Hans-Josef Altmeyer

Altmeyer as a witness during the Nuremberg trials

Hans-Josef Altmeyer (born August 24, 1899 in Illingen ; † December 10, 1964 in Mainz ) was a German civil servant.

Live and act

Youth, Education and Early Career

Altmeyer was the son of station master Joseph Altmeyer and his wife Karoline Margarethe Altmeyer geb. Lutz. In his youth he attended elementary school in Fischbach near Saarbrücken and the grammar school in Trier as well as (after his father was transferred) grammar schools in Kreuznach and Wiesbaden , where he passed his Abitur in 1916. In 1917 Altmeyer was drafted into the army.

After returning from the First World War , Altmeyer began studying law in Frankfurt am Main in 1919 , which he later continued in Freiburg. Since 1919 he was a member of the Catholic student association KDSt.V. Hasso-Nassovia Frankfurt am Main . In June 1922 he passed the trainee exam in Frankfurt and then went through the legal preparatory service, during which he was appointed to courts in Rüdesheim , Wiesbaden, Cologne , Wiesbaden and Frankfurt again. By passing the Great State Examination in Law in February 1926, Altmeyer formalized his training.

Politically, Altmeyer, whose grandfather was the founder of the Center Party in the Saar area, had belonged to the Center Party since 1923, of which he was to remain a member until 1933.

In the following years Altmeyer worked as an auxiliary judge in Neuwied, Limburg, Weilburg, Asbach and Wiesbaden and as an auxiliary worker for the public prosecutor's offices in Halle and Nordhausen. At the end of 1927 he was given a position as a public prosecutor in Stendal. From there he moved in 1929 as an unskilled worker to the Attorney General in Naumburg. After he had been transferred to Halle an der Saale on January 1, 1930, Altmeyer was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of Justice at the end of 1930 . He then belonged to the Prussian Ministry of Justice or the Reich Ministry of Justice (with which the Prussian Ministry of Justice was merged in 1934) - with some leave of absence - until 1945 as a senior civil servant. At the same time, he was accepted into the civil service with assessor service on December 16, 1930.

Graf mentions that Altmeyer worked for the Marienwerder government in the early 1930s . It was probably already made available by the Ministry of Justice to the Prussian Ministry of Justice for use in the general administration, without formally withdrawing from membership of the Ministry of Justice.

time of the nationalsocialism

After Altmeyer had remained in his previous position during the first months of the Nazi regime, he was seconded to the Secret State Police Office for three months by a special decree of December 5, 1933 at the end of 1933 , where, according to the Gestapo's business distribution plan of January 22, 1934 took over the position of a personal advisor to the Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels . This personality has repeatedly caused astonishment in research. Christoph Graf wrote : "It is noticeable that a young assessor without any recognizable connection to a party organization is brought in by Diels as an employee after the second Gestapo law has been passed."

Altmeyer's delegation to the Gestapo was extended to April 30, 1934 at Diel's request on March 22, 1934, before being made available again to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior on May 1, 1934.

The Ministry of the Interior must have referred Altmeyer back to the Ministry of Justice soon afterwards. In any case, he had been working in the judiciary again since 1934: from 1934 to 1936 he was a member of the public prosecutor's office at the Berlin public prosecutor's office and then from 1937 to 1939 as a district court director in the Berlin district court. During these years he was successively promoted to District Court Director (1936) and Ministerial Director (1938). In 1938 he joined the NSDAP, with his admission date backdated to May 1, 1937 (membership number 3,933,983).

Since 1937 Altmeyer worked on the mercy cases in the Reich Ministry of Justice in apolitical death sentences. This complex included criminal death sentences, "pest matters" (insofar as they took place using blackout and were not in connection with a political offense), war economic crimes and customary crimes.

From 1940 to 1945 Altmeyer was a Ministerialrat in the Reich Ministry of Justice . There he held the position of advisor for mercy matters, among other things. In this capacity, it was his task to examine so-called non-political death sentences, which were pronounced by courts against so-called “pests of the people” during the war, and to submit recommendations to Minister Thiearck as to whether a pardon and suspension of the execution of a death sentence was appropriate or not.

After the Second World War , Altmeyer appeared as a witness at the Nuremberg trials . Graf also speculates that Altmeyer was possibly identical with a Ministerialrat Altmeyer employed in the Federal Ministry of the Interior after 1945 . Joseph P. Krause, on the other hand, referred to a Ministerialrat Josef Altmeyer in the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia in a critical letter to the Federal President, which dealt with the questionable personal continuity of the higher administration between the Nazi era and the Federal Republic:

"Didn't you know Josef Altmeyer as an SS-Unterführer and member of the" Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler "with the low number 236 109, today Ministerialrat and head of the police department in the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia?"

Promotions

• 1936: District Court Director
• 1938: Ministerial Councilor

literature

• Christoph Graf : Political police between democracy and dictatorship. 1983, p. 331.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death sentences that were not imposed for high treason, treason, defeatism, degradation of military strength or other political offenses, but for non-political acts such as murder, robbery, looting, etc., were considered apolitical death sentences .
2. ↑ Joseph P. Krause: J'accuse: Letter to the President of the Federal Republic of Germany , 1965, p. 47.