Helldorff donation

The Helldorff donation (sometimes also Graf Helldorff donation ) is a compulsory levy for wealthy Jews in Berlin during the Nazi era . The compulsory levy was conceived by Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff , Berlin police chief from 1935, and implemented without a legal basis from 1938. The term “donation” is euphemistic because the payment was never voluntary, but on the contrary in Berlin was a mandatory requirement for rich Jews to obtain a passport and thus the opportunity to emigrate to save lives.

The tax was levied on Berliners who were classified as Jews by the Nazi race laws and who had assets of more than RM 300,000 . Depending on their assets, they had to pay between 50,000 and 300,000 RM to an “emergency fund” created by Helldorf, which supposedly served to alleviate Jewish misery. The amount extorted could also be significantly higher. According to the statements of those affected, they were summoned to the police headquarters, where the government assessor Müller-Scholtes waved the property declaration and the confiscated passport of the emigrant "enticing and promising" while he was talking to him about the "donation".

The Helldorff donation had to pay, among other things:

• William Meinhardt , before 1933 director general of Osram and chairman of the supervisory board of Danat-Bank , had to pay 100,000 RM to Helldorf before he and his wife Eva could flee to the British emigration.
• Julius Fromm , condom manufacturer.
• Moritz and Eugen Garbaty, sons of the cigarette manufacturer Josef Garbáty , had to pay Helldorf a total of 1.15 million RM.
• Martha Liebermann , b. Marckwald and Max Liebermann's widow had to pay 10,000 RM.
• Paul Mamroth , co-founder of AEG . Mamroth's neighbor in Teltow had been Count von Helldorf himself since 1935.
• Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy , chemist, industrialist and board member at Agfa , which his father founded.

On February 11, 1939, at one of the first meetings of the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, Reinhard Heydrich referred to this special tax levied by the Berlin Police President, through which, according to Helldorf, three million Reichsmarks had been paid to the Reich Ministry of Economics. Heydrich, however, did not provide any information about the total amount and what amounts had remained with the police for other disposal. However, the so-called passport levy, which Adolf Eichmann had levied from the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna since 1938, is regarded as the actual model for the emigration tax levied soon after in the “Altreich” .

Allegedly, Helldorf's semi-official campaign was stopped in 1939 by Göring after he was made aware of this by the Berlin Jewish community. With the outbreak of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, the legal possibilities for German Jews to emigrate to a safe country were already severely restricted, regardless of the end of this compulsory tax, and then practically cut off from October 1941 after a corresponding ban by Heinrich Himmler .

The survivors extorted to pay the “Helldorff donation” could be compensated in the Federal Republic of Germany after 1956 under certain conditions, since the compulsory levy was assessed as a “real special levy ” according to § 59 BEG .

literature

• Wolf Gruner : Persecution of Jews in Berlin 1933–1945. A chronology of the measures taken by the authorities in the Reich capital . Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-89468-238-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Reichmann and Michael Wildt: German Citizen and Persecuted Jew - November Pogrom and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1937 to 1939 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1998, p. 103f. ISBN 3-486-56339-4 .
2. ^ Martin Münzel: The Jewish members of the German business elite 1927–1955 . Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-75625-7 , p. 240.
3. ↑ Götz Aly and Michael Sontheimer : Fromms: How the Jewish condom manufacturer Julius F. fell under the German robbers . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 153. ISBN 3-10-000422-1 .
4. ↑ Beate Meyer and Hermann Simon: Jews in Berlin, 1938–1945 . Accompanying volume to the exhibition of the same name in the "Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin" in 2000. Philo, Berlin 2000, p. 83. ISBN 3-8257-0168-9 .
5. ↑ Bernd Schmalhausen : I'm just a painter - Max and Martha Liebermann in the Third Reich . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 1994, pp. 116-117, footnote 23. ISBN 3-487-09911-X .
6. ↑ Kirsten Graulich: "Disappeared without much fuss" . In: "Potsdam Latest News" from November 8, 2008. (Accessed November 22, 2008.)
7. ↑ Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy in his memoirs, without a location. Available at the Moses Mendelssohn Center at the University of Potsdam.
8. ↑ Files on German foreign policy / [Ed. Walter Bussmann ...]; Series D: 1937-1945; Vol. 5: Poland, Southeast Europe, Latin America, small and medium-sized states: June 1937 - March 1939, Göttingen 1953, Document 665.
9. ^ Gabriele Anderl; Dirk Rupnow; Alexandra-Eileen Wenck; Historians' Commission of the Republic of Austria .: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration as a Robbery Institution , Vienna 2004, ISBN 978-3-486-56784-7 , p. 255.
10. ^ Gabriele Anderl; Dirk Rupnow; Alexandra-Eileen Wenck: Die Zentralstelle ... , Vienna 2004, ISBN 978-3-486-56784-7 , p. 254.
11. ↑ Shalom Adler-Rudel : Jewish self-help under the Nazi regime 1933-1939 as reflected in the reports of the Reich Representation of Jews in Germany . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1974, p. 113, footnote 154. ISBN 3-1683-5232-2 .
12. ↑ Cf. Himmler's decree of October 18, 1941, by which he forbade all Jews to emigrate. Lecture in: Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: The "Deportations of Jews" from the German Reich from 1941–1945 . Marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5 , p. 61/62.
13. ↑ Georg Blessin, Hans Wilden and Hans-Georg Ehrig: Federal compensation laws . Beck, Munich 1957, 2nd completely redesigned edition, part 59, item 10 (p. 441).