Herbert Gehrke

Herbert Ottokar Gehrke (born June 12, 1910 in Lichtenberg near Berlin, † March 18, 1945 ) was a German SA leader. He was best known as the organizer of the Köpenick Blood Week of 1933 and as the person responsible for the murder of the former Mecklenburg Prime Minister Johannes Stelling .

Live and act

Gehrke was the son of a telegraph worker and later city councilor at the Köpenick district office. In his youth, Gehrke attended elementary school and a boys' middle school in Neukölln . He was then one year at the Friedrich-Werder secondary school but taught his schooling had the age of seventeen with the Prima maturity Cancel to bricklayer's apprentice to become. He caught up with the Abitur exam three years later. At the same time he passed his journeyman's examination as a bricklayer building a police station in Berlin-Köpenick .

In the following years Gehrke made his way through - interrupted by ever new phases of unemployment - as a self-employed bricklayer and in various other professions. He was a construction worker, sewer worker, postal worker, chemical unskilled worker in a paint and varnish factory in Berlin-Spindlersfeld .

On July 1, 1928, Gehrke, who had been a member of the Hitler Youth since 1927 , joined the NSDAP ( membership number 92.507). In this he worked as political leader , cell chairman, treasurer and as deputy section leader in Köpenick. In early 1929 he also became a member of the SA , the task force of the NSDAP, in which he initially belonged to Troop 37. In October 1930 he was promoted to squad leader and in the spring of 1931 he was entrusted as troop leader with the leadership of the SA troop Köpenick. During this time, close personal ties developed between him and the leader of the storm Wilhelm Sander . After Sander's advancement to leader of SA Standard 5, Gehrke followed him as leader of his storm.

When Sander secured the Gauhaus Hedemannstrasse 10 with his SA men on the occasion of the Stennes revolt in spring 1931, Gehrke led Storm 37, which was elevated to Sturmbann III or Standard 55 in December 1931. Gehrke kept the leadership of this formation when it was converted into an independent Sturmbann in the spring of 1933 and finally into Standard 15 on August 6, 1933. Gehrke and his department became notorious for the so-called Köpenicker Blood Week , during which they abducted, abused and murdered numerous civilians, including Social Democrats, Communists and Jews, in the summer of 1933. The victims included the former Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Schwerin Johannes Stelling and the carpenter and social democrat Anton Schmaus . Schmaus died in January 1934 as a result of a gunshot wound that Gehrke is said to have inflicted on him, as well as subsequent abuse by the SA. After the Köpenick Blood Week, Gehrke was promoted to Obersturmbannführer with effect from July 1, 1933 "in recognition of his services to the implementation of the national revolution" .

In February 1934 Gehrke's official promotion to Standartenführer followed. At that time he was the leader of around 3,000 SA men from Köpenick. He then led Standard 15 until April 30, 1935. After that, from May 1, 1935 to July 31, 1939, he was assigned to Brigades 28 and 29 as SA leader zV.

As a private citizen, Gehrke had been the second chairman of administrative office 17 of the general local health insurance fund in Köpenick since 1933 .

From 1941 Gehrke came to the front as a first lieutenant and died in combat in 1945. His grave is on the Sandweiler war cemetery .

After the end of the Nazi regime, the events of the Köpenick Blood Week in the German Democratic Republic were dealt with in a major trial before the Berlin Regional Court . In the judgment of July 17, 1950, of 61 defendants, 15 were sentenced to death and 13 to life imprisonment, the remainder to terms of five to twenty-five years. Gehrke was identified by the court as ringleader and chief responsible for the acts committed by his subordinates. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the convicts tried to have the sentence of 1950 overturned. A Berlin Chamber of Cassation ruled on August 13, 1992 that “serious legal errors could not be discovered”, that the judgment was “balanced” and that “no innocent person had been convicted”.

Promotions

• 1930: SA squad leader
• April 1, 1931: SA troop leader
• April 15, 1931: SA Sturmführer
• December 12, 1931: SA-Sturmbannführer
• July 6, 1933: SA Obersturmbannführer
• February 15, 1934: SA Standartenführer

estate

Personal documents on Gehrke have been preserved in the Federal Archives. In particular, the holdings of the former Berlin Document Center contain an SA personnel file (SA Mirofilm 166, images 351–362) and a questionnaire on the party statistics from 1939.

literature

• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. 2005.
• Stefan Hördler: "Cooperation of violence. Comments on the" Köpenicker Blutwoche "and SA-Sturm 33", in: Ders .: Köpenicker Blutwoche, pp. 105-109.
• Walther Hofer : The Reichstag fire. A scientific documentation. Vol. 2, 1976.
• The way of the SA leaders. In: Berliner Illustrierte night edition. dated May 24, 1934.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Martin Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist "seizure of power" in Berlin and Brandenburg 1926–1934 (PDF; 4.0 MB). Diss. Berlin 2005, p. 242.
2. ↑ Herbert Gehrke. on: Volksbund war cemeteries.
3. ↑ Large Criminal Chamber, Az. 4 [35] PKLs 32.50 [44.50].
4. ↑ Wolfgang Benz: The place of terror. P. 46; Also: Ulrike Puvogel: Memorials for the victims of National Socialism: Berlin, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia. 1999, p. 64.
5. ↑ Falco Werkentin : Political Criminal Justice in the Ulbricht Era - From Confessing Terror to Covered Repression, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-150-X