Hans Harbauer

Hans Harbauer (born June 20, 1885 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate ; † 1966 there ) was a German entrepreneur and local politician ( NSDAP ).

Life

Harbauer grew up in Weiden and was established as a forwarding agent. There he was the local group leader of the NSDAP and a member of the city council. He was also the SA special commissioner.

Takeover of the mayor's office

From 1932 to 1933 he was first second mayor, then after the seizure of power on August 29, 1933, until his impeachment on April 26, 1945, he was mayor of Weiden idOPf. He replaced the first legally qualified mayor Melchior Probst ( BVP ) in his office and even ousted him from his private villa built in 1929. Reich President Paul von Hindenburg and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler were made honorary citizens . He lived in a publicly perceptible way beyond normal middle-class conditions. Already in 1935 the mood against Harbauer was growing:

“In Weiden, the mood against the First Mayor is growing tremendously. As a real Nazi bonze, he lives far more luxuriously and splendidly than any of his predecessors, as far as the residents can even remember. Only Harbauer's predecessors were always legally qualified mayors, while he is, so to speak, a proletarian . The Nazi proletarian Harbauer, however, used to write newspaper articles all the time about the lavish efforts of his predecessor, pointed out that the mayor's daily allowances were too high, etc. Now people are saying that things are now being done better than ever, while the people are suffocating in debt and themselves of taxes must be paid in blood. "

- Sopade reports on Germany , 1935.

“The city is full of wild rumors, which are spread for obvious reasons. City Commissioner PG [party member] Harbauer was forced to issue an official notice on March 11th to warn against the spread of such rumors. It should be expressly pointed out that the reorganization of things in the city district of Weiden and in the district office of Neustadt-Waldnaab is being carried out in exemplary calm and discipline . The exercise of police power by Pg. Harbauer, supported by district leader Bacherl, the other administrators, the entire SA and SS , guaranteed the smooth takeover of power. There can be no doubt, however, that where it is necessary, measures will be taken with the strictest of hands. The behavior of the city police and the gendarmerie is impeccable. Two municipal police officers from Weiden, whose membership of the SPD is known, were initially on leave. "

- Upper Palatinate Courier, 1935.

Cultural work

In 1934 he became the first president of the Narrhalla Weiden carnival club founded by Toni Buschmann .

In 1939 he was the initiator of the first Weiden “ Max Reger Week” and took over the organization together with General Music Director and Reichskapellmeister Franz Adam (1885–1954). The Max Reger Memorial Hall promised in his opening speech for 1941 was not opened until 1991 (→  Max Reger Hall ). As part of the festival, he also worked on a book Weiden-Obf: Max Reger-Stadt published in 1939 by Gauverlag Bayerische Ostmark , which was part of the series Cities of the Bavarian Ostmark .

Housing development

During Harbauer's tenure, the imperial settlements typical of the Third Reich were also built in Weiden. In 1937, for example, he handed over the deed of donation for the arable land acquired by Bürgerbräu Weiden, on which the Rehbühlsiedlung (Rehbühl settlement community) was built until 1938. The Moosfurtsiedlung, which was also built at the time, was even named after him until 1945.

Persecution of Jews, Aryanization and expropriation

As head of the NSDAP, Harbauer played a key role in the " Aryanization " of the city of Weiden.

During the November pogroms in 1938 (Reichskristallnacht) there was a dispute between Harbauer and the responsible district leader, Franz Bacherl. While Harbauer, in his function as the superior of the city ​​police officers, had the male Jews in the city taken into so-called “protective custody” on the orders of his superior department in Regensburg , Bacherl sent “Bayerische Ostmark” to Bayreuth (Gauleiter there was Fritz Wächtler ) Late at night on November 9, 1938, the SA thugs of the Weiden SA storm, who devastated the homes and businesses of Jewish citizens and severely abused and abducted Jews. The police alerted by telephone did not intervene. Unlike other synagogues in the city , Harbauer did not set fire to the Jewish community center on Ringstrasse, which had already been heavily devastated by the SA and SS , because he feared the flames would spread to neighboring houses. The next day the 23 “protective prisoners” who had been arrested in the regional court prison were deported via Regensburg to the Dachau concentration camp .

