Gerd Voss

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Franz Leopold Gerd Voss (born September 27, 1907 in Itzehoe in Holstein , † July 1, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German lawyer and SA storm leader . Voss was best known as one of those killed in the so-called " Röhm Putsch " of 1934.

Live and act

Youth and early years

Voss was the younger son of the Berlin lawyer and notary Hermann Voss , who u. a. became known as the chairman of the Berlin Lawyers' Association. His older brother was the doctor Hans Voss . After attending school, which he graduated from the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium in Berlin (Abitur: Easter 1926), Voss studied law : he spent his first three semesters at the University of Giessen. He spent his fourth semester in Paris, where he attended lectures at the Faculté de droit and other lectures in other subjects at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France . He also worked there at an avoué and an avocat . During his studies in 1926 he became a member of the Germania Gießen fraternity , to which his father had already belonged. For the winter semester of 1929/1930 Voss moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin , where he spent his last three semesters. According to a résumé he wrote himself, during this time he discovered the “real beauty of legal science” by participating in an exercise by Martin Wolff .

Voss passed the first state examination in law on May 19, 1930 with the rating “ fully satisfactory ”. He was then appointed trainee lawyer. According to a report by the Pariser Tageblatt from 1934, Voss suffered a serious leg injury in 1929 (?) Which forced him to spend almost a year in bed, so that he had to take his exam as a convalescent six months later.

Voss completed his legal preparatory service at the Kalkberg District Court and the Berlin Regional Court III.

In April 1931, at the request of Professors Arthur Nussbaum and Hermann Dersch as well as the well-known defense attorney Max Alsberg , who was an honorary professor in the faculty and who also worked in his office as a trainee lawyer, Voss was appointed as a faculty assistant at the law faculty of Berlin University. In this position - which was a paid part-time job that he pursued in addition to his legal preparatory service - Voss organized and supervised exercises for the seminars of various professors, including a private tutorial in the winter semester of 1932, which he organized privately instead of as part of the faculty / 1933 led to problems with the same.

In the autumn of 1931, during the so-called Kurfürstendamm Trial, in which his father participated as a defender of a defendant (the young steel helmet leader Wilhelm Brandt), Voss got to know the young Berlin SA leader Karl Ernst - at that time staff leader of the Berlin SA - an encounter, which should be of decisive importance for his future career in the long term.

time of the nationalsocialism

A few weeks after the National Socialist seizure of power on January 30, 1933, Voss officially joined the NSDAP on April 1, 1933 ( membership number 1.670.602). After renewing his acquaintance with Karl Ernst, who in the meantime had risen to become the highest SA commander in Berlin, Voss became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in the summer of 1933 . Voss allegedly immediately received the relatively high rank of storm leader and the function of legal advisor to the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg. In reports in the foreign press the assertion was made in this connection that Voss - although heterosexual himself - had, for career reasons, had homosexual relationships with Ernst and other SA leaders, which would have accelerated his advancement in the SA.

In autumn 1933, Voss belonged to a group of members of the staff of the Berlin SA group who "kidnapped" the communist Albrecht Höhler during a prisoner transport carried out by Gestapo officials in secret agreement with the Gestapo and shot them outside of Berlin. In 1930 Höhler was sentenced to six years imprisonment for manslaughter of the SA “martyr” Horst Wessel .

Parallel to his SA career, Voss continued his career at the Berlin University, where he continued to work as an assistant in the law faculty. At the end of 1933, Voss was appointed leader of the lectureship at the Faculty of Law by the lecturer at Berlin University. In this capacity, he first took part in a faculty meeting in June 1934.

According to Anna-Maria Gräfin von Lösch's studies, Voss was considered to be the "greatest troublemaker within the assistantship [of Berlin University] after the change of power" in 1933/1934. In a meeting of the faculty assistants that he had called in March 1933, Voss called for the boycott of “Jewish” professors. In response to Werner Flume's accusation that he was a "pig" in character if he boycotted Jewish professors after he had worked as an assistant at Wollf as a "Jew", Voss Flume threatened imprisonment in one of the then provisional SA cellars serving prisons. Flume was not imprisoned, but Voss gave the dean of the faculty to understand that Flume was politically undesirable, so the dean advised Flume to do his habilitation at another university.

After passing the Great State Examination on September 27, 1933, Voss was appointed court assessor. Immediately afterwards, Voss applied for his release from the state judicial service and his admission as a lawyer at the Berlin Higher Regional Court. Officially on leave until May 30, 1934, his application had not yet been decided at the time of his death in June 1934. At that time, his official residence was at Fraunhofer Strasse 27.

