Harry Siegmund

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Opening of the 27th German East Fair in Königsberg on August 20, 1939; during a tour of the exhibition v. r. left to right: Harry Siegmund, Arthur Greiser , Hans Pfundtner , Friedrich Landfried , Erich Koch , Erich Neumann (far left)

Harry Siegmund (born September 25, 1910 in Libau , Kurland ; † November 18, 2009 in Heikendorf ) was a German-Baltic administrative lawyer , SS leader and ministerial official .

Life

family

Siegmund's father Max Siegmund came from a Silesian family of small farmers and craftsmen. As a timber merchant he had come to Libau from the Kempen district in Posen via Danzig . A sister of Max Siegmund was Arthur Greiser's mother . The paternal ancestors of Siegmund's mother Erna Pusch came from Memel and Lithuania , the maternal from East Prussia. Max Siegmund founded his own company in Libau, which exported wood to England and Germany.

Education

Harry Siegmund studied law at the Albertus University in Königsberg . In 1928 he became a member of Corps Masovia , which he represented at the Kösener Congress in 1930 . As an inactive he went to the University of Frankfurt for the winter semester 1930/31 , whose law teachers Friedrich Giese , Karl Strupp and Hugo Sinzheimer made a lasting impression on him. Gerhard Saager became a lifelong friend.

Back in Konigsberg he heard history lectures by Hans Rothfels . He represented his corps at a conference of the Volkischer Hochschulring Deutscher Kind near Botho-Wendt zu Eulenburg at Gallingen Castle . One of the speakers was Hans Schwarz van Berk . When the Königsberg corporations resigned from the German student body , they founded the “Action Committee” headed by Siegmund in 1932. Siegmund joined the Stahlhelm Student Union and the German National Student Union .

Albert Hensel became his mentor in the last few semesters . Before taking the exam, Siegmund became a repetitor for public law . On July 13, 1932, he passed the legal traineeship with distinction at the Königsberg Higher Regional Court .

Trainee lawyer

He started his legal clerkship at the Bartenstein District Court . Urged by Hensel to do a doctorate , he dealt with the recognition of the Baltic States under international law . Thanks to Hensel and Rothfels, he received a grant from the Free State of Prussia from November 1932 . In the election campaign for the Reichstag election in March 1933 , he appeared twice as a German national speaker in the province of East Prussia . In the meantime, he worked for a civil division of the Koenigsberg Regional Court, and after a few weeks he took leave to work on his dissertation . When his Jewish doctoral supervisor Hensel was removed from his chair , no university professor wanted to take over the work.

As a member of the Stahlhelm Student Union, Siegmund became a member of the Reiter-SS . He applied to the Oberpräsident to be transferred to the administrative service of the Free State of Prussia, which had been reintroduced (for National Socialists ) . Since he had been a member of the monarchist federation of the upright since March 1933 , the application was rejected. On civil law standing not interested and more of an end than a beginning before, he asked his cousin Arthur Greiser in the Free City of Danzig for advice. With his recommendation to Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski , he joined the staff of SS-Oberführer Otto Braß as SS-Scharführer . Bach-Zelewski had to dismiss him from the SS because of a “wrong” submission, but helped him to the post of legal advisor at the German Labor Front . Siegmund continued his traineeship training at the criminal chamber of the Koenigsberg Regional Court, the Koenigsberg Chamber of Commerce and Industry and from the end of 1935 at the Koenigsberg Higher Regional Court . In the spring of 1936 he was given a leave of absence for six weeks at the new National Socialist trainee camp in Jüterbog . On the day after his 26th birthday, he passed the assessor exam at the Judicial Examination Office in Berlin with "satisfactory" - his lack of interest in civil law was reflected in the book.

Arthur Greiser's personal assistant

With the consent of Gauleiter Albert Forster , his cousin Arthur Greiser , President of the Senate ( Head of Government) of the Free City of Danzig , brought him to the Foreign Office headed by State Councilor Viktor Böttcher . In 1937 he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party . Appointed government assessor and thus a civil servant for life, he married in April of the same year. As SS-Oberscharführer he came from the East Prussian to the Danzig SS storm. During an eight-week military exercise with Artillery Regiment 1 in Gumbinnen , he was promoted to government councilor in November 1938 .

