Hellmut Froböß

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Hellmut Gustav Eduard Gottrau Froböß (born November 8, 1884 in Seifersdorf near Schweidnitz , † October 17, 1956 in Düsseldorf ) was a German lawyer . In the interwar period he was police chief of the Free City of Danzig and during the Second World War President of the Higher Regional Court in Poznan in the German-occupied Wartheland .

Origin, studies and career entry

Froboss was the son of a public prosecutor and landowner. After finishing his school career, he completed a law degree and passed the first state examination in 1908 and the second in 1913. He then worked as a court assessor at the public prosecutor's office in Ratibor . Although war fit figured he was after the outbreak of the First World War not to Army convened. Instead, he continued to work for the public prosecutor, including in Beuthen and Gleiwitz . His performance in the judicial service was rated as above average. Released from military service, he worked as a helper at the War Usury Office in Breslau from August 1916 . In mid-March 1917 he was promoted to prosecutor at the regional court in Breslau while continuing to work in the war usury office . Since March 1917 he was married to the factory owner's daughter Erna, née Brella. The couple had two children.

After the end of the war, in July 1919, he worked on a trial basis in the general state administration of Prussia . He was assigned to the political department of the Berlin police headquarters. At the beginning of January 1920 he was finally taken over into the internal administrative service and at the same time promoted to the government council, with which he resigned from the judicial service. He was briefly a member of the DNVP , which he left again in 1920. He took part in the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 as a “reactionary police officer from Berlin” . From January 1921 he was a consultant in the Prussian Ministry of Justice . According to his personal file, he had to resign from the Prussian civil service in the spring of 1921 "because of his national convictions" and then moved to Danzig.

Police chief in the Free City of Gdansk

Froböß (center) as police chief

In Danzig he joined the Police Service of the Free City of Danzig on April 1, 1921 as police director , where he quickly made a career. Only three months later he was police chief in Gdansk. At that time he was close to the Center Party there . Until 1933 he belonged to the anti-Semitism association. In October 1932 he had temporarily banned the publication of the Nazi newspaper Danziger Vorposten as a result of a boycott of Jewish businesses. Nevertheless, he promoted the reorientation of the Danzig police according to "National Socialist points of view"; with his approval, police officers could obtain illegal Nazi documents and the forbidden Nazi student councils of the police could continue to operate conspiratorially.

After the People's Day election in Gdansk in 1933 , in which the NSDAP achieved an absolute majority, Froboss placed himself at the service of the new Nazi rulers. As police chief he was responsible for the enforcement of publication and finally party bans that ran counter to the rule of law. His direct superior was now the Senator for Internal Affairs Artur Greiser , who valued Froboss as a “clever lawyer” because of his strict actions against the opposition parties. For example, he temporarily banned the SPD newspaper Danziger Volksstimme and the center party organ Danziger Landeszeitung . For example, an article published there on the obstruction of the SPD election campaign by the police was sufficient for the ban on the Danzig Volksstimme . On May 26, 1934, Froboss also ordered the dissolution of the Danzig KPD and its sub-organizations in accordance with the Association Act, since KP functionaries are said to have owned weapons. Shortly before the Gdansk SPD was banned on October 14, 1936, Froböß and the head of the Political Police, Grötzner, were summoned to Berlin and shortly afterwards 20 Gestapo officers from the National Socialist German Reich were newly hired by the Danzig police. In this case, too, SPD members were accused of unauthorized possession of weapons. During the house search of the SPD party office, weapons were finally found and confiscated that had probably been hidden there by police spies.

Froböß initiated the National Socialist Police Officer Act for Danzig in 1937, and he played a key role in drafting it. Because of this, he was appointed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to the committee for police law at the Academy for German Law . He was also active in the committee for personal, association and obligation law. At the beginning of February 1937 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 3.774.145). He had been a supporting member of the SS since the end of February 1934 . Furthermore, from 1936 he belonged to the Association of National Socialist German Lawyers and also to the Reich Colonial Association . In the intra-party power struggle between Senate President Artur Greiser and Gauleiter Albert Forster , he took Greiser's side, who, in contrast to Forster, represented a “relatively moderate policy towards the Jewish population”. In September 1939 he ordered the release of Jewish prisoners from Gestapo custody. Froböß 'influence within the police authority increasingly waned from 1938 onwards due to the growing influence of the Berlin Gestapo. Before the attack on Poland by the National Socialist German Reich , he participated in the illegal formation of units in Danzig.

