Gustav Jonak

Gustav Jonak (born May 23, 1903 in Olmütz / Moravia , Austria-Hungary ; † December 23, 1985 in Nürtingen ) was in the National Socialist German Reich with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer , head of Section IV D 1 (Protectorate Matters) of the Reich Main Security Office and head of the Moravian-Ostrava District Office . After the Second World War he was government director in the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior .

Life

Origin, studies and early political activity

Gustav Jonak was the son of an Austro-Hungarian judge and later a notary in the Moravian town of Olomouc, who was murdered by a Czech deserter in his office in Neutitschein ( Opava region ) in 1917 . While attending secondary school in Neutitschein , he joined the “Völkischer Bund der Deutschen in Nordmorien”.

Jonak began studying law at the University of Innsbruck , which he continued at the University of Grenoble and the Vienna University of World Trade and graduated with a doctorate from the German Karl Ferdinand University in Prague in 1929 . During his studies he joined the ethnic German "Aufbruch" circle around Rudolf Kaspar and in 1922 joined the Innsbruck academic fraternity Germania. In Prague he became a member of the Teutonia fraternity in Prague in 1925 and in 1960 he became an honorary member of the Albia academic fraternity in Vienna . In 1925 and 1926 Jonak was chairman of the Prague student body and between 1929 and 1932 he represented the Sudeten German fraternities in the main committee of the German fraternity . During the same period, he worked as a legal intern in the Neutitschein district court and as a trainee lawyer in Neutitschein.

In 1930 Jonak joined the Sudeten German National Socialist Party (DNSAP). From 1931 to 1932 he was city councilor and chairman of the legal committee of the city of Neutitschein. He then served in the Czech Infantry Regiment No. 3 in Kremsier . From 1934 to 1936 he was a trainee lawyer (trainee) in Mährisch-Trübau . After the DNSAP dissolved itself, Jonak joined the Sudeten German Party under Konrad Henlein in August 1936 and became Henlein's General Secretary and Head of the Office. From 1934 to 1937 he was chairman of the Sudeten German fraternity (BdS). After his bar exam in German and Czech at the Higher Court in Brno , he was a lawyer in Mährisch-Trübau from 1936 to 1938. However, Jonak increasingly opposed Henlein’s hesitant stance and joined the radical wing of the party, which called for the Sudetenland to be incorporated into the German Empire and questioned the formation of the Czechoslovak state as the creation of the victorious powers of the First World War . Together with Rudolf Kaspar, who was excluded, Jonak also left the party in 1937.

In the German Empire

After the Munich Agreement , Jonak entered the administrative service in November 1938, where he worked for the Gestapo in Berlin , after having contacted the Security Service (SD) in 1936 . He was appointed assessor in the Reich Ministry of the Interior . Reinhard Heydrich appointed him in May 1939 as a member of the government to head the newly established Section II T, which was responsible for fundamental matters of the Protectorate . Shortly afterwards, the department was converted into the special department BM (Bohemia and Moravia) and finally into department IV D 1 of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

From August 1942, Jonak, meanwhile promoted to senior government councilor, headed the Mährisch-Trübau district council. His successor in the RSHA was SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Lettow . In 1942 Jonak joined the NSDAP (membership number 6,899,866). In 1943 he also became chairman of the advisory board of the Wittkowitz Mining and Ironworks Union. In 1945 he was the administrative liaison officer at the High Command of the 1st Panzer Army and became the Acting Police President of Mährisch-Ostrau.

His final rank in the SS was Obersturmbannführer.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Jonak was taken prisoner by the Americans in May 1945, but was soon extradited to Czechoslovakia. In 1947 he was sentenced to twelve years in prison by the Czech People's Court in Mährisch-Trübau. In 1955 he was released from prison in Cheb after a serious illness . At the same time as the last German prisoners of war returned from the USSR, Jonak was also released to the Federal Republic in October 1955. He came to the German camp in Hof-Moschendorf .

Jonak moved to Weilheim an der Teck and became a local councilor there. In 1959 he moved to Nürtingen . He first worked at the Esslingen District Office, before he was promoted to the State Social Judge and then to Ministerialrat in the Ministry of the Interior in the service of the State of Baden-Württemberg and became Head of Department VII (Planning Department for Regional Planning). He was entrusted with the formation of the Ministerial Conference for Spatial Planning and a corresponding member of the “Academy for Regional Planning” in Hanover. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Conference for Regional Planning North-West Europe and a regional social judge. Before retiring in 1968, he was promoted to government director.

Several preliminary proceedings against Jonak that were initiated in the 1960s have been closed.

Since 1957 Jonak was a member of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft and the landscape council Kuhländchen . From 1956 he wrote for the magazine Nation Europa under the pseudonyms Gerd Junker and Gerd Jäger and others. In numerous articles he dealt with contemporary history, in particular with the question of war guilt . He was also a member of the Ranke Society. From 1968 Jonak was a candidate and speaker for the NPD .

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 3: I-L. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0865-0 , pp. 26-27.
• Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition HIS Verlagsges. mbH, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 .