On January 19, 1939, Harbauer, together with Bacherl and the  Regensburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry , took part in a meeting with the Gauleitung in Bayreuth, in which the organization of the forced sale of Jewish properties was planned. As a result of this expropriation, three former Jewish businesses in the city were continued under new names. Leopold Engelmann, then the second largest cattle dealer in the German Reich , had Harbauer transferred to the Munich Gestapo prison. He pressed his property in favor of the city of Weiden. Engelmann himself managed to emigrate to Kenya with his family in 1939 , where he built a farm. In October 1940 the Aryanization of the Upper Palatinate was completed. Jewish real estate that had not yet been sold was confiscated by the Reich in 1941. The Jews who were still living in Weiden were deported with the other Upper Palatinate Jews to the Majdanek subcamp in Trawniki , Poland, on April 4, 1942, while Jews who were no longer able to work were brought together in the Jewish old people's home in Regensburg and brought to Theresienstadt on May 23, 1942 .

post war period

Four days after the US 11th Panzer Division marched into Weiden, Harbauer was relieved of his office on April 26, 1945, and Josef Schnurrer , who was not part of the party, was provisionally made head of the city.

Harbauer had served a two-year internment camp and in February 1948 was classified as an "incriminated person" in the court proceedings of the Weiden district court and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. Due to his health, this judgment was converted into 850 days of special work. In addition, he received house arrest , lost his pension rights and was only allowed to keep private assets of 5,000 Reichsmarks .

Harbauer's successor in office, Franz Joseph Pfleger , paid appropriate compensation to the cattle dealer Leopold Engelmann, whom Harbauer had squeezed out of the business in 1939 for a small purchase price in favor of the city .

Harbauer died in 1966. The villa built by Probst in 1929, in which Harbauer resided during his tenure, was used as a municipal building yard and building authority after the war, was empty from 1978 and fell into disrepair. The area at Christian-Seltmann-Straße 5 was purchased in 2010 by the Witt Weiden textile company . Witt restored the building and opened the company's own “KiWitt” day care center there in November 2014.

Awards and honors

• Max Reger Medal of the City of Weiden (June 28, 1939)
• Name of the Harbauer settlement in the Weidener district Mooslohe (until 1945; now Moosfurtsiedlung )

literature

Hartmut Mehringer , Anton Grossmann , Klaus Schönhoven : The parties KPD, SPD, BVP in persecution and resistance , Oldenbourg Verlag, 1983. P. 499–501, 503 f., 510, 563 f. ( available online )

See also

• Manfred Krapf: Lord Mayor - Lord Mayor from 1933 to 1945 ; in: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria (August 6, 2014; available online )

Web links

• Hans Harbauer in the archive of social democracy

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Born in no man's land ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2015 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. , OberpfalzNetz.de, October 11, 2006.  
2. ↑ "Nazibonze" grabs the villa: 1933: Hans Harbauer pushes Mayor Melchior Probst (People's Party) out of office ( memento of the original from April 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , OberpfalzNetz.de, October 22, 2010.
3. ↑ The flag was raised later: Druck und Drohungen , OberpfalzNetz.de, February 2, 2008.
4. ↑ 80 years of Narrhalla Weiden ( memento of the original from April 19, 2015 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. , Oberpfalz TV , February 4, 2014.
5. ↑ The first Max Reger Festival in Weiden in 1939  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   , Communications No. 6, International Max Reger Society, 2003. p. 19.
6. ↑ willow Obf: Max Reger city , Gauverlag Bavarian Eastern March, the 1939th
7. ↑ A pig to the debut , OberpfalzNetz.de, May 25, 2013.
8. ↑ ^{a b} The Jewish community in the time of National Socialism ; in: Michael Brenner , Renate Höpfinger : The Jews in the Upper Palatinate , Walter de Gruyter , 2009. P. 110 ff.
9. ^ The development of the Bayreuth fire brigades in the Third Reich until 1939 ; in: Axel Polnik: The Bayreuth fire brigades in the Third Reich: Fire protection in the Gau capital Bayreuth. A contemporary representation. , Books on Demand, 2011. p. 182.
10. ^ Fritz Winter: Thoughts on the Victims of the Pogrom Night , Mittelbayerische Zeitung, November 9, 2013.
11. ↑ Even contemporary witnesses who are still alive cannot solve puzzles ( memento of the original from April 12, 2015 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. , OberpfalzNetz.de, July 31, 2003.  
12. ↑ Ralph Gammanick: "Persilscheine" for a pure vest , OberpfalzNetz.de, July 10, 2006.
13. ↑ Racial madness in Weiden - guided tour with Dr. Sebastian Schott - Jüdische Schicksale ( Memento of the original from April 12, 2015 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. , OberpfalzNetz.de, November 13, 2013.  
14. ↑ Children move into the mayor's villa , OberpfalzNetz, June 14, 2013.
15. ^ The end of the "brown house" , OberpfalzNetz.de, October 22, 2010.
16. ↑ Crèche opened ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2015 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. , Witt Group, November 2014.
17. ↑ Mooslohe - nothing going on without moss ( memento of the original from May 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Weidenline.de.
18. ↑ Weiden Oberpfalz Bayerische Ostmark Harbauer-Siedlung ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 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. , Postcard.