After Danzig was reintegrated into the German Reich , Greiser was appointed Gauleiter and Reich Governor in Posen by Adolf Hitler . Siegmund became his personal advisor on September 12, 1939. In alignment with his civil servant status, he was appointed SS-Obersturmbannführer and assigned to the leader reserve at the SS main office . With that he was no longer subordinate to SS-Gruppenführer Wilhelm Koppe . Greiser, Martin Bormann and Walter Buch appointed Siegmund chairman of a chamber of the NSDAP regional court. He was appointed to the advisory board of the Ostbank (a subsidiary of Dresdner Bank ) in Wartheland . He was state commissioner at the mortgage bank and chairman of the supervisory board of the state electricity supply; ELWAG was of great importance for the infrastructure development of the country, for the opencast mine - and for the logistics of the Wehrmacht in the Barbarossa company .

Siegmund was promoted to senior government councilor and head of the management staff (corresponding to today's head of the state chancellery ). In order for Greiser's representative, as a liaison officer between the Reichsstatthalter (Greiser) and the Wehrmacht commander ( Walter Petzel ) , he was supposed to end the constant quarrels between the military and civil authorities.

Because of his knowledge of Russian and Latvian language it was established in June 1941 as an interpreter in the rank of lieutenant to the Armed Forces convened. In the Masurian headquarters of the XXXXII. Army Corps he was assigned to the Third General Staff Officer as a special commander. Commanding General of the XXXXII. Army corps was Walter Kuntze . In Operation Beowulf Siegmund was awarded the Iron Cross awarded second class.

He took part in the battle for Sevastopol . The chief of staff Heinz Ziegler commanded Siegmund to the reconnaissance department of the 22nd Infantry Division . Graf Sponeck , new KG of the XXXXII. Army Corps, urged Siegmund to publish a Russian newspaper in order to educate the local population and win them over to the German side. In December 1941, two editions of the "Last News" appeared. Two copies are preserved in the Federal Archives-Military Archives .

At Greiser's instigation, like many administrative officials, Siegmund returned to the management staff of the Gauleiter and Reich Governor at the end of December 1941 . For one year he also represented Hans Gehrels , the district administrator of the Posen-Land district who was sent to the war front .

After Italy fell away from the Axis Alliance in September 1943, a German military administration was set up in Rome, which was occupied by Wehrmacht troops . According to the will of the Reich Ministry of the Interior , Siegmund was to be transferred there as a senior war administrator at the end of the month . Without knowledge of the Italian language and connections, he did not want to give up his "very influential position in the Wartheland". He also organized the Gauleiter conference in Posen on October 6, 1943, at which Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler - allegedly in Albert Speer's and Siegmund's absence - gave a notorious speech about the extermination of the Jews .

In Verona he got to know Franz Hofer , Odilo Globocnik , Oswald Pohl , Friedrich Rainer and Wilhelm Harster , but remained without any task. The reason for his transfer turned out to be Hitler's prohibition of employing close relatives in the immediate vicinity of leaders of the party and the state.

Member of the Waffen SS

At the beginning of June 1944, at the time of Operation Overlord , Siegmund was drafted into the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . As a tank commander of a panther and officer candidate , Siegmund broke his ankle. Released from the naval hospital in Genk , he came to Sepp Dietrich's headquarters via Paris and Falaise at the end of July 1944 . After Siegmund, now Untersturmführer of the Waffen SS , had explored a new headquarters in Barr, Alsace , he took part in the Battle of the Bulge as a lieutenant in the Quartermaster's Department (OQ 2) .

post war period

After the failure of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler ordered the relocation of Siegmund's unit to Hungary . Opposite Balatonfüred , on the eastern shore of Lake Balaton , the Red Army was already standing . Sent to Germany shortly before the start of the large-scale Soviet offensive, he reached Potsdam on April 14, 1945 , to where the governor's management staff, which had become small, had fled from Posen. With a forged ID in the name of "von Pusch", he went to Vienna . He went underground in Bavaria and Württemberg . With others, he founded the Humboldt Association for German Reorganization and European Understanding , which consisted primarily of officers studying and younger Heidelberg students and was recognized by the Office of Military Government for Germany (US) . When the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany came into force, Germans could no longer be extradited to foreign states. In the summer of 1950, Siegmund revealed his true identity to the police and the US authorities. As a 131 he applied unsuccessfully to the interior ministries of all countries . In the arbitration chamber proceedings , he was classified as a follower in the context of denazification .

