Gerhard von Mende

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Gerhard von Mende (born December 12, jul. / 25. December  1904 greg. In Riga ; † 16th December 1963 in Dusseldorf ) was a Baltic German turkologist . As a researcher on Russia, during the Nazi era he specialized in racial ideology in the “Turkic-Tatar (Soviet-Asian) peoples” and in the early post-war period he put his knowledge to the service of the Federal Republic .

Early years

Gerhard von Mende was born in 1904 as the son of a Riga banker. During the Latvian War of Independence in 1919, his father and other members of the bourgeois elite were captured by Soviet troops, sent on a forced march and killed. His mother and six siblings subsequently fled to Germany. The adolescent developed a special interest in the oppressed minorities of Russia. 1920–1923 he studied in Schulpforta , 1927–1932 at the Berlin University of Russian and Turkish Studies . von Mende attended the Institut national des langues et civilizations orientales in Paris , and wrote his doctoral thesis in 1933 at the University of Breslau with the title "Studies on Colonization in the Soviet Union". He later received his doctorate in Slavic Studies at the Berlin Business School . Von Mende was fluent in Russian , Latvian and French and had a knowledge of Turkish and Arabic .

University and East Ministry

In 1935 Gerhard von Mende became a lecturer at the business school in Berlin. In 1933 von Mende had become a member of the SA , which he left three years later. Nevertheless, by this time he had already internalized the National Socialist ideology . He published book reviews for National Socialist publications and became an advisor to the Adolf Hitler School in Sonthofen. In June 1941, Ministerialrat Georg Leibbrandt campaigned for Mendes to work in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO), headed by Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg , where from then on Mende worked as head of department for the Caucasus (initially Department I 5 “ Caucasus ”, later: Leadership Group III“ Foreign Peoples ”). The presentation was headed by the lawyer Otto Bräutigam , an important liaison between the RMfdbO and the Foreign Office . As a result, von Mende was more and more regarded in the RMfdbO as an expert on the emigrated representatives of the Caucasian peoples. In 1939 his book The Peoples of the Soviet Union was published . This book is marked by racist anti-Semitism based on conspiracy theories . In addition to a series of crude character descriptions of various ethnic groups from the Soviet Union, the book contains a chapter entitled The Jews . In this, von Mende described Jews as a threat to the cohesion of other ethnic groups. According to Alfred Rosenberg's worldview, Mendes thought on a racial basis. In 1942, as part of the General Plan East, his concern became clear that he was, among other things, interested in a psychological understanding of entire peoples in the occupied eastern territories , especially in order to get the groups of people defined as people under the control of the Nazi state.

On October 1, 1941 of Mende from the State University of Poznan to the chair of economics and regional studies of the Soviet Union in Berlin's Friedrich Wilhelm University appointed. On January 20, 1942, Georg Leibbrandt and State Secretary Alfred Meyer , both also employees of Alfred Rosenberg in the RMfdbO, took part in the Wannsee Conference at which the coordination of the mass murder of the Jews was decided. Gerhard von Mende also took part in the first follow- up conference. This took place on January 29, 1942 in the rooms of the RMfdbO on Rauchstrasse 17/18 in Berlin. Mende was very well informed about the genocide against the Jewish population in the occupied eastern territories. On February 7, 1942, Erhard Wetzel from the RMfdbO, the author of the gas chamber letter , wrote a secret report for Otto Bräutigam about a meeting in the Berlin RMfdbO about the question of racial Germanization, especially in the Baltic countries. Von Mende also took part in this meeting. The participants came to the conclusion “that with regard to the question of the east country, a precise examination of the population had to be carried out beforehand, which should not be labeled as a racial inventory, but rather as a hygienic examination and the like. The like must be camouflaged so that there is no unrest in the population. "

In May 1942 he was commissioned by the Ministry of Education to hold courses on the subject of “Folklore and Nationality Studies of the Soviet Asian Peoples”. In 1943 his superior in the RMfdbO, Georg Leibbrandt, lost his post. As a result, von Mende was able to continue his work in the RMfdbO. At the same time, since Leibbrandt was released, he worked with Fritz Arlt in the SS volunteer control center under Gottlob Berger .

On April 1, 1944, von Mende was appointed to the professorship for Folk Studies of the East in the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Friedrich Wilhelms University.

Activities in the post-war period

Even in the immediate post-war period, Gerhard von Mende was able to fall back on both his general and ideological knowledge and put it in the service of the western allies , and later also of the federal government . After 1945 he worked as a professor for Russian studies at the University of Hamburg . In the Soviet zone of occupation his writings The National Struggle of the Russian Turks. A contribution to the national question in the Soviet Union (= communications of the seminar for oriental languages; vol. 39, Beibd .; Weidmann , Berlin 1936) and the peoples of the Soviet Union (= geopolitical series of publications "Völker and States" 8; Schneider, Reichenau 1939) placed on the list of literature to be discarded.

