Hans Meinshausen

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Hans Meinshausen (far left) with other Nazi functionaries at the inauguration of the NSDAP Gauhaus in Vossstrasse in Berlin. Next to him: Karl Ernst , Albert Speer , Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff , Joseph Goebbels and Karl Hanke .

Hans Meinshausen (born February 23, 1889 in Eschwege , † October 19, 1948 in Dresden ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ).

education

Meinshausen was born the son of a lawyer. After attending elementary school and grammar school in Eschwege, he moved to the Philippinum grammar school in Marburg (under Gottfried Friedrich Aly ) and after a consilium abeundi to Neuhaldensleben . From 1908 to 1914 he studied history, German, philosophy and political science in Marburg , Berlin and Greifswald . During his studies Meinshausen belonged to a powerful student association. The scale scars he suffered from his battles were still clearly visible in later years. In 1914 Meinshausen passed the first state examination for the higher teaching post.

From 1914 Meinshausen participated as a war volunteer in the First World War, in which he fought in Flanders , Macedonia , Russia , Italy and France , among others . He was wounded twice in the war and was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes.

After returning from the war - with the rank of lieutenant of the reserve in the reserve hunter battalion No. 1 - Meinshausen received his doctorate in 1919 in Greifswald. phil. In 1920 he became editor of the Rheinisch Westfälische Zeitung . He then worked as a study assessor at schools in Homburg in front of the height , in Bad Ems and in Marburg (again Phillipinum), where he was expelled from the house as a student. Such a "return through the front door" was not an isolated case in his life. In 1923 he was expelled from the occupied Ruhr area by the French . Meinshausen married in 1924. The marriage resulted in two daughters and two sons. After moving to Berlin, he worked as a specialist for the issues of study assessors in higher education.

In 1926 Meinshausen became a teacher in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

Membership and work in the NSDAP

In 1929 Meinshausen joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). A year later he was suspended from school service because of his activities for the NSDAP and dismissed in the subsequent disciplinary proceedings. The verdict was later overturned in September 1932. From 1930 to 1933 Meinshausen served as deputy to the Gauleiter of Berlin Joseph Goebbels . Meinshausen's secretary during this time was Magda Quandt , who later became Goebbels' wife. From 1931 he was a Reich speaker for the NSDAP.

In April 1932 Meinshausen became a member of the Prussian state parliament . In the Reichstag election of July of the same year he was elected to the Reichstag for the first time , in which he initially represented constituency 3 (Potsdam II), and to which he belonged from then on until November 1933. He resigned his mandate for the Prussian state parliament in August 1932 because of his election to the Reichstag. In the Reichstag election of March 1933 , he changed his constituency and was henceforth a member of parliament for constituency 2 (Berlin). The most important parliamentary event in which Meinshausen was involved during his time as a member of parliament was the passage of the Enabling Act in March 1933, which was also passed with his vote.

On March 13, 1933 Meinshausen was "State Commissioner for the conduct of the business of the city school council". In this function Meinshausen was responsible for the "external school supervision" (school construction plans, compulsory hour regulations, teacher training, teaching materials, etc.). The "internal school supervision" lay with the high presidents of Brandenburg and Berlin. At the same time he participated in the interventions under the law for the restoration of the civil service of April 7, 1933: implementation, leave of absence, downgrading, dismissal of socialists, Jews and those "who did not stand up unreservedly" for the Reich of the National Socialists. Specific persecution against groups and individuals is not known.

Despite a biographical study from 1934 that described him as the “Führer’s man”, his relationship with Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, fell apart. A further career did not develop. After the Nazi power solidified, its traces became thinner. From 1940 to 1943 Meinshausen served in the Wehrmacht , most recently as a captain in a supply battalion on the Eastern Front near Smolensk .

After his return to Berlin, he failed to get closer to Goebbels' field of activity. On the contrary, he was removed from Berlin at his request and appointed provisional mayor of Görlitz (on the Neisse). He accompanied the end of the war there with the usual demands for final victory , perseverance and loyalty. Criminal decisions against soldiers and citizens are just as little known as against the inmates of the Biesnitzer Grund camp , a satellite camp of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . He took care of the streams of refugees in front of the approaching 1st Ukrainian Front from Ivan Konew and took care of the evacuation of the Görlitz population, which he was later accused of as “forced evacuation” and crimes against the population. On May 10, 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Americans.

