Gottlieb Rösner

Gottlieb Ludwig Rösner (born August 22, 1894 in Beuthen Black Forest , Upper Silesia ; † September 5, 1970 in Berlin-Spandau ) was a German political functionary ( NSDAP ) and paramilitary activist.

Live and act

Earlier career

After attending school, Rösner was trained as a mechanical engineer at a mechanical engineering school.

From 1914 to 1918 Roesner took as shock troops - infantry , gunner and gunner with the infantry regiments 156 , 7 and 36 and the artillery regiments 275 and 283 in the First World War in part. During the war he was wounded several times (including gunshot wounds to the hand and shoulder, grenade splinters to his right leg and twice buried) and was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes.

In the first post-war period, Rösner belonged to the Dohna Freikorps from January to April 1919 and then to the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division until November 1919 . Then he belonged to the Black Reichswehr (last there as Vice Sergeant ) and the Völkische Hundertschaft.

Rösner earned his living from 1923 to 1925 at the German works in Spandau.

Activity in the Nazi movement before 1933

On August 28, 1925, Rösner joined the NSDAP ( membership number 17.163), which was newly founded that year , to which he said he had belonged from 1921 to 1923.

At the end of December 1925, Rösner set up the first division of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the party's street fighting unit, in Berlin. Specifically, this first SA unit was the SA department in Spandau . In 1927 he led the SA Standard Spandau. Also around 1927, Rösner was appointed by Joseph Goebbels as NSDAP district leader of Brandenburg-West.

As a member of the SA, Rösner took part in numerous violent clashes between supporters of the Nazi movement and their political opponents in street and hall battles in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He suffered serious injuries twice: the first time a severe concussion from blows with a stick (February 1926) and the second time a stab in the back with a side gun (March 22, 1927). The latter injury resulted in an extended hospital stay. There were also various minor injuries.

From 1927 to 1933 Rösner was a commercial clerk at Rhenania OSSAG Mineralöl AG, most recently as an operations assistant.

In 1931, Rösner set up an SA engine squadron in Brandenburg. By the Führer order No. 7 he was promoted in his position as leader of this squadron on November 1, 1931 to the rank of Oberstaffelführer in the SA sub-group Brandenburg. In 1932 he had reached the rank of SA standard leader. The promotion to Oberführer that Rösner was striving for did not materialize , allegedly because of personal differences between him and Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff, who was in office as the Berlin SA chief from 1931 . Helldorf justified Rösner's denial of boarding, on the other hand, with Rösner's unsuitability for the position of Oberführer.

Time of Nazi rule

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Rösner was appointed a paid city councilor in Berlin-Weißensee . In addition, he took over the function of a liaison leader (SA liaison leader) between the Berlin SA and the Berlin Gauleitung of the NSDAP.

In April 1934 he received an informal reprimand from the NSDAP Gaugericht for inadmissible attempts on his part to interfere in party court proceedings and attempts to denounce Standartenführer Martens for financial transactions at the party jurisdiction. The district court I of the party called for the initiation of partisan proceedings against Rösner for "unnational socialist behavior" and "unauthorized interference in party jurisdiction", however, was rejected by the district court.

Following the events of the so-called Röhm affair in early summer 1934, Rösner was commissioned by Kurt Daluege , who took over the provisional leadership of the SA group in Berlin-Brandenburg in July 1934 , to cleanse the group of "unreliable elements". In this capacity he belonged to an internal SA investigation committee, which had the task of examining which higher SA leaders of the Berlin-Brandenburg group were guilty of political, private or other misconduct. In this position he also took part in numerous internal SA investigations and court proceedings against SA leaders who were suspected of having been guilty of misconduct in the course of the investigations. In connection with the activities of the investigative committee, Rösner received receipts for debts that his enemy Helldorf had with the Jewish clairvoyant Erik Jan Hanussen . After Helldorf refused to extort Rösner's attempts - which were aimed at promoting Rösner's accelerated promotion - the latter initiated SA proceedings against his former superior, which was ultimately put down by Joseph Goebbels thanks to Helldorf's protection .

As a result of the reorganization of the Berlin SA, Rösner was entrusted with the command of SA Brigade 30 in July 1934, which he retained until this unit was dissolved in May 1935.

In January 1935, Rösner wrote a letter to Helldorff in which he threatened to hand over to the party court of the NSDAP any documents that had come into his hands, showing his, Helldorf's, relations with the clairvoyant and Jew Erik Jan Hanussen , who was murdered in 1933 , tried to blackmail him to get him the promotion to SA-Oberführer, which he, Helldorf, had withheld from him in 1932, retrospectively. After Helldorf refused, Rösner submitted an application to the party supreme court to exclude Helldorf from the NSDAP . However, this measure backfired because Helldorff - who rose to become police president of Berlin in the same year - with Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring had powerful protectors, so that instead of Helldorf Rösner was targeted by the party offices.

