Heinrich Tillessen

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Heinrich Tillessen (born November 27, 1894 in Cologne , † November 12, 1984 in Koblenz ) was one of the murderers of Matthias Erzberger , the former Reich Finance Minister ( German Center Party ). One of his brothers was Karl Tillessen , Hermann Ehrhardt's deputy in the Consul organization . Heinrich Schulz was the accomplice .

The court proceedings against Heinrich Tillessen were one of the court proceedings in post-war Germany that received the most attention and the most intense attention from the general public and legal experts, in which numerous problems of the judicial processing of crimes before and during the Nazi era presented themselves , in particular the continued effect of National Socialist legislation.

Youth and first military service

Heinrich Tillessen's father Carl Tillessen was an artillery officer, most recently in the rank of lieutenant general. The mother Karoline was Dutch. Heinrich Tillessen grew up with 10 siblings (3 brothers and 7 sisters) in Cologne, Metz and Koblenz - his father's garrison locations. Another of his brothers was the future naval admiral Werner Tillessen . The family was considered strictly Catholic. The father was retired in 1904. The family then moved to Koblenz. After the death of his father and mother (1910 and 1911) Heinrich Tillessen left grammar school with primary school leaving certificate and joined the Imperial Navy on April 1, 1912 as a midshipman . After completing his training at the naval school and on the training ship Hertha , he attended the officers' course and was appointed ensign at sea on April 12, 1913 . He spent most of the time up to the outbreak of war in 1914 on various special courses.

After the outbreak of World War I, he served on smaller units, mainly in the Baltic Sea, with no war missions worth mentioning. On March 22, 1915 he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . On July 13, 1917, he was transferred to the 17th torpedo boat semi-flotilla, where he was deployed as an officer on the watch under the commandant Hermann Ehrhardt . He experienced Ehrhardt as a strong leadership and charismatic officer who impressed him. As part of the delivery of the German navy, Tillessen was responsible for transferring a torpedo boat to Scapa Flow . After the fleet was scuttled , he remained in English captivity until February 6, 1920. On July 30, 1920 he was discharged from the Navy at his own request .

Erzberger's murder

When Tillessen heard of the Kapp Putsch , he hurried to Berlin, where, on the advice of his brother Karl, he joined the officer assault company of the Ehrhardt marine brigade of his former flotilla chief. It was here that he met his later accomplice Schulz for the first time. After the Ehrhardt Brigade was dissolved in April and May 1920, Tillessen initially tried to take up a civilian profession. It was his brother Karl who persuaded him to accept a position with the Bavarian politician Georg Heim in Regensburg . With three other former brigade members, including Schulz, Tillessen acted as Heim's bodyguard. Here he became more and more politically radicalized, not least in the context of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund .

On April 30, 1921, Tillessen and Schulz were appointed to Hermann Ehrhardt in Munich at their own request . Here they were working at the headquarters of Ehrhardt's terrorist organization Organization Consul , which was in the process of being set up , whose stated aim was to carry out fememicide . In the military department B under Manfred von Killinger , also a former torpedo boat commander, Tillessen was responsible for sending the magazine Der Wiking . From May 11th to the end of June 1921 Tillessen was Ehrhardt's liaison during the third Upper Silesian uprising in Breslau . At the beginning of August, Tillessen and Schulz received the order from Killinger to murder Matthias Erzberger .

After Tillessen and Schulz had succeeded in locating Erzberger's whereabouts in Bad Griesbach , they carried out their project in the late morning of August 26, 1921. In a lonely place in the Black Forest, the two shot several times at Erzberger and his party friend Carl Diez , who were walking there. Diez was seriously injured. Erzberger tried to flee downhill, but collapsed after ten meters. The perpetrators climbed up after him and killed him with headshots at close range.