Outside of the faculty, Voss also worked as a lawyer in 1934. His clients included the actor Gustaf Gründgens . For the latter, Voss led the negotiations for the acquisition of the villa (including inventory) of the late Jewish banker Ernst Goldschmidt in Zeesen, 30 km from Berlin city center , where he extorted the purchase price to 58,000 RM while exploiting his position of power through barely veiled threats , about half of the real value of the property. After the Second World War, Gründgens himself admitted that the sales negotiations were "quite dubious". The authorities classified the entire transaction after 1945 as an "emergency sale" as part of the National Socialist Aryanization campaigns, so that after 1990 there were protracted legal disputes in connection with this.

In the older literature, the incorrect assertion often appears that Voss also worked as a lawyer for the NSDAP politician Gregor Strasser , which is probably due to a mix-up with his father: Strasser was in the Berlin office of Voss senior, Strasser's brother Anton Strasser was also employed by Voss senior from 1933 to 1934.

assassination

On June 30, 1934, Voss was arrested as part of the Röhm affair in the course of the occupation of the headquarters of the Berlin SA by the state police group General Göring . The following night he was held captive at the headquarters of the SA Feldjäger Corps in Kleine Alexanderstrasse and then transferred to the SS barracks in Berlin-Lichterfelde . On the afternoon of July 1, he was sentenced to death by an improvised court martial and subsequently shot by an SA firing squad.

In the older literature, the motive for the killing of Voss is mostly in connection with the already discussed incorrect claim that Gerd Voss was Gregor Strasser's personal lawyer - in fact Voss was not yet licensed to practice law at the time of his shooting, but was still preparing the record before his dissertation, but occasionally appeared as a lawyer under false pretenses - further claims that Voss as Strasser's lawyer in the safe of his law firm (he really didn't have one) had politically highly significant private documents from Strasser (especially about the December crisis of the NSDAP of 1932 ) have kept. In Lothar Machtan 's biography of Hitler in 2003 , it says : “Strasser's lawyer Gerd Voss fared even worse. When he refused to open his filing safe, he was shot dead on the spot by a rolling squad and the safe was broken into. ” The earliest source to claim that Voss was Strasser's lawyer and that he was keeping Strasser documents because of his refusal The communist white book on the shootings of June 30th, published in 1934, finds that the SS / Gestapo had been shot . There it says:

"Dr. Voss had long been Gregor Strasser's legal advisor, and his personal friend. In this double capacity, Gregor Strasser gave him all documents relating to his conflict with Hitler and the party. Goering and Goebbels were after these incriminating documents! A special command sent by Göring appeared in the office of the completely surprised Dr. Voss and demanded the surrender of these documents, which had been handed over to him professionally by Gregor Strasser. When the correct lawyer rejected the illegal request, he was unceremoniously gunned down, the secret safe was broken into and the documents stolen. The clients of the thieves, burglars and murderers may have felt a load off their hearts when they held incriminating files in their hands. "

Otto Strasser himself spread the claim that a lawyer Voss had kept his brother's documents for him and that these documents had been confiscated by the SS / Gestapo in Voss' office and that this lawyer Voss had been shot in the process, in various books of his own since 1935 . After all, Strasser corrected in his book from 1935 that the shot Voss was not Voss 'father, but Voss' son. However, he writes there:

“My brother deposited with him all files relating to the conflict with Hitler, as well as numerous files on Göring, Göbbels and other party leaders. It did not occur to Gregor Strasser's overly gullible nature that professional secrecy and notarial obligations would not be an obstacle for Mr. Göring - which Dr. Voss had to atone with his death. On June 30th, a Göring special detachment appeared in the office and demanded that Dr. Voss surrenders the files of Gregor Strasser. When Dr. Voss dutifully refused to hand over the files, Göring's henchmen shot him down, broke up the file safe, stole the papers and disappeared. "

A relationship between Voss junior and Strasser is almost impossible due to the hostility of Voss' employer Karl Ernst zu Strasser in 1933 and 1934. Accordingly, it is extremely unlikely that Voss' killing was related to Strasser, but rather that he was shot because of his proximity to Karl Ernst. For example, the former Gestapo officer Hans Bernd Gisevius made the same claim in his book Until the Bitter End shortly after the end of the Second World War . The Pariser Tageblatt also wrote in 1934 that Voss, as a member of the entourage, had been shot by Ernst "for the sake of completeness".

Probably the earliest correction of the Voss murder case from June 30th / January 1st. July 1934 in the secondary literature can be found in Karl Martin Grass , who stated on the process: "The Voss case is striking, which is consistent in all three works [i.e. White Paper , Otto Strasser's Deutsche Bartholomäusnacht and Klaus Bredow's Hitler races ] as 'Rechtsanwalt Voss' is given, incidentally also with Gisevius, while in reality it was his son, as the age of the list shows. "

In summary, the following can be said about the process: (1) In his communication to the editorial staff of the White Book, Strasser confused Gerd Voss and his father Hermann Voss with one another insofar as he made the incorrect claim that the lawyer named Voss (whom he had no first name was or whose first name he did not know), of whose shooting he had learned in exile as part of the purge, had been in contact with his brother as a lawyer, although it was actually not the shot Gerd Voss, but the non-shot Hermann Voss as a lawyer Had connections with his brother. (2) The shot Voss was not a finished lawyer, but at the time of his death he was still in the legal preparatory service and also did not have the doctoral degree that Strasser ascribed to the shot Voss, while in fact only the non-shot father, but not his son owned one. (3) the older Voss Was not the lawyer was Gregor Strasser, but he had stood only in contact with him without an attorney represent him or care for.

