Heinrich Schnitzler (police officer)

Heinrich Wilhelm Schnitzler , pseudonym: Wilhelm Schneider (born March 31, 1901 in Düsseldorf ; † 1962 there ) was a German police officer.

Live and act

Youth and early career

Schnitzler was the son of a businessman. After attending school, he studied law . In 1919 he joined the Catholic Center Party , to which he was to belong until 1933. Since 1921 he was a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Hercynia Freiburg im Breisgau .

On June 5, 1924, he passed the first state examination in law with "sufficient". On June 18, 1924 he was appointed trainee lawyer. Then Schnitzler was from 1924 to 1927 in the judicial preparatory service in the area of ​​the higher regional court in Düsseldorf . His assessments for this time attest to his great diligence, quick comprehension and healthy judgments. After graduating as Dr. jur. and taking the Grand State Examination, which he passed with "sufficient" on November 18, Schnitzler became a court assessor at the Düsseldorf District Court .

On November 16, 1928, Schnitzler joined the Prussian State Police Administration. First he was assigned to the police headquarters in Rheydt on a trial basis. In 1929 he was appointed government assessor there. On November 1, 1929, Schnitzler moved to the Frankfurt am Main police headquarters . At the same time, Schnitzler began to organize himself professionally: In 1930 he joined the Republican Judges' Association and the Catholic Civil Service Association .

On August 16, 1930 Schnitzler was appointed to the Berlin police headquarters as a member of the government , where he worked in Department IA. In 1931 he was appointed head of department for left-wing extremist, non-communist movements. His main task at that time was the police observation and surveillance of the SPD . In this context, Schnitzler was, among other things, involved in the removal of the social democratic state government in Prussia on July 20, 1932 . In 1932 Schnitzler was appointed head of department for cultural organizations of the KPD , while at the same time being appointed reporter to the newly established central office of the State Criminal Police Office to monitor and combat the subversive disintegration in the Reichswehr and police.

During his time with the Berlin police, Schnitzler made contacts with the SA intelligence service , with whom he eventually worked. Through the Berlin police, Schnitzler also got to know Rudolf Diels , who would later become the first head of the Gestapo , who at the time was an advisor on matters of communist defense in the Ministry of the Interior.

During the violent impeachment of the Prussian state government by Reichswehr troops in the wake of the so-called Prussian strike of July 20, 1932, Schnitzler acted as a liaison for General Gerd von Rundstedt, who carried out the impeachment, at the Berlin police headquarters.

Worked with the Gestapo (1933 to 1934)

After the Gestapo was founded in the spring of 1933, Schnitzler was appointed Diels' steward to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin, where he was initially made head of Division 1A (Generalia). In fact, he was considered Diel's right-hand man at the time.

In February 1933, Schnitzler was allegedly involved in organizing the mass arrests after the Reichstag fire . His role in connection with the fire itself and its police investigation is controversial as part of the larger research controversy surrounding the Reichstag fire: While researchers such as Hans Mommsen and Fritz Tobias cite him in their publications as a witness for the so-called single perpetrator thesis, which assumes that the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe set the Reichstag on fire by himself, the research group around Pierre Gregoire and Walther Hofer , who advocates the thesis of arson by the National Socialists , rejects him as implausible.

On August 22, 1933, Schnitzler, who had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 ( membership number 3.488.791), was promoted preferentially to the government council. The required post was not created until October 1, 1933. In December of the same year he was finally entrusted with the management of Department I (Organization and Administration) of the Secret State Police Office while at the same time maintaining the leadership of Department IA. In the autumn of 1932, a campaign by NSDAP agencies began against Schnitzler - probably backed by the SD - who denounced him as unsuitable for the key position he held because of his past in the Social Democratic Prussian police of the Weimar period. In his defense, Schnitzler submitted various documents from which it emerged that he had already worked with Nazi agencies before the National Socialists came to power and, in particular, had exchanged intelligence material.

When Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich were able to decide the power struggle for control of the Gestapo in their favor in April 1934 and Diels was replaced by Heydrich as head of the Secret State Police Office, Schnitzler also left the Gestapo as Diels' confidante.

Later Nazi period (1934 to 1945)

To May 1, 1934 Schnitzler again received a position in the Prussian general administrative services: he was first at the district office employs Rhein-Wupper and was then up to the June 1938 Head of the Police Department in Remscheid , which the police headquarters in Wuppertal shelter. From February 1, 1935 to August 1, 1938, Schnitzler, in addition to his full-time work, also held the position of head of the district law office in the Bergisches Land district . In December 1935, he also acquired the SA sports badge .

Schnitzler's first marriage to Maria Katharina Brigitta Spelz (* October 8, 1898 in Elberfeld; † March 6, 1939 in Essen) resulted in a son, Dirk (* June 16, 1937) during his time in Remscheid.

Soon after Schnitzler had taken part in a course for law enforcement officers in the Reichsschulungsburg Erwitte from April 20 to 29, 1938 , he was transferred to the executive committee of the Ruhr Coal District Settlement Association in Essen with effect from July 1, 1938 . He took up this position on July 11, 1938.

On August 23, 1939, Schnitzler was drafted into the Air Force , to which, interrupted by an indispensable position from October 1, 1941 to April 16, 1942, he was a reserve officer until the end of the Second World War. In the Air Force he was assigned to the 44 Flak Regiment and later to the High Commanders' Staff of the Flak Cartillery School in Berlin. He later belonged to the staff of Luftgaukommando VI in Münster in Westphalia. On July 1, 1942, Schnitzler was promoted to captain of the reserve. Professionally, he tried at this time to be promoted to the Upper Government Council and to be accepted into the Reich Supply Administration for the time after the war.

During the war, Schnitzler, whose first wife died in 1939 as a result of cancer, was married to the factory owner's daughter Karola Hildegard Fischer-Fürwentsches (born August 5, 1912 in Dülken) on April 3, 1940. Another son, Frank, was born from this marriage (* 1941).

post war period

After the end of the Second World War , Schnitzler was again employed in the civil service. Most recently he was Ministerialrat in the police department of the Ministry of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Politically and journalistically, Schnitzler distinguished himself in the post-war period through his energetic efforts to enforce a reassessment of the early phase of the Nazi era in public opinion. To this end, in the second half of the 1940s, he first entered into correspondence with Rudolf Diels and numerous other members of the Gestapo in 1933 and 1934, such as Helmut Heisig and Walter Zirpins , with whom he presented a uniform description of the activities and goals of the political police voted in the "Diels era". As a result, the members of this network of former Gestapo officers issued each other certificates for their respective denazification procedures until the early 1950s, which confirmed the allegedly decent attitude of the Political Police under Diels in general and, above all, the integrity of the respective colleagues in particular.

Fonts

• Memories of Erich Klausener , recording from March 4, 1947. (private print)
• The Reichstag fire from a different perspective , in: Neue Politik , Zurich 1949 (published anonymously)
• Prisoner Of War No. 3404933 - Diary March 31, 1945 to September 22, 1945 (edited by Dierk Henning Schnitzler and Klaus Michael Schnitzler), Norderstedt 2014

literature

• Christoph Graf : Political Police Between Democracy and Dictatorship , 1983.
• Alexander Bahar , Wilfried Kugel: The Reichstag fire: How history is made , 2001

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Mommsen: Der Nationalozialismus und die deutsche Gesellschaft , 1991, p. 168. Schnitzler appeared under this name at his own request in the publications of Rudolf Diels and Fritz Tobias.
2. ↑ George C. Browder: Foundations of the Nazi Police State , p. 49.