Court president at the Higher Regional Court in Poznan

After Greiser became head of the civil administration following the German occupation of Poland after the beginning of the Second World War and shortly afterwards Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter for the Reichsgau Posen annexed by the German Reich (from January 1940 Warthegau), Froböß became a judicial commissioner there in autumn 1939 commissioned to set up a judicial administration. Initially entrusted with running the business, he was appointed President of the Higher Regional Court in Poznan on March 11, 1940 retroactively to January 1, 1940. At the beginning of April 1940 he was officially introduced to the office of President of the Higher Regional Court in Poznan by Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner . This assumption of office was expressly desired by Greiser, because Froböß had "already been a loyal colleague, personal friend and comrade to him as the police chief in Danzig" and had brought with him "proven experience in the German national struggle for his office". During the inauguration on April 2, 1940, Froböß assured the judiciary in the Wartheland "to make a bulwark of Germanness against the East" and "to eliminate all Polish influence".

Maximilian Becker describes the work of the President of the Higher Regional Court as follows: Froböß contributed “to Greiser's policy of Germanization and depolonization and supported his efforts to limit police powers in favor of the Gauleiter's competencies. Froböß firmly advocated judicial punishment for prohibited sexual contact between Poles and Germans. He supported the expropriation of the Polish population and put pressure on the courts subordinate to him to speed up these proceedings. In addition, he participated with (the statements requested by the Reich Ministry of Justice) in the discriminatory criminal and civil law legislation. ”Beyond membership in the NSDAP, Froböß demanded that the judges subordinate to him in the OLG district of Posen show a special commitment to National Socialism "To provide advice and help for active cooperation with the party offices". As President of the Higher Regional Court, he was responsible for the composition of the courts. In this context, he is said to have "transferred and withdrawn from the criminal justice system" judges after imposition of inadequate sentences. In the Warthegau he was also a legal advisor and in this function was also involved in the drafting of new laws and in the participation in proceedings in which party members were involved. In August 1940 he took over the chairmanship of the Poznan Judicial Examination Office. In January 1941 he was awarded the War Merit Cross II. Class without swords. The award of the War Merit Cross 1st Class without swords took place in March 1944. He was also the bearer of the German Eagle Order .

After he was found fit for war at the end of March 1944 as a result of a draft, he successfully pursued the determination of its indispensability . Since the Reich Minister of Justice Otto Georg Thierack assessed him as an “irreplaceable specialist” and attested him a “leading and key role”, Froböß was made indispensable in May 1944. From September 1944 Froböß was a member of the supervisory board of the sugar factory building company in Wartheland. In the final phase of the Second World War, before the battle for Posen and the evacuation of the German population and his family, he left for Berlin. At the end of January 1945 he temporarily took over the post of General Prosecutor of the Higher Regional Court of Breslau and released prisoners from prison with sentences of up to one year. During the war he carried out this activity from the Görlitz district court . In April 1945 he was transferred to Garmisch-Partenkirchen , where there was a branch of the Reich Ministry of Justice.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Froböß was arrested by US military police on May 17, 1945 and taken into custody in Munich and Augsburg. In June 1945 he was transferred to the Ludwigsburg internment camp. After his release from internment on July 20, 1946, he made his living as an agricultural assistant in Jasberg in Upper Bavaria and then lived temporarily in Lippstadt . There he was classified in Category V (Relieved) as part of the denazification on May 25, 1948. As a result, as a retiree, he received full benefits and retired. However, he did volunteer work at the Higher Administrative Court in Münster . As President of the Higher Regional Court a. D. he was an assessor in the Honorary Council of the FDP , which he chaired from 1951 to 1953. Most recently he lived in Düsseldorf . In 1953, an investigation was initiated against him by the chief public prosecutor at the Düsseldorf Regional Court after he was accused of perverting the law and allegedly intervening in ongoing proceedings as President of the Higher Regional Court. However, these proceedings, which were carried out with little emphasis, were "discontinued at the end of September 1954 after several former Warthegau judges had attested that he had never acted as a judge". A disciplinary procedure initiated in 1955 against him regarding an examination of the legality of his appointment as OLG president was discontinued with his death in autumn 1956. However, during the trial, his pension was cut by 30 percent.