In 1955 and 1956, Gerhard von Mende aimed to found a university for Oriental and Eastern European languages . The project failed. He other hand, as head of the success Research Service Eastern Europe in the Federal Ministry of displaced persons , one the Interior Ministry adjunct office where he could use his knowledge.

Necla Kelek described von Mendes' activities after 1945: US agencies got involved in the establishment of a “spiritual administration for Muslim refugees” in Munich's Löwenbräukeller , previously a prominent Nazi meeting place. Ibrahim Gacaoglu , a CIA- led Muslim, took over the chairmanship of the small association that was supposed to organize the Nazi Muslims left over from the war (e.g. Waffen SS troops under the ideological influence of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini ). In the background, there were persistent Nazi clans, such as von Mendes, who was formerly responsible for organizational contact with the Muslims in the SS and Wehrmacht . Men like him, who were experienced in evaluating and dealing with Muslims, were now needed again. In Dusseldorf he ran an “office for homeless foreigners” financed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Government (later, after von Mendes's death, “Study Group for East-West Issues” with the same objective), a euphemism for people who wanted to live at home People had committed serious war crimes and were therefore no longer able to return to Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union or other countries in the East. An important role was played by the expellees minister , Theodor Oberländer , who was head of the “Sonderverband Bergmann”, a troop of Muslim soldiers from the Wehrmacht, during the National Socialist era. In 1956, however, the CIA man Gacaoglu was replaced by an "old fighter": Nureddin Namangani, imam and captain of the SS special unit Dirlewanger , which was involved in the suppression of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. The previous Nazi Muslims did not want to leave von Mende and Oberländer to the American secret service.

From February 1956, von Mende kept in close contact with the Federal Center for Homeland Service (from 1963: Federal Center for Political Education), where he later found a well-paid position. In the context of the East-West conflict , he set up an East College of the Federal Center for Homeland Service in Cologne-Lindenthal under the guise of an anti-communist attitude , which began operations on November 28, 1958. The declared aim of this college was the “organization of the intellectual and political fight against communism”. It should be noted critically that his previous work in the RMfdbO was also based on the idea that “communism” was a consequence of “ethnic degeneration” produced by “Judaism”. His National Socialist position was well known to the Federal Center for Homeland Service . For this reason he should not take a publicly visible top position in the Ostkolleg and the desired position of director of the office was denied him. However, until his death in 1963 he remained a member of the board of directors of the state authority. It was not until many years after Mendes' death that the label of the Ostkolleg was changed to Ost-West-Kolleg .

From V. Mendes Dusseldorf Research Service Eastern Europe in the post-war period can be found eight different developments, especially press evaluations, in the collection of the German Central Library for Economics (ZBW), “Leibniz Information Center for Economics” in Kiel. A section "Archives of the Soviet Union" (sic) of the research service is also occupied. A résumé of the National Socialist Mende determined by a court order can be found in the German Federal Archives.

Private

Gerhard von Mende was married to the Norwegian writer Karo Espeseth (1903–1991). The sinologist Erling von Mende is his son.

Fonts

  • Studies on colonization in the Soviet Union. (sic) Priebatsch, Breslau 1933
  • The national struggle of the Russian Turks. A contribution to the national question in the Soviet Union . Zs. Communications from the seminar for oriental languages , supplement to vol. 39, Berlin 1936
  • The peoples of the Soviet Union. Series: Peoples and States. Rudolf Schneider, Reichenau (Saxony) , 1939
  • Edward Winter : The Josephinism and its history. Contributions to the intellectual history of Austria 1740 - 1848. Series: Prague studies and documents on the intellectual and moral history of Eastern Central Europe, 1st co-ed. Hans Joachim Beyer , Hans Koch, Fritz Valjavec, Mende. - Rudolf M. Rohrer, Brno & Vienna 1943
  • " Ethnicity issues in the east", in: Eastern tasks of science: Lectures of the Eastern Conference of German Scientists. Edited by the main science office of the Rosenberg office. Munich: Hoheneichen-Verlag 1943, pp. 80–91. Digitized
  • The occupied eastern territories, in: Franz Alfred Six Hg., Yearbook of World Politics 1944. Junker & Dünnhaupt , Berlin 1944
  • Comments on the psychology of Soviet people, in: Tymbos for Wilhelm Ahlmann . A memorial book. Published by his friends. de Gruyter , Berlin 1951
  • “Experiences with Eastern Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War”, in: Multi-ethnic armies and coalition wars . Publication series of the Society for Foreign Studies . Darmstadt 1952
    • (same title) in: Zs. "Auslandsforschung", 1, 1952, pp. 24–33
  • with Walter Hoffmann and Hans Koch : Contributions to research on the East. Series: Forgotten Science. Series of publications of the Notverband ejected university professors, Herbert Grabert . Ed .: "German Society for Science and Research e.V." Musterschmidt, Göttingen 1954
  • The Turkic peoples under the rule of the Soviet Union, in From Politics and Contemporary History , 16, 1960, pp. 258–271
  • Nationality and ideology. Study Society for Time Problems , Duisdorf 1962

