Gottfried Krummacher

Gottfried Krummacher

Gottfried Adolf Günther Krummacher (born February 26, 1892 in Weingarten , † July 20, 1954 in Kassel ) was an administrative lawyer and politician ( NSDAP ). In June 1934 he resigned from all political functions at the Reich level and was removed from the last political office as district administrator in January 1935.

Live and act

After attending the municipal high school in Bonn (Abitur in 1910), Krummacher studied law and political science at the University of Bonn . After the first state examination in law, he volunteered as a volunteer at the outbreak of World War I in 1914 . In the regiment of the Bonn royal hussars, the 1st Rhenish, No. 7, in the infantry regiments 25, 389, the infantry division 88 he was in the front. He received the Iron Cross of both classes. After the end of the war, he was deployed in the Eastern Border Guard until August 1, 1919 . From September 1, 1919 to the spring of 1920, he served as a clerk at the district court in Rheinbach. In 1921 he received his doctorate from the University of Würzburg as Dr. jur. et rer. pole. with the dissertation The System of Citizenship Rights in the Imperial Constitution of Weimar 1919 .

After initial professional experience - in 1921 as an employee of a private bank in Aachen, in 1922 in a major bank in Bonn, in 1923 as head of the foreign department of a chemical factory in Düsseldorf - he joined the legal and financial publishing house Dr. Otto Schmidt a. Most recently he headed its Berlin branch before he was appointed to the civil service on April 18, 1933 as district administrator of the Oberbergischer Kreis.

About his membership in associations and parties

As a student, Krummacher became a member of the German Scout Association in 1920. In 1923 he participated in the Ruhr War with scout groups and was therefore sentenced by the French court martial in Bonn to five years in prison and a fine of 2000  RM . However, he escaped arrest by fleeing to the English-occupied territory. In 1926, after the French occupation had withdrawn, he was honored by the Reich President von Hindenburg for his services in the battle against the Ruhr at the invitation of Cologne's Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer in a large liberation ceremony in Cologne with 21 others. In 1927 he founded the strongly militaristic German Boy Scout Association Westmark , whose federal field master he was until 1930. From 1919 to 1924 he was a member of the DNVP , from 1928 to 1930 a member of the Stahlhelm and from 1930 to 1945 a member of the NSDAP.

To resign from his political offices

During his only two years as a district administrator, he had an assignment from Gummersbach from September 20, 1933 to February 12, 1934 - for six months, without subsequent appointment - in the Reich leadership of the Nazi women's association . After Robert Ley publicly pronounced the dismissal of the district administrator as "already decided today" in a rally on January 14, 1934 in front of political leaders of the NSDAP , the assignment ended after five months. This mandate was linked to the candidacy and, on November 12, 1933, the election to the German Reichstag. Since the contract ended prematurely, Krummacher resigned his mandate as MdR at the beginning of January 1934. The press acknowledged this scandalous disregard for the institution of the National Socialist Reichstag with the report that District Administrator Krummacher had died.

After being banned from speaking, he resigned in February 1934 as a speaker for the NSDAP in the Rhineland. In June 1934 he gave up the Rhenish state management of the German Christians, which he had taken over in January 1932 . Membership in the Provincial Church Council in Koblenz, in the Church Senate of the Old Prussian Union, in the General and National Synod also expired. In connection with the DC state management, Krummacher was for three weeks from June 24th to July 14th 1933 authorized representative of the State Commissioner of the Protestant Churches in Prussia for the Rhineland and one week for Westphalia . Due to the new church constitution passed on June 14, 1933 and the church elections that followed on July 23, the activities of State Commissioner August Jägers and those of his 15 authorized representatives ended.

In a letter from November 6, 1934 to a pastor of the Confessing Church in Linz am Rhein , which has been widely used in many copies and has since been published several times , he suggested that German Christians should merge with the Confessing Church in view of the increasingly threatening de-Christianization through Alfred Rosenberg's worldview. This letter was intercepted by the Gestapo and forwarded to the Gauleitung. This document, the termination of his Reichstag mandate, the uncovering of a large corruption initiated by the Gau and Kreisleiter and protected by Robert Ley - sale of the district's own electricity company for over 11 million RM to the RWE - and constant disputes with the Gau and District leadership, the SA and the Gestapo led to his removal from office as district administrator on January 24, 1935. This ended the last political function.

This was followed by the penal transfer of the district administrator as an employee to remote regional councils as far away as possible from the Rhineland: on July 1, 1935 to Hildesheim, on September 1, 1935 to the government in Schleswig. It was only after almost two years that he was appointed government councilor. From November 28, 1938 to July 7, 1939 he was transferred to Reichenberg in the Sudetengau as head of the transport department with the field of motor vehicle law. This specialist activity resulted in promotion to the Upper Government Council . After being transferred to the government in Liegnitz, then to the government in Kassel, Krummacher took part in the Second World War as captain from 1939 to 1943 . In 1943 he was seconded to the Düsseldorf government as director and transferred back to Kassel on March 10, 1945 , where he died in 1954 after a long illness.

Fonts

• Great Depression and Christianity . Berlin-Charlottenburg: Max Grevemeyer; Leipzig: HG Wallmann, 1933; DNB 57450205X ; 2nd edition: Bonner Universitäts Buchdruckerei, 1933; DNB 361113358
• What is church to us? Bonn: Bonner Universitäts Buchdruckerei, 1934; DNB 580472450

Both writings were confiscated by the Gestapo from the publisher in Bonn in 1935.

literature

• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
• Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 587 .

swell

• Gottfried Adolf Krummacher, Time and Memoirs, 4 volumes (typewritten), Kassel 1948.
• Files from the Gummersbach District Archives.
• Personnel files of the Hessian State Archive Marburg and the Hessian Main State Archive Wiesbaden.
• Files of the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Web links

• Gottfried Krummacher in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Newspaper article about Gottfried Krummacher in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Westdeutscher Beobachter , No. 14 of January 15, 1934, p. 6 f.
2. ↑ Among other things, in Völkischer Beobachter of June 21, 1934, p. 7.