Hans Hinkel

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Hans Hinkel in the uniform of an SS brigade leader (1939)

Johann Heinrich "Hans" Hinkel (born June 22, 1901 in Worms , † February 8, 1960 in Göttingen ) was an NSDAP functionary , journalist , member of the Reichstag , ministerial official and SS group leader in the National Socialist German Reich .

Life

Hinkel, son of Worms master butcher Johann Hinkel and his wife Eva Elisabetha, b. Dannheimer, after graduating from high school in Worms, studied political science and philosophy in Bonn from 1919. As early as 1919 he had joined the Sugambria Bonn fraternity . After a dispute with French occupation soldiers, he was expelled from the Rhineland and therefore continued his studies in Munich without obtaining a degree.

In 1920 he joined the Freikorps Oberland and on October 4, 1921 the NSDAP for the first time (membership number: 287). Also in 1921 he became a member of the SA (until 1928). In 1923 he took part in the Hitler putsch and then fled to Lower Bavaria. From June 1924 to November 1926 he acted as the editor of the “Völkische Innwacht” or “Inn and Salzachwacht” in Neuötting . After the ban and the re-admission of the NSDAP, he rejoined the party in 1925 (membership number: 4686). In September 1926 he was managing director of the NSDAP Gauleitung Hessen-Nassau in Kassel. In 1927 he was involved in setting up the " Kampfverlag " ( " Kampfverlag ") run by the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser in Berlin. As its editor , he owned a third of the publishing house in the following year. When Otto Strasser left the NSDAP in 1930, Hinkel stayed in the party. In the same year he became a member of the Reichstag for the NSDAP, as well as NSDAP press director of the Gaues Berlin, editor of the "Deutsche Kultur-Wacht" and was editor for the Berlin edition of the Völkischer Beobachter until 1932 . In addition, he was active in the ethnically -minded, anti-Semitic " Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur " ( Combat League for German Culture ). He joined the SS in 1931.

After the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP in 1933, Hinkel became head of the Reich Organization of the Kampfbund for German Culture (KfdK) and third managing director of the Reich Chamber of Culture . From July 1933, as State Commissioner and "Reichskulturwalter", Hinkel supervised the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden , which was founded on July 15, 1933 and dissolved on September 11, 1941 by the Berlin Gestapo . In this function, Hinkel ensured that the non-Jewish artists were sealed off. Since 1935, Hinkel was in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as a special commissioner for “cultural personalities” (“Sonderreferat Hinkel - Jewish questions”). In this function, the SS officer and blood medalist was responsible in particular for the ousting of Jewish Germans from the cultural scene, the so-called " de-Jewing ". Among other things, Hinkel was the driving force behind the pressure exerted on the popular actor Joachim Gottschalk to part with his Jewish wife. In October 1940 still ministerial director and as such, among other things, responsible for looking after the troops, Hinkel rose to ministerial director until mid-1941.

Hinkel was from 1927 to 1938 with Anna, geb. Danzer, married from Neuötting. The final divorce resulted in two children. On September 25, 1942, Hinkel married Anita Spada-Kambeck in Berlin . The singer (born in 1913 in Essen) was a member of the Scala Ensemble and was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp for a few weeks after being denounced because of statements critical of the regime, among others at the instigation of Joseph Goebbels . Since then, however, she had apparently changed her attitude towards the regime in such a way that Goebbels even acted as best man at the wedding.

Hans Hinkel (left) next to Ernst Kaltenbrunner (center) among the spectators of a trial before the People's Court after July 20, 1944

At the end of 1942, Hinkel took over the management of the film department in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . Hinkel organized test screenings of films for propaganda experts, institutions and authorities. Propaganda films were continuously tested for their effectiveness. Since the anti-Semitic film propaganda touched on a key question of National Socialism , these test screenings also served as a means to swear the entire propaganda apparatus to a common, radical line. From April 1943 on he held the rank of group leader in the SS. In March 1944, Hinkel became the new Reich Film Director , and in the middle of the year he was also Vice President of the Reich Chamber of Culture. He ensured that in the final phase of the war more than half of all male members of the German feature film industry were conscripted as soldiers and in the Volkssturm . In the course of the show trials before the People's Court after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, Hinkel appeared at Ernst Kaltenbrunner's side as a spectator in the courtroom.