literature

  • Maximilian Becker: fellow campaigners in the popular struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-77837-3 . (Google Books)
  • Lothar Gruchmann : Justice in the Third Reich. 1933-1940. Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 28). 3rd, improved edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-53833-0 .
  • Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) (= Legal History Series 413), Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-61791-5 , p. 147– 153.
  • Werner Schubert (Ed.): Academy for German Law: Minutes of the committees. Volume 3: Committee on Personal, Association and Obligations Law 1934–1936 (tenancy law, law of impaired performance, transfer by way of security, retention of title and security assignment, lack of air) . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, ISBN 3-11-012177-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Full name according to: Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 147
  2. ↑ Life data according to: Werner Schubert (Ed.): Academy for German Law: Minutes of the committees. Volume 3: Committee on Personal Law, Association Law and Law of Obligations 1934–1936: (Tenancy Law, Law of Impairment of Performance, Transfer by way of security, retention of title and security assignment, lack of air) , Berlin / New York 1990, p. 62.
  3. ↑ a b c Werner Schubert (Hrsg.): Academy for German Law: Minutes of the Committees Volume 3: Committee for Personal, Association and Obligations Law 1934–1936: (Tenancy Law, Law of Disruptions in Performance, Transfer by way of security, retention of title and security assignment, lack of air) , Berlin / New York 1990, p. 62
  4. ↑ Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 147
  5. ^ A b c Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 148
  6. ↑ Oscar Reile : Secret Eastern Front. The German defense 1921–1945. Verlag Welsermühl, Munich / Wels 1963, p. 27
  7. ^ A b c Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich. 1933-1940. Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era , Munich 2001, p. 280.
  8. ^ Marek Andrzejewski: Opposition and Resistance in Danzig 1933–1939 , Dietz, Bonn 1994 (Research Institute of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, series: Politics and Social History, Volume 36), p. 138; see. Maximilian Harden : The storm bell calls , in: Die Zukunft 1920, p. 43 ( PDF ).
  9. ^ A b Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 91.
  10. ↑ a b c Dieter Schenk: Danzig 1930–1945. The end of a free city. Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-737-3 , p. 50.
  11. ↑ Erwin Lichtenstein : "Report to my family - A life between Danzig and Israel" , with an afterword by Günter Grass; Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1985, p. 88.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 92.
  13. ↑ Dieter Schenk: Hitler's husband in Danzig. Gauleiter Forster and the crimes in Danzig-West Prussia. , Dietz, Bonn 2000. ISBN 3-8012-5029-6 , p. 51.
  14. ↑ Ernst Sodeikat: National Socialism and the Danzig Opposition . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , issue 2/1966, p. 170 f.
  15. ↑ Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 149
  16. ↑ a b c Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933-1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 151
  17. ↑ Greiser's assessment of Froböß in the nomination proposal of the Reich Ministry of Justice of January 11, 1940. Quoted from: Lothar Gruchmann: Justiz im Third Reich. 1933-1940. Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era , Munich 2001, p. 280.
  18. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Regions 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 84.
  19. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 74.
  20. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Regions 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 92 f.
  21. ^ A b c d e Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 152
  22. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Regions 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 260.
  23. ↑ Moritz von Köckritz: The German Higher Regional Court Presidents in National Socialism (1933–1945) , Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 153
  24. ^ A b Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 268.
  25. ^ Udo Wengst (editor): FDP federal executive. The Liberals chaired by Theodor Heuss and Franz Blücher in 2 volumes . Volumes 7/1 and 7/2: minutes of meetings 1949–1954 / 1954–1960 (= sources on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Fourth row: Germany since 1945. ), Düsseldorf, Droste, 1990/91, volume 1, p 1475.
  26. ↑ Maximilian Becker: Fellow campaigners in the national struggle. German Justice in the Integrated Eastern Territories 1939–1945 , Munich 2014, p. 267.
personal data
SURNAME Froboss, Hellmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Froböß, Hellmut Gustav Eduard Gottrau (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, Police President of Gdansk and President of the Higher Regional Court in Poznan
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Seifersdorf near Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH 17th October 1956
Place of death Dusseldorf