It is therefore incorrect to state that Voss was shot in his office because he actually did not have a office and was not shot in any office (neither of his own nor that of another), but in the SS barracks in Lichterfelde. Whether there is something to the statement that a lawyer Voss in Berlin (i.e. the older Voss) kept Gregor Strasser's documents for him (whether in his office or elsewhere), and whether these documents - even if the lawyer who supposedly them them was kept in custody, was demonstrably not shot - were actually confiscated by the Gestapo / SS in the course of or in the wake of the purge or whether they remained in the possession of the lawyer is still unclear.

Fonts

  • "The fraternity on the wrong path", Burschenschaftliche Blätter WS 1929/30, No. 2, p. 28 ff.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date and place of birth after Lösch: The naked spirit. 1999, p. 177.
  2. ^ Rainer Orth: The SD man Johannes Schmidt. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8288-2872-8 , p. 197. There the note that the date of death “30. June “was wrong in the Gestapo's official list of deaths for the Röhm Putsch, as evidenced by a later interrogation statement by Voss' father Hermann Voss, who visited the son on July 1st in custody.
  3. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft . Vol. 1, Part. 8, Supplement L-Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8253-6051-1 , pp. 361-362.
  4. ↑ Anna-Maria von Lösch: The naked spirit. The Law Faculty of the Berlin University in transition from 1933 , Tübingen 1999, p. 177.
  5. ^ "The career of Gerd Voss, one who was shot", in: Pariser Tageblat vol. 2 (1934), no. 212 (July 12, 1934) ( digitized ).
  6. ↑ Anna-Maria von Lösch: The naked spirit: the law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval from 1933 , Tübingen 1999, p. 177.
  7. ↑ On the participation of Voss senior in the Kurfürstendamm trial of 1931/1932, cf. Friedrich Karl Kaul: The Pitaval of the Weimar Republic, It crackles in the entablature , Berlin 1961, Vol. 3.
  8. ↑ Heinz Höhne : Morsache Rohm , Reinbek 1984, p 321st
  9. ^ "The career of Gerd Voss, one who was shot", in: Pariser Tageblat vol. 2 (1934), no. 212 (July 12, 1934) ( digitized ).
  10. ↑ Anna-Maria von Lösch: The naked spirit: the law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval from 1933 , Tübingen 1999, p. 177.
  11. ↑ Anna-Maria von Lösch: The naked spirit: the law faculty of the Berlin University in upheaval from 1933 , Tübingen 1999, p. 177.
  12. ^ "Obituary for Werner Flume", in: Yearbook of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences 2009 , 2010, p. 585; Anna-Maria von Lösch: The naked spirit: the law faculty of the Berlin University in the upheaval of 1933 , Tübingen 1999, p. 232.
  13. ↑ Peter Michalzik : Gustaf Gründgens. The actor and the power. Quadriga, Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-88679-337-2 , pp. 149-152; Pretty dubious. In: Der Spiegel . No. 28/1995.
  14. ↑ Lothar Machtan: Hitler's Secret , 2003, p. 247; this information can also be found in: Friedrich Roetter: Might is right , 1939, p. 224; Peter D. Stachura: The Shaping of the Nazi State , 1978, p. 129 (Stachura erroneously calls him "Alexander Voss"); Paul R. Maracin: The Night of the Long Knives. Forty-Eight Hours That Changed the History of the World , 2007, p. 196.
  15. ^ White book about the shootings of June 30th , Paris 1934, p. 123. On p. 90, "Dr. Voss" is mentioned as a victim of the action.
  16. ^ Otto Strasser: Die deutsche Bartholomäusnacht , Zurich 1935, p. 39; ders .: Flight from Terror , 1943, p. 135; ders .: Hitler and I , 1982, p. 203.
  17. ↑ Hans Bernd Gisevius: Until the bitter end. From the Reichstag fire to July 20, 1944. Special edition brought up to date by the author , 1960, pp. 155, 158 u. 177.
  18. ^ Karl Martin Grass: Edgar Jung, Papenkreis and Röhmkrise 1933-34 , 1966, appendix, p. 87.
personal data
SURNAME Voss, Gerd
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Voss, Franz Leopold Gerd (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and SA leader
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Itzehoe
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1934 or July 1, 1934