Heinrich Gärtner (civil servant)

Heinrich Friedrich Gärtner (born January 31, 1885 in Offenbach am Main , † August 2, 1952 in Milan ), pseudonyms: Nordmann , Gregor Strelbe , was a German officer and newsman.

biography

Gärtner was the son of the authorized signatory Georg Gärtner and his wife Wilhelmine, nee Stein. In his youth he attended grammar school in Offenbach, where he passed the final exam in 1904. From 1904 to 1907 he studied forest science and economics at the Universities of Giessen and Münster. In 1905 he passed the pre-examination and in 1910 the state examination. In between he did a year of military service from 1907 to 1908 with the 5th Grand Ducal Hessian Infantry Regiment No. 168 in Offenbach. On January 27, 1911 he received the lieutenant's license .

As a forest trainee, Gärtner was employed by the Greater Hessian Ministry of Finance and in the Greater Hessian Forest Districts Isenburg and Grebenhain. He then worked as an appraiser for a forest inspector and forester in the service of the city of Frankfurt, whose deputy he became in the spring of 1912. Gardener Elisabeth Knoepfel married around 1912. The son Heinz Günther emerged from the marriage (born December 21, 1918 in Darmstadt).

When the First World War broke out , Gärtner went to the front as commanding officer of the 4th Company of the 1st Brigade of the 49th Offenbach Battalion. He fought at Luneville and Verdun. During a lengthy hospital treatment, Gärtner was made available to the Greater Hesse Ministry of Finance and appointed to deputize for the spa director (October 20, 1914 to September 4, 1915). On September 3, 1915, until the end of the war, he was transferred to Lithuania as the district chief of the military district office in Projurze (Tauroggen). After he had been promoted to first lieutenant on May 28, 1916, he retired as captain at the end of the war. D. from military service.

In the first post-war period, Gärtner initially worked as the head of the commercial department at the head of the Lithuania settlement center in Berlin (February 1 to March 14, 1919) and as head of this settlement center (March 15 to September 30, 1919). Then he was from October 1, 1919 to June 30, 1920 as an attaché in the service of the Foreign Office, where he was employed in Department X (dealing with economic matters).

In the 1920s, Gärtner began to work as a news man: At this time he established relationships with news agents such as Herbert von Bose , Hans Danckwerts and Eberhard Reinert . From around 1929 until the dissolution of the German Overseas Service (DÜD) in March 1931, Gärtner was employed at the DÜD headquarters in Berlin. Then he set up news gathering points for the politician Walter Funk (1932) and for the Gestapa (1933). The latter was affiliated with the defense department of the Gestapo headquarters headed by Konrad Nussbaum . They also provided the Reichswehr Ministry (namely the officers Toussaint and Dietrich Niebuhr ) with information.

In addition to his work as a news dealer, Gärtner also wrote articles for a wide variety of periodicals, for example for Hans Zehrer's Daily Rundschau and for the magazine Middle East (under the pseudonym Gregor Strelbe). Around 1931 Gärtner and some journalists acquired the press service for economic development, a political-economic correspondence with which he wanted to intervene in political events. However, the project never really got off the ground.

As a news dealer, Gärtner was involved in countless political deals. He maintained relationships with circles of the NSDAP , the socialist left, with "reactionaries" and even with exiles such as the former Tsarist General Pavlo Skoropadskyj , with whom he pursued the project of bringing about a political overthrow in Ukraine. In particular, from 1931 to 1933 he was close to the advocates of the economic reform program for rural communities around Ludwig Herpel and Günther Gereke .

Gärtner's relationship to the NSDAP was ambivalent: According to his diaries, he harbored strong sympathy for the socialist-revolutionary wing of the party, while he rejected the “capitalist-reactionary” direction of the clique around Göring and Funk. His enthusiasm for the party before Hitler came to power soon gave way to a strong disillusionment in view of the reality of Nazi rule: While in early 1933 he still characterized himself as someone who was “and always had been a 100% revolutionary Nazi”. Even without being a member of the party ”, he summed up at the end of 1933:“ I just want to say one thing briefly […] that the situation has not improved since the end of January 1933, no matter how explicitly one tries to assert it. [...] What has become of this wonderful National Socialist movement and its goals in practice so far? "

The news office on Tirpitzufer set up by Gärtner in 1933 for the Gestapo of the “ Rudolf Diels ” era came under the sights of the new Gestapo leadership soon after the SS took over the secret police: On May 17, 1934, Reinhard Heydrich had the office closed and Gärtner to arrest. The Gestapo chief accused Gärtner of pursuing coup plans in early 1933 to prevent the National Socialists from taking over government.

After his release, Gärtner moved to Switzerland in August 1934. There he continued to work as a news dealer. His main area of ​​activity was supplying financially potent private customers with information about the Swiss economy. As an agent, he was still in contact with Danckwerts. He also maintained contacts with Allen Welsh Dulles , the head of the American intelligence service in Switzerland, with Wilhelm Canaris and the Abwehr, as well as with the journalist HR Knickerbocker , whom he threatened with the material for the book Der Rote Handel! , a report on the Soviet Union. In addition, Gärtner helped political refugees from Germany such as Franz Jung ("without his help [...] I would have perished in emigration") to survive abroad during his time in Switzerland . After the war, Gärtner lived in Italy.

Archival tradition

Various files on Gärtner have been preserved in the Swiss Federal Archives, namely in the personal register of the police department (E 4264, 1988/2, Az. P057693, Gaertner, Friedrich Heinrich, January 31, 1885, vol. 692, 1944–1968) and the federal prosecutor's office (E 4320 (B), 1984/29, Az. C.12-504, Gärtner, Heinrich, 1885, Bd. 107, 1939–1959; E 4320-01 (C), 1996/203, Staatsschutzfiche Gaertner Heinrich Friedrich, January 31, 1885, Vol. 168, 1938-1989).

literature

• Fritz Mierau : The disappearance of Franz Jung. Stations in a biography , Hamburg 1998, passim.
• Rainer Orth : "The official seat of the opposition?" Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor 1933/1934 , Cologne 2016, pp. 643–645.