Heinrich Goedecke

Walter Otto Heinrich Goedecke (born July 14, 1881 in Berlin ; † October 21, 1959 in Siegen ) was a German lawyer and Prussian administrative officer in the province of Westphalia . He was chairman of the district council of the district of Siegen , regional president of the upper president and general landscape director of the province of Westphalia.

Life

Heinrich Goedecke was the son of the medical councilor Heinrich Goedecke. He studied law at the Universities of Berlin , Geneva and Marburg and passed his legal traineeship at the Berlin Higher Court in 1904 . Then he was court trainee and from September 1906 government trainee in Opole . From October 1909 he worked as a government assessor in the Neuss district office and from February 1911 in the Geldern district office until he switched to the Münster government at the beginning of October 1912 .

Goedecke, as a member of the government from May to October 1919 in the district office in Schmalkalden , was initially provisional on November 29, 1919, and then from October 1, 1920 as district administrator of the Siegen district, the final successor of the resigned predecessor Ernst Bruno Bourwieg . He was previously involved in the Kapp Putsch .

In the 1920s and until it was replaced by the NSDAP, the dominant party in the district in administration and regional self-representation was the DNVP . In the region she was represented by her pronounced anti-Semitic "Christian-social" tendency, which went back to Adolf Stoecker . In the Reichstag elections on June 6, 1920 , she achieved 44.6 percent, a result that was very different from the Reichstag average (15.1 percent). Goedecke, who, as it seems, had not belonged to any party until 1933, was officially obliged to comply with the requirements of the social democratically led state government and its regional administrative level (RP Arnsberg), but at the same time saw himself to the entirety of the anti-constitutional camp (self-designation: "fatherland" or "national camp"). This is represented by the provincial reluctance to attend the annual republican "Constitution Day", which was not very popular in the Siegen district, and its attitude towards the activities of the veterans' associations. Goedecke was an honorary member of the District Warrior Association. The social-democratic Volks-Zeitung criticized this sharply, since "the war club affair in the Siegerland in particular is being run by the worst nationalist enemies of the republican state". District administrator Goedecke (and Mayor Alfred Fissmer ) have always been spared from this side, according to regional historian Dieter Pfau. At no point in time, and in contrast to the constitutional forces, were they the subject of "fundamental criticism" by the right-wing camp.

On May 1, 1933, Goedecke joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2,930,568). He joined the Reich Colonial Association and the Nazi Legal Guardian Association . He exercised his district office until July 1935, after which he was acting provisionally as government vice-president in Aurich until November 1935 . He was then officially promoted to government president at Oberpräsident Westfalen from the beginning of January 1941. In 1943 he was appointed General Landscape Director of the Higher Presidium of Münster in the Province of Westphalia. From 1936 to 1942 he was also the Prussian Provincial Councilor in Westphalia. In 1939 he was also the Territorial Delegate of the Commissioner for Voluntary Nursing for the Province of Westphalia.

As a Nazi burden, he was removed from office by the British military government in April 1945 and arrested in mid-June 1945. In the context of denazification , it was first classified by the subcommittee, then by the main committee, in Category III, the most unfavorable in the mass proceedings , and rated as "intolerable". In December 1947 he was classified in Category IV and finally in the appeal process in 1948 in Category V ("unencumbered"). The Appeals Committee took over Goedecke's defense, saying that he had joined the NSDAP because of his "moderate influence on the course of events" and therefore remained there despite his disappointment. He was "opponent of the party". The classification as "unencumbered" enabled full pension entitlement. He was retired on July 1, 1948.

He lived in Greven until 1950 and then again in Siegen until his death .

literature

• 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. 249 ( Publications of the Historical Commission for Westphalia. 22, A, 16 = historical work on Westphalian regional research. Economic and social history group. 16)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Joachim Lilla: Senior administrative officials and functionaries in Westphalia and Lippe (1918–1945 / 46). Biographisches Handbuch , Münster 2004, p. 159.
2. ^ Volker Hirsch: Heinrich Goedecke: District Administrator of the Siegen District from 1920 to 1935 .
3. ^ Ulrich Friedrich Opfermann , Siegerland and Wittgenstein under National Socialism. Personen, Daten, Literatur, Siegen 2001, 2nd edition, p. 174.
4. ↑ Dieter Pfau, "Christian Cross and Swastika". Siegen and Siegerland on the eve of the “Third Reich”, Bielefeld 2000, p. 56.
5. ↑ Dieter Pfau, "Christian Cross and Swastika". Siegen and Siegerland on the eve of the "Third Reich", Bielefeld 2000, p. 59f .: "The majority of the population in Siegerland ... did not attach great importance to it."
6. ↑ Dieter Pfau, "Christian Cross and Swastika". Siegen and Siegerland on the eve of the “Third Reich”, Bielefeld 2000, p. 39.
7. ↑ Dieter Pfau, "Christian Cross and Swastika". Siegen and Siegerland on the eve of the “Third Reich”, Bielefeld 2000, p. 44.
8. ↑ Dieter Pfau, "Christian Cross and Swastika". Siegen and Siegerland on the eve of the “Third Reich”, Bielefeld 2000, p. 223.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Regional personal dictionary on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein , article Heinrich Goedecke .

predecessor	Office	successor
Ernst Bruno Bourwieg	District Administrator of the District of Siegen 1920–1935	Gerhard Melcher (substitute)