Hellmuth Gommlich

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Hellmuth Max Johann Gommlich (born July 11, 1891 in Plauen near Dresden ; † April 3, 1945 in Meiningen ) was a German SS-Sturmbannführer , police advisor of Zella-Mehlis , senior government councilor in the Ministry of the Interior in Thuringia and district administrator in Meiningen .

biography

Gommlich, son of a bank clerk, attended the Annenrealgymnasium in Dresden. Before he graduated from high school , he broke off his school career and began training as a seaman in 1908 on a sailing training ship belonging to the North German Lloyd . At the seafaring school in Bremen , after one year of training, he completed his training as a helmsman on long voyages in February 1913. He then became a volunteer with the Imperial Navy and took part as a marine on torpedo boats in several war missions during the First World War. As a naval officer he achieved the rank of first lieutenant at sea. After the end of the war he was discharged from the Navy as a reserve officer at the end of 1919. Gommlich, married since 1917, had three children.

From the beginning of 1920 he began training as a police officer with the Bremen State Police. Due to his good performance, Gommlich became the youngest police commissioner in Bremerhaven in 1921 . On May 1, 1924 changed Gommlich to his old employer, the North German Lloyd, and became head of the authority department, contain on the company's ships to alcohol and drug smuggling and stowaways track should. Due to economic failure, the North German Lloyd had to give up the watch department. Gommlich then joined the Thuringian police service on September 1, 1926. As early as December 1926, he was working as a detective secretary and in 1930 became a police advisor in Zella-Mehlis.

time of the nationalsocialism

Gommlich joined the NSDAP as early as 1931 ( membership number 861.768) and also became a member of the SA during this period . From there he switched to the SS in April 1934 (membership number 107.054), where he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer until 1940. Gommlich also became a member of the SD .

In mid-May 1935, Gommlich was appointed head of the police department in the Ministry of the Interior by the Thuringian Minister of the Interior, Fritz Wächtler , after having previously worked there as a temporary advisor from 1934. As the highest-ranking police officer, he was responsible for the municipal police stations in Thuringia as a senior government councilor and supervised the Gestapo in Weimar and its affiliated branch offices. He was also significantly involved in the Aryanization of the vehicle and weapons company Simson , which Fritz Sauckel had pushed . On the recommendation of the Thuringian Interior Minister Walter Ortlepp , who had been in office since the beginning of February 1936 , Gommlich was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer . As a special representative of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , he was responsible for the establishment of the Buchenwald concentration camp on Sauckel's orders and conducted the relevant negotiations with Theodor Eicke and Oswald Pohl directly.

In early July 1938 he was officially first provisionally, and from April 1939 District Administrator in Meiningen and remained in that capacity until the beginning of April 1945. After the outbreak of World War II, he tried several times in vain to use in the Navy of the Armed Forces , but was not due to its Unabkömmlichkeitsstellung moved in. Gommlich was also spa director of the Staatsbad AG Thuringia and DRK district leader . In the summer of 1942, at Sauckel's intercession, Gommlich escaped criminal proceedings for violating the wartime economic order, although he was at table several times in his function as spa director in Bad Salzungen without food tickets .

Shortly before the US Army marched in, Gommlich and his wife, daughter and mother committed suicide by poison. With acute symptoms of intoxication, the family was admitted to the state hospital in a comatose state , where all four family members finally succumbed to the consequences of their poisoning in the early morning hours of April 3, 1945. The bodies of the deceased were buried on April 13, 1945 in a mass grave in the Meiningen Park Cemetery.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Marlis Gräfe, Bernhard Post and Andreas Schneider: The Secret State Police in the NS Gau Thuringia 1933 - 1945. Sources on the history of Thuringia . II. Half volume, published by: State Center for Political Education Thuringia , unchanged new edition 2005, ISBN 3-931426-83-1 . (PDF)
  • Norbert Moczarski : Hellmuth Gommlich - rise and fall of the last NS district administrator of Meiningen. In: Yearbook 2005 of the Hennebergisch-Franconian History Association, pp. 251–276, Veßra-Meiningen-Münnerstadt Monastery 2005.
  • Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937 - 1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Norbert Moczarski : District Administrator Hellmuth Gommlich National Socialist Career (pdf; 338 kB) ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.meiningen.de
  2. ↑ a b c d Marlis Gräfe, Bernhard Post and Andreas Schneider: The Secret State Police in the NS Gau Thuringia 1933 - 1945. Sources on the history of Thuringia , p. 546 f.
  3. ↑ a b Gommlich - membership numbers of the NSDAP and SS on www.dws-xip.pl
  4. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 192.
  5. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937 - 1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1999, p. 307.
  6. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937 - 1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Göttingen 1998, p. 26f.
  7. ^ Wilhelm Pocher: White flags over Meiningen , Stadtarchiv Meiningen 2000, p. 18.
personal data
SURNAME Gommlich, Hellmuth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gommlich, Hellmuth Max Johann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Sturmbannführer and district administrator in Meiningen
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1945
Place of death Meiningen