Gerhard Utikal

Gerhard Utikal (* 15. April 1912 in Friedrich Graetz , Upper Silesia ; † 5. November 1982 in Remscheid ) was German National Socialist Reich main branch manager in the Rosenberg office and as head of the Berlin Central Office in Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (ERR) instrumental in art theft during World War II involved .

Life

Utikal joined the NSDAP in 1931 ( membership number 873.117) and the SA in 1932 . In 1935 Utikal published for the first time the anti-Semitic text “The Jewish Ritual Murder” with the subtitle “A Gentile Clarification”, which appeared in several different editions until the Second World War . The 15th edition of this book was published in 1941. With the inclusion of the motif of the legend of the ritual murder he published , Utikal drove in the shadow of the modern ideological history of the anti-Jewish “ritual murder hysteria” that arose in Germany towards the end of the 19th century.

Since 1936 Utikal worked for the party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg in his office Rosenberg . From 1937 he was department head of the Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature . In addition, he was the head of the main unit “Operation” in the “Office of Literature Maintenance” under Hans Hagemeyer .

During the Second World War , Utikal coordinated the theft of art in France from August 1940 to April 1941 as head of the Berlin Central Office in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). From the beginning of April 1941, Utikal was entrusted with the management of all task forces on Rosenberg's instructions. On August 20, 1941, Utikal von Rosenberg was also appointed staff leader of the ERR for the occupied eastern territories, about which Rosenberg informed the Reich Commissioner for the eastern territories, Hinrich Lohse , on the same day. The official order for Utikal to “secure” cultural goods in the Soviet Union followed on October 3, 1941. At the same time, Utikal worked as a consultant in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories in the cultural department of the Political Department under Hans-Wilhelm Scheidt . Due to the resulting personal union of its functions, Utikal had both party official and state competences, although this mixture was further increased in April 1942 with the "Decree on the creation of a central office for the collection and recovery of cultural assets in the East ". Utikal was expressly appointed head of this central office, which was closely related to the Politics Department headed by Georg Leibbrandt , in his capacity as head of the ERR and not as a member of the ministry. The tasks of Utikals central office were specified in the decree as follows: “The central office has the overall planning of all work dealing with the recovery of cultural goods in the east; it monitors the implementation. The central office supports those work projects aimed at salvaging cultural assets that are suitable to increase the German war potential, to serve the German economy and research and to preserve the existing cultural values. "

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, the work Utikals: The Jewish ritual murder was included in the list of literature to be sorted out as part of Nazi propaganda in the Soviet occupation zone . Utikal was able to go into hiding until 1947. Then he was arrested and imprisoned in the Dachau internment camp and in Nuremberg . Utikal was questioned by Robert Kempner in early April 1947 as part of the Nuremberg Trials . In December 1947 Utikal was transferred to Paris. 1950 the trial in Paris was brought to the head of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg for the theft of art - primarily Gerhard Utikal, Robert Scholz and Bruno Lohse . Utikal's procedure was severed.

Utikal was released from custody in August 1951. After that he lived in Ebenhausen , Heiligenhaus and Remscheid.

literature

• Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection , Volume I, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-8975-4 . Published under the same title in Hildesheim in 1991 under ISBN 3-487-09539-4 .
• Anja Heuss : Art and cultural property theft. A comparative study on the occupation policy of the National Socialists in France and the Soviet Union. Heidelberg 2000.
• Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
• Hanns Christian Löhr, Art as a Weapon - The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, Ideology and art theft in the “Third Reich” , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-7861-2806-9 .
• Lynn H. Nicholas: The Rape of Europa. The fate of European works of art in the Third Reich. Munich 1995
• Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian bargain. The art world in Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, New York 2000, ISBN 0-19-512964-4 .
• Wilhelm Treue : On the National Socialist art theft in France. Documentation. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 13th year (1965), issue 3, pp. 285–337. ( IfZ archive .)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 565.
2. ^ Gerhard Utikal: The Jewish ritual murder. A gentile clarification. 15th edition, Hans W. Pötsch Verlag , Berlin-Lichterfelde 1941, 182 pages.
3. ↑ Rainer Erb: Third picture: The "ritual murder". In: Julius H. Schoeps / Joachim Schlör (eds.): Images of hostility towards Jews. Anti-Semitism - Prejudices and Myths. Augsburg 1999, p. 76, ISBN 3-8289-0734-2 .
4. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is heading for a catastrophe ..." The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 150, ISBN 3-89650-213-1 .
5. ↑ Martin Vogt: Autumn 1941 in the "Führer Headquarters". Werner Koeppens reports to his Minister Alfred Rosenberg. Koblenz 2002, p. 101 f. (Source: IMT, XXVI, Doc. No. 1015 [c] and [d], pp. 530 f., 545 f.)
6. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ...". The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, pp. 152 and 162. (Source: Decree on the creation of a central office for the recovery of cultural assets in the East, April 1942, BA R 6/170, Bl. 39–45, esp. Bl. 43.)
7. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is heading for a catastrophe ..." The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Munich 2006, p. 153. (Source: Decree on the creation of a central office for the collection and recovery of cultural assets in the east, April 1942, BA R 6/170, p. 39–45.)
8. ^ German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, List of Literature to be Separated , Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946.
9. ^ Günther Haase: Art theft and art protection , Volume I, Norderstedt 2008, p. 403.
10. ^ Ernst Piper : Alfred Rosenberg. Hitler's chief ideologist Munich 2005 ISBN 3-89667-148-0 . TB edition 2007 ISBN 3-570-55021-4 . (Zugl. Habil. Phil. Univ. Potsdam 2005), z. Partly online: The factual notes and entire literature section, p. 652ff. ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 625 kB), p. 761.