Hans Stieler from Heydekampf

Hans Stieler von Heydekampf (born August 24, 1880 in Berlin ; † April 4, 1946 in special camp No. 3 Hohenschönhausen ) was a German police commander.

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Youth and military career (1880 to 1919)

Stieler von Heydekampf was the son of the Prussian Lieutenant General Arthur Julius Stieler von Heydekampf . He embarked on a military career in his early youth: in 1891 he joined the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps. On March 20, 1899, he was taken over as a lieutenant in the 1st Guards Regiment on foot, before moving to the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot on February 24, 1904, where he was promoted to First Lieutenant on September 18, 1909 .

From October 1, 1909 to September 30, 1912, Stieler was an adjutant at the Woldenberg district command. On October 1, 1913, he was promoted to captain . On April 29, 1914 he came to the 5th Guards Regiment on foot, with whom he took part in the First World War as a battalion commander and on the regimental headquarters . In the last months of the war he was adjutant in the IV Army Corps from August 19 to December 14, 1918 .

Shortly after the end of the war, Stieler joined the Hülsen Freikorps on March 31, 1919 in the course of the suppression of the revolutionary unrest in Germany in the first post-war months . On August 23, 1919, he became an adjutant at the settlement office of the 5th Guards Regiment on foot, before he was accepted into the security police on October 12, 1919 . He officially resigned from the army on April 9, 1920, after having received the character of a major on November 11, 1919 .

Police career (1919 to 1934)

On July 27, 1921, Stieler was appointed commander of the protective police in Potsdam . From there he was assigned to the Oak Police School on July 15, 1922. On November 15, 1923 he was transferred to the police administration in Magdeburg , where he became a lieutenant colonel on April 1, 1926.

Stieler was transferred from Magdeburg to the police administration in Essen on July 26, 1926 . On April 1, 1928, he was assigned to the police school in Bonn . After he was promoted to police colonel on August 1, 1929, he was commanded to Berlin until August 12, 1929. On September 3, 1929, Stieler was then appointed commander of the police at the Recklinghausen Police Headquarters , a post which he was officially to hold until March 5, 1933.

On October 7, 1932, the President of the Province of Westphalia founded an office called “The Higher Police Leader in the West”, based in Recklinghausen, of which Stieler von Heydekampf, who was considered reactionary, was appointed. The task of the new special authority was to suppress and, if necessary, suppress feared political unrest in the administrative districts of Arnsberg, Münster and Düsseldorf. Until February 11, 1933, he also held the position of responsible officer for the Upper President of the Province of Westphalia.

Shortly after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Stieler was confirmed in his office: By a circular issued by the now Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Göring on March 26, 1933, he was officially appointed commander of the State Police Inspectorate (LPI) West with effect from April 1, 1933, as his office, whose headquarters were relocated to Düsseldorf on June 21, 1933 , was called since April 1933. He was thus the head of one of five large police inspections that had been set up by Göring's decree (partly from existing bodies, as in the case of LPI West) in order to police the process of conformity in the state of Prussia. Within his area of ​​responsibility, Stieler combined the command of the entire state police in his hand at that time, whereby in the police hierarchy he initially had the rank of police general (according to Lilla since December 1, 1932) or police colonel (notification of the Prussian press service on his appointment) and later held that of a major general in the state police. Analogous to the four other police inspections, the function of his inspection was officially described since March / April 1933 as “preparation and implementation of the defense against internal unrest”. According to the memoirs of Rudolf Diels , his position was of particular importance , since he would also have been responsible for suppressing the communist uprisings feared by the National Socialists in the Ruhr area and the Rhineland.

In his position as commander of LPI West, Stieler was responsible for carrying out the mass arrests in West Germany after the fire in the Reichstag on February 28, 1933 and for accommodating the people who had been declared prisoners. As a steward of Hermann Göring, he also held office from February 11 to June 10, 1933 as “Special Commissioner of the Minister of the Interior” with special powers. One of the most important tasks of the state police inspections was, on the one hand, to monitor the political cleansing of the uniformed police, ie the implementation of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" of April 7, 1933. On the other hand, the state police inspections carried out an intensified militarization of the newly formed state police in the years 1935 and 1936 was transferred to the Wehrmacht.

In June 1934, Stieler submitted his resignation as commander of LPI West, whereupon he was given leave of absence until September 30, 1934. With effect from July 1, 1934, Richard Baltzer succeeded him as commander of the State Police Inspection West.

Later life (1934-1946)

After retiring from the police force, Stieler returned to the army: On February 1, 1937, Stieler became major general at Defense Inspection XI (Hanover), where on January 1, 1939 he was given the character of lieutenant general. The patent as Lieutenant General followed on February 1, 1941.

During the Second World War , Stieler initially acted as inspector of the Armaments Inspectorate III (Berlin) from February 6, 1940. On June 9, 1941 he was then assigned to the Eastern Front as economic inspector south . On January 15, 1942, he resigned as Armaments Inspector III and was dismissed on November 30, 1942.

At the end of the war, Stieler was arrested by the Soviet NKVD and taken to special camp No. 3 in Hohenschönhausen, where he died in 1946.

literature

• Daniel Schmidt: Setting the course for the “Third Reich”. The State Police Inspection West in Düsseldorf , in: Carsten Dams / Klaus Dönecke / Thomas Köhler (eds.): Dienst am Volk? Dusseldorf police officers in the field of tension between the upheavals of 1919-1949 , Frankfurt a. M. 2007, pp. 115-144.
• Joachim Lilla : Senior administrative officials and functionaries in Westphalia and Lippe (1918–1945 / 46). Biographical manual. Aschendorff, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-402-06799-4 , p. 287 ( Publications of the Historical Commission for Westphalia. 22, A, 16 = historical work on Westphalian regional research. Economic and social history group. 16).