Hans Schleif

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Hans Schleif (born February 23, 1902 in Wiesbaden , † April 27, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German architect , building researcher , classical archaeologist and SS leader , most recently with the rank of SS standard leader .

Life

A model of the Acropolis of Pergamon created by Schleif in the Pergamon Museum

Hans Schleif was the son of the merchant and consul Fritz Schleif and his wife Luise Ruppel. He had three siblings. When Schleif was seven years old, the family moved to Berlin in 1909 . He passed his Abitur at the Latin Real Department of the Joachim-Friedrich-Gymnasium and began studying architecture at the Technical University of Dresden , in Munich and Berlin in 1920 . After the preliminary examination, Schleif passed the main diploma examination in 1924 at the TU Berlin . After completing his studies, he found work in the Bielenberg und Moser architects' office . In 1926 he married his school acquaintance Gisela Lehmann. Their daughter Edith was born in 1933 and divorced in 1944. At first he excelled as a model maker. Here he received his first major order in 1927 with a replica of old Nuremberg for the world exhibition in New York . He was able to bring the model to the USA himself . Further models followed until 1936, including models by Miletus , Pergamon and Priene for the Antikensammlung Berlin , Olympia , for New York Delphi and Olympia as well as Cologne , Trier and Bonn .

In 1927/28, Schleif was the first holder of the German Archaeological Institute's travel grant, which was awarded to building researchers for the first time . He took part in several excavations, including in the Heraion of Samos under the direction of Ernst Buschor , in which he continued to participate until 1936. Schleif researched in particular the older buildings and the large altar. Also from 1927 he was involved in the excavations in Olympia and in the next few years supported the excavation manager Wilhelm Dörpfeld, who suffered from poor eyesight . He played a major role in his important publications Alt-Olympia (1935), Alt-Athen (Part I 1937; II 1939) and Erechtheion (1942). He also dug in 1930 with Georg Steindorff in Nubia , until 1933 as an employee of Gerhart Rodenwaldt in Corfu and was an employee of the US Troy excavation, where he examined the Athena temple. 1933 was grinding at the TU Berlin Dr.-Ing. PhD . Daniel Krencker was in charge of the work on the Zeus Altar in Olympia .

After grinding for more than seven years only with short-term contracts for various clients without obtaining a permanent position, he joined the SS in 1935 (SS No. 264.124). Schleif had been a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 5,380,876) since 1937. From 1938 to 1940, Schleif was the head of the excavation teaching and research facility of the SS science organization Research and Teaching Association German Ahnenerbe . There he was responsible for the excavations in Bensberg , Altstadt and Alt-Christburg , at the Kriemhildenstuhl , on the Karnburg and in Biskupin (renamed Urstätt from 1940 to 1945 ). His deputy was Herbert Jankuhn , who was particularly responsible for prehistoric issues. At times, during the resumption of excavations in the Zeus sanctuary in Olympia, which was announced and financed by Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, Schleif was released from the SS as local excavation manager. In 1936 , Schleif completed his habilitation at the Technical University of Berlin and was appointed lecturer in 1937, associate professor in 1938 and extraordinary professor of classical archeology at the University of Berlin in 1939.

Not least because of the close connections to the famous excavator and building researcher Wilhelm Dörpfeld , but also because of his skills, experience and ambition, Schleif was considered a suitable successor in the management of the Olympic excavation. But it was not until December 1937 that he and Emil Kunze were able to take over the local excavation management after a few quarrels about the appointment as civil servant of the German Archaeological Institute and the resulting post. Schleif played a major role in the planning and implementation of the Olympic excavation at the time. In the five excavations he directed, investigations were carried out in the stadium, in the grammar school, in the south hall, in the bathing district and in the southeast area. He carried out construction studies on the Philippeion , the Nymphaeum , the Temple of Zeus and the treasuries. The research went hand in hand with an organization and development program at the Altis . After the excavations were stopped in 1942, Schleif turned to longer-term work, including the systematics and history of Greek architecture promoted by the German Archaeological Institute . The planned multi-volume encyclopedia remained unfinished apart from a few articles.

Use during the war (1939–1945)

From October 1939 to mid-1941, Schleif took part in the robbery of art and cultural property in Poland on behalf of the Ahnenerbes . In the first phase of the German occupation of Poland , he was a member of the Paulsen Special Command , which is said to have distinguished himself through unscrupulousness. Accordingly, he was appointed trustee for Posen on December 1, 1939 within the framework of the main trust agency in the east , for which the Ahnenerbe provided scientific and administrative staff. In 1939 he also joined the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , where he served again shortly before the occupation of Greece in April 1941.

In the spring of 1940, Schleif was replaced as head of the excavation department in the Ahnenerbe by Jankuhn, after long tensions had arisen because Schleif preferred classical archeology to prehistoric archeology. In this context, he had emphasized several times that Hitler also reject the Germanic prehistory, and emphasized his own, self-perceived closeness to his protege Himmler.