Escape

The perpetrators first went back to Munich. However, the investigative authorities were able to quickly determine their identity, which they had hardly tried to hide, and triggered a wanted note with pictures of the perpetrators. They left Munich on August 31, 1921. Tillessen initially hid in the Alps, then moved to Burgenland via Salzburg . In November and December 1921, both perpetrators lived under assumed names in Budapest , where they joined a Hungarian volunteer corps supported by the "National Army " Miklós Horthys , whose protection they had already been promised in the course of the planning of the assassination.

Tillessen and Schulz were recognized several times during their stay in Hungary, temporarily left the city of Budapest and wandered through Hungary and hired themselves as gardeners for some time. An extradition request from Germany was rejected by Hungary with reference to the lack of a corresponding agreement. Once again given a false German passport by his political friends in Germany, Tillessen went to Spain at the end of 1925. In Madrid he found work as an employee of a Spanish airline and lived for years in a modest middle-class family. He avoided contact with other Germans. During his escape, he developed depression , which continued throughout his later life.

Return and second military service

In December 1932 Tillessen returned to Germany and found shelter with siblings in Cologne. After January 30, 1933 Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the President signed Paul von Hindenburg on 21 March 1933 impunity Regulation (StrFVO), in its first paragraph reads:

"For crimes that are committed in the fight for the national uprising of the German people, in preparation for them or in the fight for the German floe, impunity (...) is granted."

As a consequence of this regulation, all long-distance murderers of the previous years were exempt from punishment. Hero worship began for some. Tillessen didn't have to hide any further. He found work again, built an existence, married and lived in Düsseldorf, Mannheim and Heidelberg. On September 1, 1933, he was accepted into the NSDAP (membership no. 3.575.464) and the SA . With his accomplice Schulz, Tillessen only met again shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. On September 4, 1939, Tillessen was called up for military service, but shortly thereafter declared unfit for on-board service. He spent the war years on land in the service of the German Admiralty and was discharged from the Navy at the end of 1944 with the rank of corvette captain . He went to his family in Heidelberg.

Arrest and first trial

In Heidelberg Heinrich Tillessen was reported as a National Socialist after the city was occupied by American troops and arrested and interrogated by the American military police on May 3, 1945 . He confessed himself - without being asked directly - to be an accomplice in the murder of Matthias Erzberger. He then remained in custody; on August 15, 1945 a formal arrest warrant was issued.

On May 13, 1946, Tillessen was relocated to Freiburg to answer before the competent Baden courts. On August 26, 1946, exactly 25 years after the crime, the Baden Public Prosecutor Karl Siegfried Bader filed a lawsuit with the Offenburg Regional Court for trial before the criminal chamber. However, by order of September 10, 1946, the chamber refused to open the main hearing, as in its opinion there was impunity in accordance with the 1933 Impunity Ordinance. On September 13, 1946, the prosecution appealed against this to the Higher Regional Court in Freiburg, arguing that the ordinance was a National Socialist injustice which had been declared null and void by the Allied Control Council and the military governments.

On September 30, 1946, the competent chamber of the Higher Regional Court overturned the decision of September 10, 1946 and ordered the opening of the main hearing. However, the Chamber of the Higher Regional Court did not follow the arguments of the prosecution in all points: it expressly stated that it considered the impunity ordinance of 1933 to be applicable. On the other hand, she said it should be considered a condemnation of the act as a crime against humanity under Control Council Law No. 10. The main hearing took place in November 1946. The prosecution called for the death penalty , the defense acquittal , citing the Impunity Ordinance . The judgment was already announced on November 29, 1946 by the chamber chairman Rudolf Göring (1883-): acquittal under application of the exemption from punishment ordinance . The prosecution immediately appealed and prevented the judgment from becoming final.

The response to this verdict was enormous: the press condemned it as a “shameful verdict”, and the Constituent Assembly of the State of Baden , which met in Freiburg, protested in a spontaneous resolution “resolutely”.

Second case before the Tribunal général in Rastatt

The French occupation organs reacted most consistently: on the day of his release from prison, Tillessen was intercepted by the French secret service, taken to France and interned there. The chairman of the judging chamber, District Court Director Göring, was recalled, then on leave and finally retired.

