Hans-Karl Koch

Hans-Karl Koch

Johannes Karl 'Hans-Karl' Ernst Fritz Koch (born October 14, 1897 in Potsdam , † July 1, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ) and SA leader.

Live and act

Earlier career

Koch was born into a Protestant family in Potsdam. He attended high school and was a member of the army from September 1, 1914 , with which he took part in the First World War until 1918 . During the war Koch was badly wounded by shrapnel on the Western Front and was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes.

After the war, Koch was a member of the Reichswehr until April 1, 1920, which he left as a lieutenant in the reserve. He also temporarily joined the Epp Freikorps , where he met Ernst Röhm .

In the early 1920s, Koch studied at the Agricultural University in Berlin . He completed his studies there with the state examination. Then he worked as a farmer .

Career in the Nazi movement

At the end of the 1920s, Koch began to be actively involved in the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), in which he made a career in the Sturmabteilung (SA), the party's private army, in the following years .

From 1931, Koch took over management tasks in the Silesian SA as an employee of the chief of the Silesian SA units, Edmund Heines .

Thanks to Heine's protection, Koch received a seat as a member of the NSDAP in the Prussian state parliament after the Prussian state elections in April 1932. He was a member of this body for a total of almost eighteen months, until the body was dissolved in autumn 1933.

On July 1, 1932, Koch was appointed leader of the Lower Silesia sub-group of the SA, which he led until its dissolution on September 14, 1933, and at the same time promoted to SA-Oberführer. In this capacity he was promoted to the rank of brigade leader with effect from July 1, 1933. Since March 1933 he was also special commissioner of the Supreme SA leadership for the province of Lower Silesia.

On September 15, 1933, Koch was appointed leader of the SA Brigade 21 (Lower Silesia) with headquarters in Liegnitz , which was set up on that day as the successor formation to the Lower Silesia subgroup .

In the Reichstag election of November 1933 - in which only candidates from the NSDAP were allowed to stand for election - Koch received a mandate for the Reichstag, which had largely sunk to an ineffective representative body . After his death, Koch's mandate was continued by Georg Trzeciak for the rest of the electoral term from July 1934 .

With effect from March 15, 1934, Koch was commissioned by the Supreme SA leadership to lead the SA Group Westmark and at the same time released from the leadership of SA Brigade 21 (his successor as leader of SA Brigade 21 was Eberhard at that time von Wechmar ). As the commissioned leader of the Westmark group, Koch - still with the rank of SA brigade leader - was henceforth in command of around 200,000 SA members in western Germany, with his office being in Koblenz. He held this position until his arrest and execution on June 30th / 1. July 1934 at.

assassination

On June 29, 1934, Koch traveled to a SA leaders' conference scheduled for June 30, 1934 in the Bavarian spa town of Bad Wiessee, where he stayed at the Hotel Hanslbauer, which was intended as the conference venue. In the early morning hours of June 30, Adolf Hitler suddenly appeared with a large number of police escorts and arrested the majority of the SA members who were already in the pension, in particular the SA chief of staff Ernst Röhm and Edmund Heines, who were also on the evening of 29. June had arrived at Pension Hanslbauer. The blow against the SA leadership was part of the Nazi government's wave of political cleansing in the early summer of 1934, which has become known as the Röhm Putsch .

After being arrested by the police, Koch was pardoned by Hitler while he was still in the Hanselbauer guesthouse on the intercession of Viktor Lutze , who had come with Hitler (whom Hitler had appointed as Röhm's successor as the new chief of staff of the SA), so that he was different from Röhm and most of the other SA members who were found in the hotel were not transferred to prisoner transports to Munich and taken to the Stadelheim prison, but instead went to Munich as a free man in Hitler's entourage.

At lunchtime in Munich, Koch took part in a conference in the Senatorensaal of the Brown House, the party headquarters of the NSDAP, in which Hitler presented Röhm's deposition as SA chief and the arrest of Röhm and a large number of SA leaders who had traveled to Munich reported by some other SA leaders.

Although Koch had been released from arrest by Hitler himself, he was arrested there and transferred to Berlin after he had returned to Koblenz by plane, since his "pardon" was apparently not known to the police authorities outside Munich. There he was brought to the SS barracks in Berlin-Lichterfelde and sentenced to death by a court martial on July 1, 1934 as an alleged participant in the putsch against the Nazi government allegedly planned by the SA leadership, and sentenced to death by a peloton of relatives the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler shot.

Although Koch's shooting was an "industrial accident" due to his original protection by Hitler, he was subsequently put on the list of 77 (later expanded to 83) people drawn up by the Secret State Police, who were shot by the Reich government from June 30th to July 2nd was declared legal by the law on measures of the state emergency service passed on July 3, 1934 and exempted from criminal prosecution.

With the Fuehrer's order No. 26 of October 31, 1934, Koch was finally expelled from the SA posthumously, releasing his previous position and revoking his rank.

estate

A large part of Koch's personal records as a functionary in the NSDAP and the SA were destroyed after his murder. A few fragments have been preserved in the Federal Archives (BDC: PK files, kept on the film G 88 "Koch, Johann - Koch, Josef").

A file of the Prussian judicial administration on a trial in which the alleged homosexuality of Koch played a role (complaint by Edmund Heines against the Stahlhelm leader Herbert von Sydow before the Hirschberg district court because of a brochure in which Sydow had accused Heines and Koch of homosexuality) is kept in the Secret State Archives (Re. 84a, No. 53856).

Web links

• Hans-Karl Koch in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Entry on Hans-Karl Koch in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Koch in the Reichstag handbook for the 9th electoral term (1933). Likewise in Koch's party correspondence in the Federal Archives. On the other hand, Erich Stockhorst gives: five thousand heads. Who was what in the Third Reich . blick + bild, Velbert / Kettwig 1967, p. 240 announces October 17, 1897 as his birthday.
2. ↑ Fuehrer's order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. I of July 1, 1932, p. 5.
3. ↑ Leader Order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 15 of July 1, 1934, p. 9.
4. ↑ Leader's order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 24 of May 2, 1934, p. 14.
5. ↑ Fuehrer order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 26 of October 31, 1934, p. 13f. ("Westmark Group").