With the German occupation of Greece , Schleif was assigned to the SD task force in Athens . At the same time he carried out a final excavation campaign in Olympia in 1941/42.

On February 10, 1944, Schleif was transferred to the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, where he was not only deputy head of Office Group C (Construction) Hans Kammler , but also on a special assignment as Fuhrer and in the SS special staff as Kammler's right hand participated. On January 30, 1945, Schleif was promoted to SS-Standartenführer .

In these functions he was entrusted with the overall supervision of all concentration camp construction projects, including the gas chambers and crematoria, which is why he can be considered a "technocrat of extermination" alongside Hans Kammler. Under Kammler, Schleif was also responsible for the expansion of the underground production facilities for jet engines, jet aircraft , engines and the A4 rocket program . Under Kammler he was jointly responsible for the underground relocation of rocket production into the tunnel system of the Kohnstein . With B8 Bergkristall , one of the largest and most modern underground factories for Me-262 jet fighter aircraft in St. Georgen an der Gusen not far from Mauthausen was built under Kammler and Schleif from 1944 onwards .

Stephan Lehmann made the largely unknown SS service career known to the professional audience in 2007 at the conference “Life Images: Classical Archaeologists and National Socialism” in the Pergamon Museum .

Since then, new and latest research results have shed further light on Schleif's activities at Kammler's side. Although there had been doubts about Kammer's suicide (May 9, 1945) for a long time, new file finds in US archives suggest that Hans Kammler defected to the US armed forces with a wealth of files.

Death of Schleif

At the end of the war , on April 27, 1945, Schleif killed his second wife and longtime assistant in the Ahnenerbe Leonore Thomass and their twin sons, then himself.

Artistic reception

Hans Schleif's grandson, the actor Matthias Neukirch , has extensively researched the biography of his grandfather and processed it in the play Hans Schleif - A Search for Traces , which premiered on October 13, 2011 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hans Schleif  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dirk Mahsarski: Herbert Jankuhn (1905 to 1990). A German prehistorian between National Socialist ideology and scientific objectivity. Rahden, Westf. 2011, pp. 176-179.
  2. ↑ Kater 1974, pp. 149-155, 289, 459; Heather Pringle: The Master Plan. Himmler's scholars and the holocaust. London 2006, pp. 207ff.
  3. ^ Stephan Lehmann: Hans Schleif (1902–1945). In: Gunnar Brands, Martin Maischberger (Hrsg.): Lebensbilder. Classical archaeologists and National Socialism. Leidorf, Rahden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86757-382-5 , p. 211 f. and 222.
  4. ↑ Mahsarski 2011 a. OS 195.
  5. ^ Letter from the head of Office Group C - Construction - in the WVHA, SS-Gruppenführer Hans Kammler dated February 2, 1944: Lehmann 2012, pp. 212-213.
  6. ↑ Stürmer 2002, p. 441; Legendre 2007, p. 459.
  7. ^ Walter Naasner (ed.): SS economy and SS administration. The SS Economic Administration Main Office and the economic enterprises under its supervision. Düsseldorf 1998, p. 45; Stephan Lehmann: Hans Schleif (1902-1945). In: Gunnar Brands, Martin Maischberger (Hrsg.): Lebensbilder. Classical archaeologists and National Socialism. Rhaden 2012, pp. 214-218; for the office see Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Destruction. The economic empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
  8. ↑ See Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 475.
  9. ^ Rainer Fröbe: Hans Kammler, technocrat of destruction. In: Robert Smelser; Enrico Syring (ed.): The SS. Elite under the skull. 30 résumés. Paderborn 2000.
  10. ↑ Heinz Dieter Hölsken: The V-Waffen: Origin - Propaganda - War use. Stuttgart 1984; Jens-Christian Wagner: Production of Death. The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Wallstein 2001.
  11. ^ Rudolf A. Haunschmied , Jan-Ruth Mills, Siegi Witzany-Durda: St. Georgen-Gusen-Mauthausen - Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered . BoD, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7440-8 , p. 127 ff.
  12. ↑ The article was printed in 2012, s. Stephan Lehmann: Hans Schleif (1902-1945). In: Gunnar Brands, Martin Maischberger (Hrsg.): Lebensbilder. Classical archaeologists and National Socialism. Leidorf, Rahden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86757-382-5 , pp. 207-22; Stefan Altekamp, ​​Classical archeology in Nazi Germany. In: Helen Roche and Kyriakos Demetriou (eds.): Brill's companion to the classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Leiden 2017, pp. 289-324, esp. 313f.
  13. ↑ In 2019, Rainer Karlsch and Frank Döbert presented new evidence from US archives for the thesis that Kammler was still alive at least in November 1945 and that the Americans had access to him Döbert, Karlsch, Hans Kammler, Hitler's Last Hope, in American Hands , Cold War International History Project, Wilson Center, August 18, 2019
  14. ^ Deutsches Theater Berlin - Hans Schleif
personal data
SURNAME Schleif, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schleif, Philipp Oswald Hans (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, building researcher, archaeologist and SS-Standartenführer
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1945
Place of death Berlin