Horst Rechenbach

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Horst Rechenbach (born July 11, 1895 in Strasbourg ; † May 6, 1968 in Rendsburg ) was a German officer, most recently an SS Oberführer , National Socialist politician, researcher and writer.

Live and act

He was the son of the Prussian major Otto Rechenbach and was born in Alsace . After graduation in 1914 in Königsberg Rechbach joined as a cadet in the engineer battalion Prince Radcziwill in East Prussia one was in January 1915 to lieutenant and in October 1918 for lieutenant promoted. From January to May 1919 he was a company commander in the East Prussian Freikorps.

Rechenbach then studied agriculture and economics for three semesters each at the Albertus University in Königsberg and at the University of Göttingen . During this time, the documents in the Federal Archives show his temporary affiliation with other voluntary corps and self-protection associations. In 1921 he was a member of the Deutscher Hochschulring / Hochschulring Deutscher Art Königsberg and in 1922 of the Markaria Göttingen armed forces. In March 1922 he passed the state examination in agriculture and in September 1922 acquired the qualification to work as an animal breeding inspector. But then he joined the Reichswehr . According to Robert Lewis Koehl , he was a veterinary teacher there with a particular interest in breed studies. Other sources show him from 1925 to 1931 as a specialist teacher at the agricultural college in Erfurt . At the beginning of the thirties Rechenbach was employed as a troop instructor with the military district V of the Reichswehr, with the training and above all the selection of recruits . To select his recruits, Rechenbach developed a scheme according to which physique , race and "general soldierly and personal impression" were assessed. Exactly these aspects can be found later on the "race cards" for assessing SS applicants. Rechenbach had been a personal friend of Darré since about 1930 , who appointed him and Bruno Kurt Schultz as breed experts at the RuSHA . Rechenbach, like the other two, belonged to the Nordic Ring and in the twenties had belonged to the eagle and falcon and the artamans .

In December 1931, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler asked him to come to the Reich leadership in Munich in order to set up the Race and Settlement Office as deputy chief. As a Reichswehr medical examiner, he supported the SS Race Office, initially only part-time. The Reichswehr released him on September 6, 1932. In the SS he was given the SS no. 51,550 and in the NSDAP with membership number 1,352,318. In 1933 he moved to Berlin and made a career in the Nazi state with the staff of the Race and Settlement Main Office. In 1933 he was the main department head in the staff office of the Reichsbauernführer .

Disputes between Reichsnährstand and Reichssippenamt

In view of the technical and ideological differences of opinion between the Reichsnährstand and the Reichssippenamt, in which Rechenbach played a role after 1933, one must not forget that all opponents were involved in the NSDAP and, with different ranks, in the SS and that their goal was in essential things there was general agreement. The main staff department G "Blood Issues of German Peasantry" in the Reichsnährstand (RNSt) of the Reichsbauernführer Richard Walter Darré also belonged to the Race Office of the SS, which was also under the leadership of Darré until September 1938, and the SS-Standartenführer Rechenbach as staff main department head is from 1936 in this capacity at the same time head of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP in the Reich Office for Agricultural Policy. While Darré wanted to record all the families of the hereditary farms according to the order in which they were entered in a "clan book" that was supposed to be something like a herd book , the SS planned to create an analogous SS clan book. At the meeting between Darré and Himmler on January 21, 1935, there was therefore general agreement for a common approach. A total of one million families and 350,000 Reichsmark costs were expected for the combined index. The planned execution of the project fell within Rechenbach's area of ​​responsibility.

From the outset, the connection with scientific research was considered. Since 1934 was a working group on "The rural community" 13 of the Reich Association "Agricultural Policy and Production Engineering" in the Working Group VII / Research Service located, belonged to the Reich Association of farming science. The figurehead of the working group was SS-Sturmbannführer Bruno Kurt Schultz , who in 1940 as chairman wrote about the activities of this working group: “For several years it has been pursuing the purpose of researching the population-biological and sociological conditions of our rural people ... to deepen and ... to work out a complete overview of the genetic makeup of the rural community ... "The actual programmatic head of this research, Heinz Wülker , was directly employed in the staff office of the Reichsbauernführer and thus Rechenbach's employee, and Darré even personally suggested certain villages (such as Moordorf in Ostfriesland ) to investigate.

Therefore, in 1935, Rechenbach published his first essay as head of the Reich Office for the Selection of German Farmer Settlers and at the same time a representative of radical ideas of racial hygiene , in which he described Moordorf as "a land plague that pollutes the whole area". It goes on to say that this "eyesore" can only be "removed by a detailed hereditary biological inventory (...)". This “investigation” was then carried out by Rechenbach in 1935/36. Rechenbach compiled some statistics on alcoholism , crime , nonsense and indebtedness and explained: "It is superfluous to emphasize that the particularly inferior families are characterized by the largest number of children ." So he came to the conclusion that the place was overpopulated. Of the 521 families, only 9.8 percent are “ hereditary ” good, 20.4 percent are average, 16.1 percent are questionable and 53.7 percent should be rejected. Only a third of its residents are suitable as farmers. He came to the conclusion: “It should be noted that this is an example of a completely misguided rural settlement. [...] They were [...] anti-social elements of their own people. "