In 1945 Hinkel was first interned by the Americans in Dachau and transferred to Poland in 1947 because of his involvement in the robbery of Polish cultural assets. All of his publications, including the handbook of the Reich Chamber of Culture and the Jewish Quarter of Europe , edited by him , were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone . A denazification proceedings against Hinkel, who was incarcerated in the Warsaw prison Mokotów , opened in absentia in 1949 by the Main Chamber in Munich , ended with a sentence of two years in the labor camp as the "main culprit", taking into account the incarceration he had suffered so far. One came to the conclusion that Hinkel was "after Goebbels undoubtedly the most authoritative and most active drummer for the promotion of NS, and that from the very beginning". Hinkel was finally able to return from Poland to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1952, where he was now only classified as a "minor offender" in a new procedure before the Hildesheim main denazification committee .

Hinkel entered into a third marriage on May 5, 1956 in Göttingen. He died there on February 8, 1960.

See also

literature

  • Petra Burgstaller: Future: Play. Using the example of the children's city “Mini-Salzburg” . Vienna: Lit-Verlag, 2005, chap. 3.3.1 "The 'Hinkel Office'"
  • Katrin Diehl: The Jewish press in the Third Reich: Between self-assertion and external determination , Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997 (= Conditio Judaica, 17), chap. II.5 "Hans Hinkel - an approach"
  • Friedrich Geiger: "One in a hundred thousand": Hans Hinkel and the Nazi cultural bureaucracy. In: Matthias Herrmann / Hanns-Werner Heister (eds.), Dresden and advanced music in the 20th century , Part II: 1933–1966, Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2002 (= Music in Dresden, 5), p. 47– 61
  • Michael H. Kater : A daring game. Jazz under National Socialism . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-462-02409-4 .
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , pp. 249-250.
  • Herbert Freeden: Jewish Theater in Nazi Germany , Frankfurt / Main a. a .: Ullstein, 1985, p. 40ff.
  • Jürgen Kühnert, ideology and business: the F. Bruckmann company and their cooperation with the Nazi cultural functionary Hans Hinkel. In: Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens 70 (2015), pp. 15–54
  • Peter Patzelt: a bureaucrat of crime. Hans Hinkel and the “de-Judaization” of German culture. In: Markus Behmer (Ed.): German Journalism in Exile 1933 to 1945: People, Positions, Perspectives; Festschrift for Ursula E. Koch . Münster: Lit, 2000, pp. 307-317
  • Alan E. Steinweis: Hans Hinkel and German Jewry, 1933-1941 . In Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 38, 1993, pp. 209-219

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c birth certificate no. 709/1901 in the birth register of the city of Worms, Worms city archive
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Katrin Hammerstein: Hans Hinkel. In: Officials of National Socialist Reich Ministries. March 29, 2019, accessed on May 4, 2020 (German).
  3. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 2: F-H. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0809-X , pp. 342–343, here: p. 342.
  4. ^ A b c Jürgen Kühner: Ideology and business. The F. Bruckmann company and its cooperation with the Nazi cultural functionary Hans Hinkel. In: Historical Commission of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e. V. (Hrsg.): Archive for the history of the book industry . tape 70 . Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin / Munich / Boston, p. 15-52 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h Ernst Klee: Das Kulturlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, pp. 249–250.
  6. ↑ Rolv Heuer: More "Krull" than "Tell". In: Die Zeit , April 18, 1969 (issue 16/69).
  7. ↑ Michael H. Kater: Daring Game Jazz in National Socialism . 1st edition. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-462-41106-5 .
  8. ^ Goebbels, Joseph: Diary entry of September 26, 1942. In: National Socialism, Holocaust, Resistance and Exile 1933-1945. Online database. De Gruyter. 05/05/2020. Document ID: TJG-5520
  9. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 257.
  10. ^ List of literature to be sorted out: H. German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, Zentralverlag, accessed on May 1, 2019 .
  11. ↑ List of literature to be sorted out: I and J. German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, Zentralverlag, accessed on May 1, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hinkel, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hinkel, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, journalist and ministerial official
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Worms
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1960
Place of death Goettingen