Hermann Florstedt

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Arthur Hermann Florstedt (born February 18, 1895 in Bitsch , Lorraine , † after 1945) was a German SS standard leader and camp commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp .

Life

Origin and youth

In the year Florstedt was born, his father was stationed as a sergeant in the Lorraine fortress of Bitsch . The family, originally from Eisleben , moved back there in 1897 . Florstedt attended the 1st community school in Eisleben until 1909 and then took up an apprenticeship as a forester, which he broke off in 1910. In 1912, as a four-year-old volunteer, he joined the Leib-Guard-Hussar Regiment in Potsdam. During the First World War , Florstedt was used in France and Russia. In 1917 he was taken prisoner by Russia . Because he had a son with a Russian wife, he was allowed to return to Germany after the child was born in May 1918. The son Walter was raised by his grandparents.

After the war ended, Florstedt was released from the army in January 1919. He moved to Weimar , where he married Charlotte Wille in May 1922. The marriage remained childless. In Weimar, Florstedt belonged to the right-wing paramilitary Wehrverband Stahlhelm from 1920 to 1924 . In 1929 the couple moved to Eisleben; compared to relatives there, Florstedt declared himself " bankrupt ". He opened a taxi company in Eisleben; In 1931 he worked as a sales manager in a bicycle shop. The Eisleben district court sentenced Florstedt in November 1929 to a fine of 100 RM for bodily harm .

National Socialism and perpetration

Florstedt joined the NSDAP in March 1931 ( membership number 488.573) and in April the SA , but switched to the SS in May 1931 (SS number 8.660). Florstedt, along with Gauleiter Jordan and district leader of Alvensleben, is one of the main people responsible for the “ Eisleber Blutsonntag ”, during which a KPD building and a workers' gym were attacked on February 12, 1933 from a National Socialist “propaganda march” . Four people died here; 24 were seriously injured. After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Florstedt became head of the city council in Eisleben in April 1933. A KPD member arrested in July 1933 reports that he had been tortured by Florstedt for hours during interrogation that he fainted several times.

In April 1934 Florstedt - meanwhile SS-Hauptsturmführer - was entrusted with the management of the 73rd SS-Standarte Ansbach and left Eisleben. In August 1935 he took over the 14th SS equestrian standard in Karlsruhe with the rank of SS Obersturmbannführer . A personnel report signed by Hans-Adolf Prützmann in September 1935 describes Florstedt as "loyal, honest, cheerful, open, cheerful, tough and energetic, very independent, agile person, clear head, good general education" and notes in the section "Behavior in and out of service ”:“ easily excitable, quickly with the fist in hand, but controlled to a certain extent, soldierly taut in service, out of service very sociable, for this reason happy to drink ”. On December 2, 1935, Florstedt was sentenced to a fine of 300 RM for attempted release of prisoners, resistance, disturbance of the peace and damage to property, after he had rioted in a drunken state the day before at a Bruchsal police station. After a complaint by a Reichsbahn official, whom Florstedt had insulted in January 1936, Florstedt was transferred to Kassel in March 1936 and charged with the management of Sturmbanns I / 36. Since January 1937 leader of the 35th SS standard in Kassel, Florstedt was promoted to SS standard leader in April 1938.

In September 1939 Florstedt became a member of the Waffen SS with the rank of Obersturmführer. In the same month he moved to the camp commandant's office in Buchenwald concentration camp in Weimar , where he worked as a guard block leader. Florstedt's behavior towards the concentration camp guards is described as "extremely haughty and arrogant". After several complaints, Richard Glücks from the inspection of the concentration camps suggested employment as a protective custody camp leader ; a position in which Florstedt had no direct contact with the guards. In July 1940, Florstedt moved to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three months , where he initially worked as a protective custody camp leader and later as the first camp leader. In this function he returned to Buchenwald; Among the prisoners there, he was considered brutal and unpredictable. He had Jewish prisoners sing the so-called Jewish song, which contained an anti-Semitic and insulting text. In October 1941, Florstedt was responsible for ordering a day of food deprivation for the entire concentration camp. In addition, he had three well-known communist block elders replaced and punished by beating. Previously there had been a solidarity campaign in the concentration camp in favor of newly arrived, completely malnourished Soviet prisoners of war. Since 1941 deputy of the camp commandant in Buchenwald, Florstedt was transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp for 3 months in June 1942 .

