Hans-Werner Otto (State Secretary)

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Hans-Werner Otto (born August 28, 1908 in Breslau ; † January 2, 1977 ) was a German lawyer, Nazi official and State Secretary .

Life

After completing his school career, Otto completed a law degree at the University of Breslau ; He completed both legal exams with “satisfactory”. He received his doctorate in Breslau with the dissertation published in 1934 The essence and inner justification of the internationalization of flows under esp. Berücks. d. Determ. d. Versailles Peace Treaty to Dr. jur. Otto passed the major legal state examination in Berlin in 1936 and then entered civil service. Otto had been with Gertrud, geb. Neugebauer, married. The marriage resulted in two daughters (Heidegret and Heidemarie).

Otto, a member of the NSDAP since May 1932 ( membership number 1.190.423), resigned from the Protestant Church in 1938. After the “Anschluss” of Austria , he worked for the Innsbruck District Authority from September 1938 . From October 1939 he officiated as district administrator in Feldkirch ( Vorarlberg ) and was also the district office manager for local politics in the NSDAP district leadership. In October 1941 he was dismissed by Gauleiter Franz Hofer after he had mentioned differences between him and Otto in a letter to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. At the same time, Hofer certified Otto “excellent ability”, “willingness to work”, “organizational talent” as well as “own initiative” and supported Otto's wish for an “eastern deployment”, to which he felt he was “a native Silesian”.

In April 1942 Otto was transferred to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and in May became the deputy city commander in Nikolayev . In January 1943 he took over the post of regional commissioner in Nikolayev. Otto left Nikolayev in March 1944 shortly before the city was retaken by the Red Army . From August 1944 to May 1945 he was a sergeant in the Wehrmacht , including with the 5th Mountain Division .

According to the denazification resolution , Otto owed his high positions to his NSDAP membership. At the same time it was acknowledged that, as District Administrator of Feldkirch, he had contributed to the fact that three patients were not deported to the extermination centers , as planned, in the course of the National Socialist murders, Action T4 . In 1948 Otto was classified as a “fellow traveler” and in 1950 as “exonerated”.

Otto joined the German Party (DP) in Schleswig-Holstein . As a DP top candidate, he received a mandate in the 1950 state elections , which he did not accept, however, as he became State Secretary in the Ministry of Social Affairs on October 7, 1950 under Minister Hans-Adolf Asbach . He held this office until January 31, 1967. Otto was considered to be Asbach's confidante; together they influenced the personnel policy in the Schleswig-Holstein social area. From February 1, 1967 until his temporary retirement at the end of July 1971, he was State Secretary in the Schleswig-Holstein Ministry of the Interior. Otto held a number of supervisory and administrative board mandates. From 1951 to 1956, Otto was chairman of the board of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Zeitgenösses Bauen eV in Kiel and from 1962 to 1976 he was also the first chairman of the Kieler Renn- und Reiterverein (KRRV).

In 1965, the Ludwigsburg Central Office initiated preliminary investigations against Otto to investigate Nazi crimes in the Nikolajew district. According to the investigation, Otto gave the order to build a gallows on which ten Russians who had ignored the curfew were hanged. In interrogations Otto stated that he had heard nothing of the persecution of Jews in Nikolayev. The deportation of 600 to 700 Jews from the city by the security police and the security service (SD) in August 1942 remained unknown to him. When Sonderkommando 1005 opened a mass grave near the city in autumn 1943 and burned the corpses of 50,000 Jews murdered by Einsatzgruppe D in 1941, Otto claims to have only heard rumors about it; he also remembered an "unpleasant smell" in his statements. The lawyer Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke calls Otto's statements "difficult to understand because of his high positions in Nikolajew". In the preliminary investigation, which was largely dependent on testimony, Otto could not be proven to have been involved in violent Nazi crimes. Otto's deputy in Nikolajew was at the time of the preliminary investigations councilor in the Ministry of Social Affairs in Schleswig-Holstein.

Otto's vita is listed in the Brown Book of the GDR , where he was referred to as an "occupation specialist", under whose jurisdiction a German special court fell in Nikolayev, which sentenced ten 18-year-old Soviet forced laborers to death in July 1943 for "harming the welfare of the German state" .

Honors

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Who is who ?: the German who's who: Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin , International Publications Service, 1977, p. 714.
  2. ↑ Hofer's letter of December 9, 1941, quoted by Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Heyde / Sawade affair. How lawyers and medical professionals covered the Nazi euthansia professor Heyde after 1945 and remained unpunished. 2nd edition, Nomos, Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 3-7890-7269-9 , p. 124.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 446.
  4. ↑ Godau-Schüttke, Heyde / Sawade affair , p. 123 f.
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geschichte-sh.de
  6. ↑ This assessment in Godau-Schüttke, Heyde / Sawade-Affäre , p. 122.
  7. ↑ Schleswig-Holstein State Parliament: Printed matter 15/2502. 15th electoral period 03-02-2 (PDF; 97 kB)
  8. ↑ 50 Years of the Working Group for Contemporary Building eV - A Review 1946-1996. Kiel 1996, p. 141; Board minutes of the Working Group for Contemporary Building eV from April 21st, 1950 to May 14th, 1956 - Archives of the Ministry of the Interior and Federal Affairs of Schleswig-Holstein
  9. ↑ Kiel racing and riding club - history
  10. ^ Godau-Schüttke, Heyde / Sawade affair , p. 126.
  11. ↑ Godau-Schüttke, Heyde / Sawade affair , p. 125 f.
  12. ↑ Otto, Hans-Werner - appointed to Osteinsatz ( Memento from June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: Brown Book of the GDR, p. 383 f.
personal data
SURNAME Otto, Hans-Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, Nazi official and State Secretary
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH 2nd January 1977