Hans Geitmann

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Hans Geitmann (born January 15, 1902 in Magdeburg ; † March 9, 1990 ) was a German engineer and member of the board of the Deutsche Bundesbahn .

Life

Origin, studies, career entry

Geitmann was the son of a senior postal worker. After graduating from high school in 1920, he initially worked as a craftsman , from 1927 onwards he entered the higher civil engineering railway service. He then studied structural engineering at the technical universities in Hanover and Stuttgart . He turned to the railway system under the influence of his professor Carl Pirath .

Geitmann passed his state examination in 1931 after having worked in the higher civil engineering railway service for three years. In the position of Reichsbahn master builder (construction assessor ) he entered the service of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , there as an employee of the Reichsbahndirektion Opole .

Career in the Reichsbahn of the Third Reich

Further offices were the Reichsbahndirectors in Stuttgart and Königsberg until 1935 . In 1934 Geitmann was promoted to the Reichsbahnrat .

From February 1935 to May 1938 Geitmann worked in Berlin in various railway departments of the Reich Ministry of Transport . Subsequently, he headed the Reichsbahnbetriebsamt Essen . From March 1939 to June 1942 he worked for various offices in Prague , Wuppertal , Brussels and Bucharest , each as operations and timetable department. In the non-German cities mentioned, he was considered a liaison to the respective railway companies. In June 1942 Geitmann took over the management of the Reichsbahndirektion Opole , which he held until 1945. On October 1, 1942, he was appointed President of the Reich Railway Directorate.

Participation in the Holocaust

As a senior official, Geitmann was jointly responsible for logistical questions relating to the expulsion and murder of Jews . During Geitmann's time in Prague, where he was in control of the operations department of the Bohemian-Moravian Railway , the transports of Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the Theresienstadt ghetto ran . It is also known "that the Reichsbahndirektion Opole under its President Hans Geitmann was responsible for the transport of Upper Silesian Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp and probably also for other problems connected with the logistics of Auschwitz-Birkenau ." In September 1942 it came to Auschwitz "House of the Waffen-SS " chaired by SS-Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl for a conference that was intended to "clarify the issues that were disputed in the KL area in Auschwitz" and in which Geitmann also took part. At the meeting he agreed to the relocation of the marshalling yard requested by the SS . In 1965 Geitmann was accused in the Brown Book of the GDR based on the available documents of having been jointly responsible for the transport of prisoners to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Geitmann's "Entanglement in the Machine of Death" was never investigated after the end of the war.

Post war career

While escaping from Upper Silesia, Geitmann was taken prisoner in the Czech Republic. After staying in various camps and prisons, he was deported to the American zone of occupation in March 1946 . 1947 Geitmann returned to the service of the railway. At the Reichsbahn-Zentralamt in Göttingen and Minden , he first worked as a department head, then as department president. In 1949 he headed the operations department of the Frankfurt am Main Railway Directorate . On July 1, 1951, he was promoted to Vice President of the Frankfurt Federal Railway Directorate. In 1952 he was appointed President of the General Operations Management South in Stuttgart, and in 1954 he was appointed President of the Nuremberg Directorate . In 1957 Geitmann finally became a member of the board of directors of the Deutsche Bundesbahn. At the inauguration, Transport Minister Hans-Christoph Seebohm declared on May 13, 1957: "With President Geitmann, the new board includes a railway specialist and engineer who has had numerous leading positions". Geitmann remained a member of the board until his retirement in May 1967.

In addition to his work for the railways, Geitmann was chairman of the board of trustees of the senior testing office for senior technical administrative officials (Frankfurt). From 1958 to 1967 he was also a member of the supervisory board of the Industrieverwaltungsgesellschaft (IVG).

Honors

According to Braunbuch , Geitmann was the recipient of the Romanian medal "Crusade Against Communism" and the War Merit Cross I and II Class . In recognition of his technical and scientific achievements in the railway industry as well as in the construction and operation of railways, the Technical University of Braunschweig awarded him the title of Dr.-Ing. e. H. In 1967 Geitmann received the Officer's Cross of the French Legion of Honor .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Claaßen, Thomas Schröder, Wolfgang Stoffels a. a .: Everyday life in the railway industry today - Documentation on German railways. Pürgen 2000, p. 90 (= The railway scene yesterday-today ; 6).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Dr. Ing.Eh Dipl.-Ing. Hans Geitmann died, in: Die Bundesbahn , vol. 66 (1990), issue 5, p. 518.
  3. ^ The board of directors of DB . In: MR Friedrich Ossig (Ed.): DB Report 65 . Hestra Verlag Hernichel & Dr. Strauss, Darmstadt 1965, p. 13 .
  4. ^ The Railway Gazette 107 (1957), edition v. July 19, 1957, p. 78.
  5. ↑ a b c Dr.-Ing. Hans Geitmann on his 60th birthday. In: ETR 11 (1962), issue 1, p. 56.
  6. ↑ a b c d Brief biography of Geitmann, Hans . In: The Cabinet Minutes of the Federal Government. (accessed March 15, 2013).
  7. ^ Alfred Gottwaldt : The Deutsche Reichsbahn and Theresienstadt. In: Theresienstädter Studies and Documents 12 (2005), pp. 63–110, here p. 69.
  8. ↑ Götz Aly : The multiple contributions to the murder of European Jews. This side of Hitler and the SS: January 20 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Wannsee Conference , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 15, 2002, p. 49.
  9. ^ Niels Gutschow: Ordnungswahn. Architects plan in the 'Germanized East'. 1939-1945. Basel 2001, p. 95.
  10. ↑ a b Norbert Podewin (Ed.): "Braunbuch". War and Nazi criminals in the Federal Republic and in West Berlin. State, economy, administration, army, justice, science . Edition Ost, Berlin 2002 (Reprint) ISBN 3-360-01033-7 , p. 363.
  11. ^ Sybille Steinbacher : 'Model Town' Auschwitz. Germanization Policy and the Murder of Jews in Eastern Upper Silesia. Munich 1999, p. 285.
  12. ↑ Bulletin of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government No. 94 (1957), p. 848.
  13. ↑ a b University archive of the Technical University of Braunschweig: holdings B2. Files of honorary doctors ( memento from June 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 214 kB). Braunschweig, June 2010, p. 7.
  14. ↑ Barbara Hopmann: Von der Montan zur Industrieverwaltungsgesellschaft (IVG), 1916-1951 , Franz Steiner, Stuttgart, 1996, ISBN 978-3-515-06993-9 , p. 313
  15. ↑ Glaser's Annalen 91 (1967), No. 6, p. 192.
personal data
SURNAME Geitmann, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and board member of the Deutsche Bundesbahn
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1990