Unpublished

  • Archive material from the Mende family, including a script: Caucasus Politics. 1951

literature

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of Riga Cathedral (Latvian: Rīgas Doms)
  2. ^ A b Ian Johnson: How a Mosque for Ex-Nazis Became Center of Radical Islam. In: The Wall Street Journal , July 12, 2005.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Handbook of Oriental Studies: The Near and Middle East. Wolfgang Behn. Brill, 2006. p. 566. ISBN 90-04-15037-4 , ISBN 978-90-04-15037-9 .
  4. ↑ a b c d H. D. 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. 187.
  5. ^ Ian Johnson, A Mosque in Munich. Nazis, the CIA and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, Boston / New York 2010, p. 19
  6. ↑ Szeslaw Madajczyk (Ed.): From the General Plan East to the General Settlement Plan. Munich, New Providence, London, Paris 1994, p. 566.
  7. ^ Rüdiger vom Bruch , Christoph Jahr, Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Stuttgart 2005, p. 64. (Cited source: BArch R 6/66, Bl. 28–30, 80, 89–94, 120–122.)
  8. ^ Ian Johnson, A Mosque in Munich. Nazis, the CIA and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, Boston / New York 2010, p. 20.
  9. ^ Rüdiger vom Bruch, Christoph Jahr, Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Stuttgart 2005, p. 64.
  10. ^ A b c Rüdiger vom Bruch, Christoph year, Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Stuttgart 2005, p. 65.
  11. ↑ K. Pätzold, M. Weißbecker (Ed.): Steps to the gallows. Paths of life before the Nuremberg judgments, Leipzig 1999, p. 40 ff. And JJ Heydecker / J. Leeb: The Nuremberg Trial. Cologne 2003, p. 401.
  12. ↑ 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. 180 f.
  13. ^ Robert MW Kempner: Eichmann and accomplices. Zurich 1961, p. 165.
  14. ↑ Focus writes: "(Mende) ... as a Nazi official of the East Ministry cleared some bureaucratic hurdles on the way to the extermination of the Jews at a follow-up meeting of the Wannsee Conference ." [1] July 17, 2006, a full article on von Mendes' activities over the decades.
  15. ↑ Quoted in: Szeslaw Madajczyk (Ed.): From the General Plan East to the General Settlement Plan. Munich 1994, p. 41.
  16. ^ A b c Rüdiger vom Bruch, Christoph year, Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Stuttgart 2005, p. 66.
  17. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-m.html .
  18. ↑ "the ... Hitler putschist of 1923, Oberländer, built the Turkestan SS veterans (Namangani) as the new pioneers for the German Muslim exiles. Oberländer left the stripping of his Islamic strategy to his intimate ... Mende," from Zs. Focus July 7, 2006, web link see a previous note.
  19. ↑ Necla Kelek: “Journey to Heaven. My dispute with the guardians of Islam ”, Kiepenheuer & Witsch , Cologne 2010. Review ( Memento of the original from October 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with important notes. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / clemensheni.wordpress.com
  20. ↑ Quoted in: Rüdiger vom Bruch, Christoph Jahr, Rebecca Schaarschmidt: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Stuttgart 2005, p. 66.
  21. ↑ http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a371734.pdf page 7
  22. ↑ Location Koblenz, B 105, Folder 3637, No. 1, Regional Court Munich Compensation case of Petro (sic) Gengola, October 24, 1951, excerpt.
  23. ^ Product of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute in Prague, published 1943/44; only 2 verifiable volumes, volumes 1 and 4. No more published.
  24. ↑ with a directory of the authors, including Bruno Kiesewetter, Karl Christian von Loesch , Wilhelm G. Grewe II , Werner Frauendienst , Herbert Strickner , Helmut Zuber, Fritz Valjavec and Mende.
  25. ↑ This was considered a Yugoslavia expert in the Adenauer government, he had already been active as an author on Southeastern Europe in 1932. In 1953 he wrote a government memorandum on research into the East. It was his task to distinguish the well usable National Socialists with a focus on the Southeast in the FRG from the less well usable ones, one was still under a certain observation by the Allies. Fritz Valjavec z. B. described it as "politically and scientifically difficult to cope with," Bundesarchiv R 150, 5402/1, which of course did not hinder its further rise.
  26. ^ Publication of the state "Federal Agency for Political Education", formerly ... for home service.
  27. ↑ Mende: 137 mentions
  28. ^ Mende as a top BRD official
personal data
SURNAME Mende, Gerhard von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Turkologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1963
Place of death Dusseldorf