Attacks by Rösner on SA-Oberführer Waldemar Geyer , whom he wrongly accused of claiming "fame" for himself and spreading the claim that he, Geyer, had launched the Berlin SA in 1926, led to him im June 1935 was given leave of absence from the SA service. In 1936 he was forced to officially withdraw his allegations against Geyer as "allegations and defamations" with the expression of his regret.

Also since 1935, Rösner made himself an advocate for some NSDAP members in Spandau, who turned against abuses in the local district leadership, for which purpose he directed numerous petitions to various party offices ( Hitler's adjutant , office of the Führer’s deputy, etc.), in which he pointed out alleged grievances in District I and in particular sharply attacked the Spandau district leader Paul Skoda . Rösner himself had a tense relationship with Skoda because he was of the opinion that it was blocking his appointment as a city councilor in Spandau.

By decision of the Supreme Court of the NSDAP party from March 14, 1938 Roesner was finally out of the NSDAP excluded . The reasons for this were, on the one hand, his actions against Helldorf in 1935 and his attacks on Skoda and the deputy Berlin Gauleiter Artur Görlitzer , which was assessed as defamation . His attempts in 1934 to use intrigues to oust the Spandau SA standard leader Martens from his post in order to be able to take over it himself had a negative impact. The OPG rated Rösner's behavior as "the discharge of serious character defects". Goebbels, who observed the events, also welcomed his expulsion from the party. At the time of his expulsion from the NSDAP, Rösner was already from the SA by a decision of the 1st Chamber of the SA Disciplinary Court of February 3, 1938, citing Section 127f. of the SA Service Ordinance has been dismissed.

An application by Rösner to be accepted back into the NSDAP by mercy in 1939 was rejected by the Chancellery of the Führer of the NSDAP after the question had been presented to Hitler , who refused to accept Rösner. However, he was allowed to keep his post as city councilor in Weissensee, provided that Hitler did not suffer any disadvantage.

During the Second World War , Rösner tried to get Heinrich Himmler accepted into the Waffen SS and rehabilitation.

post war period

After the war, Rösner was used on various occasions by judicial authorities and historians as a source for the reconstruction and processing of legally and historically significant events in which he was involved as an actor or witness due to his position as a leading SA functionary. Rösner spent the last years of his life in Berlin-Spandau.

family

Rösner was married to Marie Luise Blouhm (born May 2, 1903 in Alt Mahlisch; † November 22, 1979 in Berlin-Spandau).

estate

Rösner's personal papers of a political nature were given to the private researcher Fritz Tobias by his wife in the 1970s . After Tobias death, they came to the Koblenz branch of the Federal Archives in 2015, where they have been available to the public as part of Contemporary History Collection No. 163 (Zsg. 163/85) since 2017.

Personnel files Rösners have in turn in the Federal Archive in Berlin available: With BDC are to him an OPG acts (microfilm H 110 images 1763-1776), a PK-file (microfilm K 18 images from 2455 to 2599), an SA record ( Microfilm 149-B, images 7655–7663) and an SA-P file (microfilm D 225, images 2221–2747) are available. Documents on Rösner's attempts to join the Waffen SS during the Second World War can be found in the registry of Heinrich Himmler's Adjutantur (NS 19/1227).

literature

• Ted Harrison: “Old fighters in the resistance. Graf Helldorf, the Nazi movement and the opposition to Hitler ”, in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte No. 45, 1997, pp. 385–423 ( PDF ).
• Helmut Heiber (ed.): Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP , Munich 1983.
  • Cases no.10286, 10441, 10950 (= recordings: 124 - 1708 to 1712: letter from Rösner to Martin Bormann of July 20, 1935), 11109.
• M. Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist "seizure of power" in Berlin , 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ^ German loss lists (Pr. 196) of April 15, 1915, p. 5821 ( online ).
2. ↑ Date of death according to: Landesarchiv Berlin: Digitized name directory for the Spandau registry office for the year 1970 (= P Rep. 480 Berlin registry office - Spandau (Spandau II) No. 1228, "Directory of names death registry 1970"), p. 181 of the online available Version of the name registration (there reference to the certification of Rösner's death as death register entry no. 1970/2978 of the Spandau registry office.
3. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The Goebbels Diaries , Vol. 1 / II, p. 212.
4. ↑ Leader Order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 7 of February 10, 1932, p. 2.
5. ↑ Elke Fröhlich: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels , Vol. 5, 2000, p. 197.
6. ↑ Josef Henke: Personal Staff of the Reichsführer SS , 1997, p. 458.
7. ↑ Date of death according to: Landesarchiv Berlin: Digitized of the name directory for the death register of the registry office Spandau 2 (death register entry 1979/3456).