbrandt allegedly published under his real name here. Unless it is a typo, the actual author will most certainly be his brother Gottlieb, who lived in Canada , especially since "Georg" was long dead in 1987. See Canada Kurier , about the violent anti-Semitism in the paper, fueled after the worldwide broadcast of the Holocaust - The Story of the Weiss Family , here p. 87.
personal data
SURNAME Leibbrandt, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Ministerial Director in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories during the National Socialist era
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hope Valley , Cherson Governorate , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1982
Place of death Bonn