Siegmund returned to public administration in Karlsruhe on August 15, 1951 . Under Hans Unser, the district president of Baden , he headed the legal department that had to prepare the referendum on December 9, 1951 in the dispute over the south-western state. He did public relations work for the social democrat Hermann Veit , the deputy prime minister and economics minister of Württemberg-Baden . With the establishment of the state of Baden-Württemberg in May 1952, at the request of the BHE, a ministry for displaced persons, refugees and war victims came into being under Minister Eduard Fiedler . Siegmund headed the legal department of Central Department I. When Eugen Fichtner was transferred in 1953, Siegmund followed him until 1960 as government director and head of the so-called office management. He volunteered for the state board of the German War Graves Commission . Repeated attempts at promotion by his superiors failed due to objections from parliamentarians from the SPD and FDP . Josef Schwarz and Hans Filbinger took a stand against Herbert Czaja's (" Persecution of Christians in the Warthegau") allegations about church politics . In 1963 Siegmund became a member of the FDP.

When Filbinger became Prime Minister in 1966, he set up the Department for All-German Issues in his State Ministry . He entrusted Siegmund with the management without releasing him from his duties in the Ministry of the Interior. In 1967 he was transferred to the Transport Department and promoted to Ministerial Counselor. When his (third) wife became chief physician in Badenweiler in October 1973 , Siegmund took early retirement in January 1974. As a lawyer he worked for an owner company in Badenweiler and for institutions in the transport sector .

He was unable to take up the dissertation on the Republic of Mainz, suggested by his Königsberg teacher Friedrich Giese , in Stuttgart. Only when he was retired did he write it to Rainer Wahl in Freiburg im Breisgau . In February 1987, his doctorate he with 77 years at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg cum laude for Dr. iur.

Witness for Albert Speer

Siegmund served Albert Speer as a witness to confirm his alleged non-participation in Himmler's Posen speech on October 6, 1943. After the Second World War , Speer had claimed that he had only vague knowledge of the extermination of the Jews and only found out in 1971, i.e. after the publication of his memoirs, that the wording of Himmler's second speech in Poznan had been handed down, in which the goal of the extermination of the European Jews had spoken out openly. Speer had not only given a presentation at the same conference, but was also addressed personally by Himmler in the speech. Alongside Walter Rohland , Siegmund confirmed on oath in 1975 that Speer had already left before Himmler's speech. In doing so, he moved the location of the conference held in the town hall and thus the speech inappropriately to the Poznan Castle . As the historian Johannes Fried notes, this decisively affects the credibility of the witness Siegmund, who was also brought in by Joachim C. Fest and Gitta Sereny , because Siegmund claimed that due to the dim lighting in the castle, the short-sighted Himmler did not notice Speer's (alleged) absence and therefore erroneously addressed him. In fact, in October 1943, the palace was being extensively rebuilt, while the “Golden Hall”, which Siegmund also stated as the place of the speech, is located in the city's Renaissance town hall . Speer had also given Siegmund in writing what was to be remembered.

Honors

Fonts

  • Review - memories of a civil servant in turbulent times . Raisdorf 1999, ISBN 978-3980221078 .

literature

  • Peter Klein : Officials or followers? Arthur Greiser's personnel policy in Posen , in: Jochen Böhler and Stephan Lehnstaedt : Violence and everyday life in occupied Poland 1939 - 1945 . Osnabrück: fiber 2012.
  • Catherine Epstein: Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-19-954641-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Peter Klein: Officials or followers? , 2012, pp. 192-194.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 98/1139.
  3. ↑ Harry Siegmund: I felt completely part of the corps. In: Kurt U. Bertrams (ed.): As a student in Königsberg. Memories of known corporates. Hilden 2006, pp. 147-175.
  4. ^ Rüdiger Döhler (ed.): Corps Masovia. The 175-year history of Königsberg's oldest and Potsdam's first corporation in the 21st century. Munich 2005, ISBN 3-00-016108-2 , p. 289.
  5. ↑ H. Siegmund, p. 281 f.
  6. ↑ Dissertation: The French Influence on the Development of the German Constitution 1789–1815 .
  7. ↑ Johannes Fried: Memories in cross-examination. Collective memory, Albert Speer and the knowledge of remembered past. In: Lothar Gall et al. (Ed.). History and life. The historian as scientist and contemporary; Festschrift for Lothar Gall on his 70th birthday. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 9783486580419 , pp. 336–338.
personal data
SURNAME Siegmund, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Baltic administrative lawyer and ministerial official
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Libau , Courland
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 2009
Place of death Heikendorf , Holstein