The French Tribunal général du Gouvernement militaire de la zone française d'occupation en Allemagne (GMZFOA), based in Rastatt near Baden-Baden, as the highest court for all civil matters in Baden at the time, pulled the case. It spanned two dates: December 23, 1946, the main hearing, and January 6, 1947, the judgment was announced. The basis of the judgment was the decisive question as to whether the "Exemption from Punishment Ordinance" of March 21, 1933 was still legally valid after 1945.

Noteworthy was the judgment made in the judgment with regard to the legal validity of the StrFVO and there “binding for all German courts and administrative bodies” that the election for the Reichstag of March 5, 1933 may have come about that was an obvious one from The unlawfulness and use of force committed by the government show that the so-called Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, contrary to the assertion that it complies with the constitution, was in fact passed by a parliament that resulted from the expulsion of 82 duly elected members had an illegal composition and that by the unification of all powers in the hand of Hitler it violated all the essential requirements of a proper and normal government in accordance with normal legal principles ”and“ that the Hitler government did not rely on a vote of confidence before or after March 21, 1933 to a requirement set up by the then applicable constitution of August 11, 1919. "

The judgment of the Offenburg Regional Court was overturned and the proceedings were referred to the Constance Regional Court for a new hearing on the condition that the 1933 Exemption from Punishment Ordinance may no longer be applied.

The second main hearing took place in Konstanz from February 25 to 28, 1947, under the chairmanship of the District Court Director Anton Henneka , who was later a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1951 to 1968. The prosecution called for the death penalty , the defense now pleaded - in order to avert this - manslaughter . The court found Heinrich Tillessen guilty of murder and a crime against humanity under Control Council Act No. 10. The sentence was 15 years imprisonment. The judgment was final.

pardon

Soon after the verdict was announced, petitions for clemency were made by the wife and defense counsel. In May 1952, Tillessen was granted exemption from custody; in December 1952, the remainder of the sentence was suspended. In March 1958, the pardon was released. Matthias Erzberger's widow had spoken out in favor of a pardon.

Heinrich Tillessen found work again, lived in Heidelberg and Frankfurt and in old age in Koblenz. He died at the age of 90.

literature

  • Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995 (contributions to the history of law in the 20th century, volume 14), ISBN 3-16-146490-7 .
  • Reiner Haehling von Lanzenauer : The murder of Matthias Erzberger. Publishing house of the Society for Cultural History Documentation, Karlsruhe 2008 (series of publications by the Legal History Museum Karlsruhe, Volume 14). ISBN 3-922596-71-1 .
  • Reiner Haehling von Lanzenauer: The murder of Erzberger. In: Die Ortenau , 76th annual volume 1996, pp. 435–456 digitized version of the Freiburg University Library
  • Edith Raim: Justice between dictatorship and democracy: Reconstruction and prosecution of Nazi crimes in West Germany 1945-1949 . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70411-2 . (Zugl .: Augsburg, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2012).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995 (Contributions to the history of law in the 20th century, Volume 14), pp. 17-19.
  2. ^ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995, pp. 19–23.
  3. ^ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995, p. 24 f.
  4. ^ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995, p. 25 f.
  5. ↑ a b c Heinrich Tillessen , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 07/1963 of February 4, 1963, in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on May 8, 2017 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  6. ^ Ordinance of the Reich President on the granting of impunity of March 21, 1933 (RGBl. I p. 134)
  7. ↑ Cord Gebhardt: The case of the Erzberger murderer Heinrich Tillessen , 1995, p. 253
  8. ↑ Journal Officiel 1947, pp. 605-635.
  9. ↑ Regional Court Offenburg - 1 Js 980/46 v. November 29, 1946
  10. ↑ Badisches Tagblatt No. 267 of December 15, 1952.
personal data
SURNAME Tillessen, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German assassin
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1984
Place of death Koblenz