Gustav Koenigs

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gustav Koenigs (born December 21, 1882 in Düsseldorf , † April 15, 1945 in Potsdam ), actually Gustav Hermann Wilhelm August Koenigs , was a German administrative lawyer who was designated as Reich Minister of Transport by the conspirators of July 20, 1944 .

Education and early years

Koenig's father was also a Prussian administrative officer. Since his father later moved to the Prussian Ministry of Trade and Industry , Koenigs grew up in Berlin , where he attended school in Schöneberg . After studying law in Freiburg im Breisgau , Bonn and Berlin, Koenigs, following his father's example, also embarked on the career of a Prussian administrative officer. After his legal clerkship , he worked from 1909 on various posts in the Blumenthal district , his native Düsseldorf and in Nauen . In 1920 he moved to the Department of Waterways at the Prussian Ministry of Public Works as Ministerialrat . With the change of responsibility for the waterways Koenigs soon went to the Reich Ministry of Transport (RVM), where he was promoted to ministerial director on April 1, 1921 and was appointed head of the department for inland and maritime shipping .

State Secretary in the RVM

On December 30, 1931, he became State Secretary in the Ministry of Transport, which was headed by Theodor von Guérard at that time . He also retained this position under Guérard's successors Gottfried Treviranus and Paul von Eltz-Rübenach . Since the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft was an independent company in accordance with the regulations of the Dawes Plan , the RVM was primarily responsible for the areas of aviation , motor transport , shipping and hydraulic engineering ; in the railway sector, responsibilities were limited to administrative and technical supervisory functions. Together with Minister Eltz-Rübenach, Koenigs remained in office after January 30, 1933 . As early as 1933, Koenigs signed the first decrees directed against Jews and Social Democrats. The RVM subsequently lost some of its competencies by outsourcing aviation to the new Reich Aviation Ministry from Hermann Göring and highway construction to Fritz Todt as inspector general for German roads .

During the so-called Röhm Putsch on June 30, 1934, the head of the shipping department in the RVM and head of the Catholic Action , Erich Klausener , was murdered by an SS commando at his workplace in the ministry. The Koenigs, who was greatly intimidated by this, then asked Eltz-Rübenach to be released. However, this persuaded him to remain in office.

In January 1935, Koenigs succeeded Carl Friedrich von Siemens as President of the Board of Directors of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft. On January 30, 1937, Minister Eltz-Rübenach refused to be awarded the NSDAP's golden party badge and was forced to resign. Hitler took the change as an opportunity to take the Reichsbahn back into direct administration of the Reich with the law to reorganize the relations of the Reichsbank and the Deutsche Reichsbahn . The main administration of the Reichsbahn became part of the Reich Ministry of Transport, the Reichsbahn General Director Julius Dorpmüller became the new Transport Minister . Wilhelm Kleinmann , who had already joined the NSDAP in 1931, took over the management of the railway departments as the new “senior state secretary” . The actually older Koenigs remained as the second state secretary, the departments for shipping, hydraulic engineering and motor traffic.

In February 1940, after the beginning of the Second World War , Koenigs resigned as State Secretary, allegedly under pressure from the party. His position was not filled again and State Secretary Kleinmann took over his departments. Subsequently, he was entrusted as a trustee with the administration of the steel company ARBED in Luxembourg as enemy assets , in this function there soon came tensions with the local Gauleiter and head of civil administration Gustav Simon . Nevertheless, Koenigs moved to Esch-sur-Alzette in 1943 after his Berlin apartment had been bombed out.

In Berlin, Koenigs had loose social contacts with representatives of the conservative resistance against National Socialism , such as Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , Ulrich von Hassell and Johannes Popitz . Goerdeler listed Koenigs as a possible transport minister or state secretary on one of his cabinet lists, although it is not known whether Koenigs knew about it. After the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , Koenigs was arrested by the Gestapo and held in the Ravensbrück concentration camp until Christmas 1944 . Shortly after his release, Koenigs died on April 15, 1945 in an air raid in Potsdam.

After the war, Koenigs became the namesake of a class of inland waterways , the Gustav-Koenigs-Schiff, in recognition of his work for inland navigation .

Party membership

During the Weimar Republic Koenigs was a member of the German People's Party (DVP) under Gustav Stresemann . After 1933 Koenigs initially remained independent, but then joined the NSDAP on January 30, 1938 , where he received membership number 5.501.056.

family

His first marriage to Ingeborg Lange had a son, Folkmar Koenigs (1916–2009), who followed his father into a legal career and held a professorship for commercial and antitrust law at the TU Berlin for many years . In his second marriage he was married to Konstanze von Kaler zu Lanzenheim, who was on friendly terms with Fritz von der Lancken . Gustav Koenigs was a nephew of the district administrator Max Richard Walther Koenigs , the banker Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Koenigs and the chemist Franz Wilhelm Koenigs.

literature

  • Alfred Gottwaldt , Diana Schulle: “Jews are prohibited from using dining cars”. The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. Research report, prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, ISBN 978-3-938485-64-4 , ( series of publications by the Centrum Judaicum 6)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: "Jews are prohibited from using dining cars". The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. Research report, prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, p. 22.
  2. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: "Jews are prohibited from using dining cars". The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. Research report, prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, p. 95.
  3. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: "Jews are prohibited from using dining cars". The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. Research report, prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, p. 98.
  4. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: "Jews are prohibited from using dining cars". The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of Transport between 1933 and 1945. Research report, prepared on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2007, p. 97
  5. ↑ Karolin Steinke: Folkmar Koenigs (born 1916) , tagesspiegel.de of September 4, 2009 ( memento of September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) (accessed on September 4, 2009)
personal data
SURNAME Koenigs, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer and State Secretary
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1945
Place of death Potsdam