Hans Schimpf

Hans Friedrich Wilhelm Schimpf (* 1897 in Esslingen am Neckar ; † April 10, 1935 in Breslau ) was a German officer and intelligence officer. From 1933 to 1935 he was head of the so-called research office of the Reich Aviation Ministry , an intelligence service .

Life and activity

Schimpf, a son of the entrepreneur Ernst Schimpf and his wife Friederike Marie, joined the navy at a young age, in which he had achieved the rank of corvette captain by 1933 . In the 1920s, Schimpf, who had received a cryptological training, was assigned as a naval liaison to the cipher station of the army command and was used there. Wilhelm Fenner was considered his mentor .

In April 1933, Schimpf took over the management of the so-called Research Office, which was newly established that month at Hermann Göring's initiative . The task of this department, which was subordinate to the Reichskommissariat für Luftfahrt headed by Göring (which later developed into the Reich Aviation Ministry), was to monitor the telecommunications of certain people and / or facilities. In practical terms, this meant that the Research Bureau secretly overheard phone calls and stenographed what was being said, as well as tapping telegraph lines to determine the text of telegrams. Schimpf's deputy was Gottfried Schapper .

The headquarters of the research office were initially located in Berlin's Behrenstrasse . In April 1935, the company moved to Schillerstrasse.

Shortly after Göring had recruited Schimpf as head of the Research Office in 1933, Reinhard Heydrich , the head of the SS Security Service (SD) , which rivaled Göring's Research Office, tried to convince Schimpf to leave the Research Office and switch to the service of the SS , which he did but refused. Instead, Heydrich is said to have tried to blackmail Schimpf with his numerous extramarital affairs, of which he was aware, in order to induce him to behave in a way that served the interests of the SD. According to Günther Gellermann, Schimpf's intimate letters to a lover who was married to an SS leader came into the hands of Heydrich in 1934/1935, which Heydrich used as a means of blackmailing Heydrich.

The first head of the Secret State Police Office , Rudolf Diels , who met Schimpf in 1933, described him as follows:

“Schimpf was a careful man and very reliable for his mysterious service; he was humorless and took his work very seriously. "

Schimpf's successor as head of the research office was Christoph von Hessen .

Hans Schimpff was married to Margarete Helene geb. Deffner. His son is the actor Rolf Schimpf .

The Death of Hans Schimpf (1935)

On April 10 or 11, 1935, Schimpf died under mysterious circumstances. According to a statement by the police chief in Wroclaw that Schimpf's death certificate is based, he was last seen alive on April 10 at "eight a quarter in the afternoon" and "found as a corpse" the following afternoon at three in the afternoon. On April 17, he was cremated in the Wilmersdorf crematorium .

The most common version is that he shot his lover in a hotel in Wroclaw and then took her own life. Different reports say that he was killed by a Czech agent. The public was told that Schimpf had died in a traffic accident “in Silesia”. The press was expressly instructed to report only this version distributed via the German News Office .

Reports of the death appeared in foreign newspapers in early May 1935. It says that Schimpf had documents stolen from the Reichswehr Ministry. This was discovered and Schimpf was initially on leave, then released by Goring. As a result, the Gestapo murdered him as "a connoisseur of many secrets". Among other things, an alleged report by the Gestapo is cited here, according to which Schimpf was "found shot in a forest 20 kilometers from Berlin". Wilhelm F. Flicke gives a similar representation without naming sources , enriched by further details, e.g. B. other alleged locations.

Gellermann assumes that Schimpf committed suicide together with his lover because Heydrich blackmailed him with documents showing the adulterous relationship between the two. Gellermann quoted a former employee of the Research Office as saying that the mistress had the maiden name Brenneisen. In fact, a young, married woman from Berlin with this maiden name (at least according to her official death certificate) was found dead at the same time as Schimpf in Breslau.

Jonathan Petropoulos , who wrote a monograph on aristocrats during the Nazi era a. a. also dealt with Schimpf's successor, Prince Christoph of Hesse , takes the view that the most likely scenario is the murder of Schimpf on behalf of Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, whom Schimpf's intelligence service saw as an unpleasant competition to the SS security service, which is under their control. In contrast, Nigel West speaks of the loss of confidential documents during the move from Behrenstrasse to Schillerstrasse as the reason for the suicide.

literature

• Heinz Höhne : The Time of Illusions , 1994, p. 97.
• Nigel West : Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence , pp. 95f.
• Jonathan Petropoulos : Royals and the Reich. The Princes von Hessen in Nazi Germany , 2006, p. 130f.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, civil status register, registry office Breslau II, death certificate 720/1935
2. ^ Gellermann, Günther W .: And listened for Hitler , Bonn 1991, p. 21.
3. ↑ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer ante portas: ... the first chief of the Gestapo speaks , 1950, p. 232.
4. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, civil status register, registry office Breslau II, death certificate 720/1935
5. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, civil status register, registry office Breslau II, death certificate 720/1935
6. ^ Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert: NS press instructions of the pre-war period. Edition and documentation. Vol. 3 / I: 1935. Munich, London, New York, Oxford 1987, p. 228. Partial view on Google Books
7. ^ Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert: NS press instructions of the pre-war period. Edition and documentation. Vol. 3 / I: 1935. Munich, London, New York, Oxford 1987, p. 228
8. ↑ Sensational Fememord of the Gestapo of Göring's confidante. in Neuigkeits-Welt-Blatt (Vienna), volume 62, number 107 of May 8, 1935, pp. 1–2. Digitalisat at anno.onb.ac.at . On the basis of this report: New Fememord of the Gestapo uncovered. Navy lieutenant a. D. Schimpf found shot dead near Berlin - A connoisseur of many secrets removed , in: Pariser Tageblatt of May 10, 1935 (vol. 3, no. 514: 2). DNB 1040206433 . Digitized in the Exilpresse Digital collection of the DNB
9. ^ Wilhelm F. Flicke: War Secrets in the Ether , Washington 1953, part 2, pp. 226-229. The manuscript was created under the title War Secrets in the Aether shortly after the end of the war. The National Security Agency had it translated into English and for restricted use ( restricted ) Print Digitalisat on nsa.gov, released in 2014 (accessed 20 May 2020)
10. ↑ Gellermann: And listened to Hitler , 1991, p. 21.
11. ↑ Landesarchiv Berlin, civil status register, registry office Breslau II, death certificate 731/1935 from Christine Ella Plessow, b. Brenneisen, resident in Berlin-Steglitz, 22 years old, wife of the bank clerk Gerhard Plessow