Heinrich Heim

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Heinrich Heim (* 15. June 1900 in Munich , † 26. June 1988 ibid) was a lawyer and standartenführer in the era of National Socialism . During the Second World War he served as Martin Bormann's adjutant at the Führer Headquarters . After the end of the war, he became known to a broad public because of the minutes he had made of the conversations he had at the table of Adolf Hitler .

Parental home and youth

Heinrich Heim was born in Munich in 1900 as the son of an old and respected family of Bavarian lawyers. His father was a judge at the Bavarian Supreme Court , in the Weimar Republic a member of the Bavarian State Court and at times a member of the Disciplinary Court .

Heim grew up in Zweibrücken , where he also attended school. He then studied law at the University of Munich .

Weimar Republic

After he got to know Rudolf Hess in an economics college , he allegedly joined the NSDAP on July 19, 1920 and was given membership number 1782. A later handwritten letter from Martin Bormann to Heim, dated April 15, 1936, can be found on the other hand that Heim only joined the party after 1933 and was given a lower membership number because an early party entry was to be faked. Bormann, who is said to have initiated this, informed Heim in this letter: “For the rest, I would ask that you, because of the matter with no. do not shout at third parties because of the reasons for the civil servant status. What I did with them doesn't work with others. In a letter, Hess attested Heim's “active share” in party life before 1933, saying that Heim had not formally joined the party for “special reasons” that were not specified. The date for Heim's “(re) entry” into the NSDAP was postponed from 1933 to 1931 and he was given membership number 386.127.

After passing the university examination, Heim settled in Munich and worked together with Hans Frank in a law firm, primarily representing the interests of the auxiliary fund headed by Bormann.

National Socialism

After Hitler appointed Hess as his deputy leader of the NSDAP on April 21, 1933, Hess and Bormann began to set up a party headquarters. From August 13, 1933 Heim worked on the staff of the Deputy Leader , whereupon he was given the position of Reichsamtsleiter in Department III C to deal with all questions of justice and legislation. In 1936 he became a government advisor and in 1939 a ministerial advisor in the “Staff of the StdF”, which in 1941 was renamed the Party Chancellery .

Heim worked as von Bormann's adjutant between late 1939 and autumn 1942 and was therefore present at Hitler's respective headquarters, including the Berghof , during this time . The Hamburg historian Werner Jochmann weighed the minutes made by Heim between July 5, 1941 and September 7, 1942, in which he wrote down Hitler's words, with the following words: “ No matter how hard Heim tried, the words of his Führer To be delivered as faithfully and precisely as possible, they remain subjectively filtered ”. The recorded table conversations are important, among other things , because they provide information about which military and civilians were present at the headquarters during this period. Heim's recordings were interrupted between March 21 and July 31, 1942 because he was helping the painter Karl Leipold , who was close to him, to prepare for an exhibition in the Munich House of Art . At that time Heim was represented at the Fuehrer's headquarters by Senior Government Councilor Henry Picker .

After autumn 1942 Heim returned to the Braune Haus and until the end of the war headed a newly created department for the processing of fundamental questions about the redesign of Europe (cf. National Socialist European Plans ). In 1943 he became an SS Standartenführer.

post war period

Nothing is known about Heim's life after 1945. In 1952 a legal dispute began before the Düsseldorf regional court between the Paris publishing house Flammarion and the Athenaeum publishing house in Bad Godesberg, who were the legal heirs of Hitler's table conversations recorded by Heinrich Heim and Henry Picker . Both publishers wanted to secure sole rights to the records.

When Heim's writings by Werner Jochmann were first published in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980 , Rudolf Augstein summarized them in an article in Spiegel and had a preprint published in his news magazine. If the records were considered to be original shorthand notes for many years, it now turned out that they were memory records of an ear witness. The weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote in March 1980 about this newfound knowledge: “ Nonetheless, they remain a unique historical document ”.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 238.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Werner Jochmann (Ed.): Adolf Hitler . Monologues in the Führer Headquarters 1941–1944. Recorded by Heinrich Heim. Munich 2000, p. 11 f.
  3. ↑ a b Jochen von Lang: The secretary - Martin Bormann . The man who ruled Hitler. Augsburg 2004, p. 78, ISBN 3-8289-0558-7 .
  4. ^ Peter Longerich : Hitler's deputy. Management of the NSDAP and control of the state apparatus by the staff of Heß and Bormann's party chancellery , Munich 1992, ISBN 3598110812 , p. 11 / there also (re) entry
  5. ↑ Werner Jochmann (Ed.): Adolf Hitler . Monologues in the Führer Headquarters 1941–1944. Recorded by Heinrich Heim. Munich 2000, p. 15.
  6. ^ Kurt Pätzold : Hitler's table talks . In: Wolfgang Benz / Hermann Graml / Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 5th, updated and expanded edition, dtv, Stuttgart 2007, p. 826 f.
  7. ↑ Werner Jochmann (Ed.): Adolf Hitler . Monologues in the Führer Headquarters 1941–1944. Recorded by Heinrich Heim. Munich 2000, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Hitler's heirs . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1952, pp. 32 ( Online - Dec. 3, 1952 ).
  9. ^ Rudolf Augstein: I am a general against my will . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1980, pp. 176 ( online - Mar. 3, 1980 ).
  10. ↑ Die Zeit of March 14, 1980, No. 12. Zeit -Archiv
personal data
SURNAME Home, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German National Socialist lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH June 26, 1988
Place of death Munich