From the end of November 1942 to October 1943, Florstedt acted as camp commandant of the Majdanek extermination camp in Lublin . In the General SS he had held the rank of Standartenführer since April 20, 1938; in the Waffen-SS he was last appointed Sturmbannführer on April 20, 1942. The SS and police leader for Lublin, Odilo Globocnik , suggested Florstedt in September 1943 for promotion to SS-Oberführer. The promotion was not carried out because Florstedt was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp on October 20 “for the purpose of carrying out a procedure” in the course of the corruption affair involving the Buchenwald concentration camp commandant Karl Otto Koch . On October 25, 1943, Florstedt was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement and other serious crimes.

Unexplained whereabouts after the war

There are contradicting information about the further whereabouts of Florstedt: According to Heinz Höhne , Florstedt was found guilty of murder and corruption by an SS court and sentenced to death . According to Ernst Klee , Florstedt was shot on Himmler's orders shortly before the end of the war. Martin Sommer , who was also being investigated internally by the SS, told West German investigative authorities in 1963 that Florstedt had been shot together with concentration camp commandant Koch in Buchenwald on April 5, 1945. The SS judge Konrad Morgen confirmed the execution of the death sentence against Florstedt. Neither summer nor mornings were present at the execution; the records of the registry office responsible for Buchenwald were lost due to the war. Harry Stein, on the other hand, states that Florstedt escaped from prison in Weimar in April 1945 and went underground. Karin Orth refers to a report by Florstedt's sister-in-law, according to which Florstedt stayed with her in Halle for a short time after the end of the war and then went into hiding.

The Thüringer Tageblatt , a newspaper of the GDR CDU , reported on April 24, 1962 that Florstedt was working for the criminal police in Mainz. The newspaper publisher later referred to West German investigative authorities on the information provided by an unnamed Buchenwald prisoner who now lives in West Germany. Investigations by the Mainz police remained inconclusive. Senior Public Prosecutor Kimmel from the Central Office of the State Judicial Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes did not consider Florstedt's death to have been proven after a memo from October 6, 1975.

literature

  • Peter Lindner: Hermann Florstedt, SS leader and concentration camp commandant. An image of life in the family's horizon . Gursky, Halle (Saale) 1997, ISBN 3-929389-19-3 .
  • Peter Lindner: Did Hermann Florstedt survive the Second World War? Fragments of official investigations into the SS leader and camp commanders from Majdanek . In: Journal for local research. Issue 10. Gursky-Verlag, Halle / Saale 2001, ISSN  1610-4870 , pp. 73-91.
  • Ernst Klee: The person lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Eugen Kogon : The SS state . The system of the German concentration camps ; Frechen: Komet, 2000; ISBN 3-89836-107-1 (= Munich: Heyne, 1995 31 ; ISBN 3-453-02978-X ; Reinbek near Hamburg: Kindler, 1974)
  • Karin Orth: The system of the National Socialist concentration camps. Pendo Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-85842-450-1 .
  • Karin Orth: The concentration camp SS . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-34085-1 .
  • Tom Segev , The Soldiers of Evil. On the history of the concentration camp commanders. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt 1992. ISBN 978-3-499-18826-8 .
  • Harry Stein: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition , Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 13.
  2. ↑ This assessment in Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 20.
  3. ↑ Report in Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 22.
  4. ↑ Personal report of September 20, 1935 , printed by Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 30f.
  5. ^ Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 31.
  6. ^ Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 31f.
  7. ^ Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 40.
  8. ↑ a b Stein, Buchenwald Concentration Camp , S: 51.
  9. ^ Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 46f.
  10. ↑ a b Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 81f.
  11. ↑ Heinz Höhne: The order under the skull. The history of the SS. Augsburg 1992, ISBN 3-89350-549-0 , p. 354.
  12. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 156f.
  13. ↑ a b Lindner, survived Hermann Florstedt , p. 76ff.
  14. ↑ Karin Orth: Concentration Camp SS , p. 208. See also Peter Lindner, Hermann Florstedt , p. 59f.
  15. ^ Orth, The Concentration Camp SS , p. 208.
personal data
SURNAME Florstedt, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Florstedt, Arthur Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS standard leader and camp commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Bitsch , Lorraine
DATE OF DEATH after 1945