Internment and Trial

In the internment camp in Darmstadt (Hesse) Meinshausen was looking forward to his release in 1947 when the judicial authorities in Saxony, with the support of the Soviet military administration SMAD, demanded his extradition “for crimes against humanity ” during the Görlitz period: shootings, explosions, forced evacuation and tyrannization of the population. The same approach was taken with Bruno Malitz , the former district leader of the NSDAP in Görlitz, who was interned in Bremen after he had already held the office of a department head in the administration there due to incorrect questionnaire statements. After some hesitation, the American occupation administration under General Lucius D. Clay agreed, and Malitz and Meinshausen were extradited in December 1947 to be tried in Görlitz.

In April 1948 there was a more than two-week show trial in front of at times 2,300 participants in the town hall there. During the trial, Carl-Albert Brüll was assigned to him as defense counsel; the department K 5 of the criminal police - responsible for Entnazifizierung measures - took over the steering of Attorney and court Chairman as well as the configuration of the outer frame in a judicial stage play. Karl Mellmann from K 5 in particular controlled the processes, put pressure on the people at the judges' table together with the public prosecutor Rolf Helm , provided selective evidence and testimony and the creation of a suitable mood: "Punishing the oppressors of mankind is grace, and they are forgiven Barbarism ”( Büchner's Danton ).

This process at the interface of two dictatorships tested the assertion of party interests against the judiciary and supported the Stalinization process in the Soviet occupation zone and, from summer 1949, in the early GDR . The party conform media, namely New Germany , provided the necessary campaign. In 1983 a publication in Berlin (West) repeated the false statements made by New Germany in April 1948. Nothing had been able to stop the apparent intentions of the as-if judiciary of a new kind of “democracy”. The SED wanted a “Nuremberg of the Zone”. On the penultimate day of the trial, Walter Ulbricht appeared as a witness against Meinshausen and made a reference to the battle in the hall of 1932 in Berlin-Friedrichshain .

The death sentence of April 22nd and the execution on October 19th, 1948 (together with Bruno Malitz ) at Münchner Platz in Dresden did not take place (anymore) because of "most serious crimes against the population" (with the exception of the "forced evacuation" from the approaching front) , but because of the general complicity in the Nazi system and "as a precaution" to protect against an accomplished propagandist.

“What's the story behind this?” Somebody from the US Army had asked in between. It was about a “pilot project” by the political police in coordination with Walter Ulbricht and Erich Mielke to enforce power against the judiciary and the population - on the way to the GDR, which is soon to be founded, and to the future Ministry for State Security .

Fonts

  • The powers of the emperor in the German constitution of 1871 (...) . Greifswald 1919 (dissertation).
  • Education for the Third Reich. Speeches and essays . Berlin 1934.
  • Foreword by the editor . In: Educator Greater Berlin. Directory of teachers, educational establishments, school authorities and party offices. Berlin 1935.
  • The national political instruction. A manual for the teacher. 8 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1934 (ed.).
  • German reading book for boys . 5 vols., Frankfurt am Main 1939 (ed.).
  • Contributions to the German Philologist's Journal .

literature

  • Helmuth Fechner: Dr. Meinshausen, City School Councilor of Berlin . Berlin: Verlag National Socialist Education, 1934.
  • Rolf Hensel: Steps to the scaffold. The Berlin City School Council and Lord Mayor of Görlitz: Hans Meinshausen . Berlin 2012 (= contemporary historical research 44). ISBN 978-3-428-13690-2 .
  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , pp. 410-411.
  • A career as a perpetrator. Dr. Hans Meinshausen (1889-1948) . In: Pedagogical Museum Working Group (ed.): Heil Hitler, Herr Lehrer. Elementary school 1933-1945. The example of Berlin . Reinbek near Hamburg 1983, p. 47.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Lilla, extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945, Düsseldorf 2004, p. 410 f.
  2. ↑ Helmuth Fechner, Dr. Meinshausen. City School Council of Berlin, Berlin: Vlg. National Socialist Education 1934.
  3. ↑ A career of perpetrators. Dr. Hans Meinshausen (1889–1948), in: Working Group Pedagogical Museum (ed.), Heil Hitler, Herr Lehrer. Elementary school 1933–1945. The example of Berlin, Berlin: 1983, p. 47.
  4. ↑ Rolf Hensel: Steps to the scaffold. The Berlin City School Council and Lord Mayor of Görlitz: Hans Meinshausen. Berlin 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Meinshausen, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Eschwege
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1948
Place of death Dresden