After it was not possible to agree on a joint procedure with the Reichssippenamt , under Rechenbach's leadership Reichsnährstand, the Nazi teachers' association and the racial political office of the NSDAP concluded the "Tired Agreement" on July 7, 1937 and "I. formed a working group for clan research and clan care with the Aims of a genealogical inventory of the entire German people, exhausting all genealogical sources .... II. The planned work, which will be carried out jointly by the German farmers and the German educators, begins with a complete evaluation of the church records . III. The end result of all work is the Dorfsippenbuch required by the Reichsnährstand ( family book according to the family sheet procedure of the Reichsnährstand) and that of the NSLB. required family tables (Klenck procedure). ”- This did not end the disputes with the Reichssippenamt and its head Kurt Mayer . Therefore, on June 12, 1939, the chief of the personal staff of the Reichsführer-SS wrote: “Dear Mayer! The Reichsführer-SS took note of the copy of your letter to SS-Oberführer Rechenbach dated May 30, 1939. He has the impression that in the event of a dispute which obviously exists between you and ... Rechenbach, no agreement can be reached in writing. The Reichsführer-SS will be happy to provide you and ... Rechenbach with a room for a three to four hour meeting in which all differences of opinion between you should be cleared up. ... Hail Hitler. Your Wolff . SS group leader. "

In 1939 he was “in the field” and was badly wounded near Lublin . In 1940, with the rank of major as settlement officer, he was head of a department at Colonel General Friedrich Fromm's staff in the Wehrmacht High Command . This year, on behalf of Darré, his was published as “Strictly confidential. For official use only "classified book" The Assessment of the Human Body "as a" very personal textbook for a narrowly limited circle ". In 1942, in his position in the Army Department in the General Army Office, he was responsible for a knapsack publication “Defense and Plow in the East”, which was to be distributed to the troops in a circulation of 1.2 million. After Himmler's violent intervention , the brochure that had already been printed was crushed.

Rechenbach asked for his transfer. From 1943 he was head of the NSDAP Reich Office for the Rural People. In this position he was also responsible for the selection and support of the German settlers in the Wartheland and for the training of the executing officials. At the beginning of 1943 he also became head of the Reich Association of German Certified Farmers .

On February 16, 1943 - by order of Herbert Backe - Rechenbach was commissioned as Reichsamtsleiter to convert the “ Association for peasant family history and peasant coat of arms ”, which had previously been responsible for the work on the village family books, into a “healthy country folk” support group , “the was to solve war-decisive tasks in terms of health, workforce and mood of the rural people ", since it does not" insignificantly depend on perseverance until the final victory ". At a working meeting of the funding association (whose chairman is SS-Oberführer Rechenbach and its Reich manager Otto Heidt ) in Barr in Alsace from 24.-27. November 1943 it is determined that the “Farm Heritage” section of this funding association is responsible for the village family books. On January 15, 1944, however, the Reichsdienststelle of the “Gesundes Landvolk” promotion association in Berlin was completely bombed out.

In December 1934, Rechenbach was invited to a meeting with the staff of the Deputy Leader , during which a “special legislation on Jews” was discussed. However, Rechenbach did not play a significant role in the persecution of the Jews. On the contrary, the disputes with the head of the Reichssippenamt, Kurt Mayer, consisted in the fact that Mayer wanted to concentrate the mapping activities on the big cities in order to find out the baptisms of Jews, while Rechenbach, with his other objectives and scientific interests, saw work in the villages as a priority.

In 1945 Mayer was left with only suicide, while Rechenbach had a life after the war. He became a teacher at private agricultural schools and gained a reputation as a specialist in the breeding of laying hens. The poultry farm in Düsseldorf- Garath , where he worked (then owned by Alhard von Burgsdorff ), received the Hans von Bemberg Prize in 1957 for outstanding animal breeders for its White Leghorn .

Fonts

• The fate of the peasants is the fate of the people. - Blood issues of the German people . Reichsnährstand publishing company, Berlin 1935.
• Moordorf, A contribution to the history of the settlement and the social question . Reichsnährstand publishing company, Berlin 1940.

After the end of the Second World War, the two writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone .

Ranks

• December 24, 1932: SS-Hauptsturmführer
• July 6, 1933: SS-Sturmbannführer
• November 9, 1933: SS-Obersturmbannführer
• November 9, 1934: SS Standartenführer
• January 30, 1938: SS-Oberführer

Positions

• July 1933 Head of Staff Main Department G in the staff office of the Reichsbauernführer, member of the German Reichsbauernrat
• 1934 Head of the Reich Office for Settler Selection
• May 1935 to June 1, 1937 Head of Department I in the Race Office of the RuSHA
• 1940 Settlement Commissioner at Colonel General Fromm's staff in the OKW
• December 1943 until the end of the war head of the main work area "Growth and Raising of the Rural People" in the NSDAP Reich Office for Rural People
• lifelong member of the Reichsbauernrat

literature

• The ancestors of German peasant leaders. Volume 16: Horst Rechenbach . Berlin: RN Verlags-Gesellschaft 1936. - This printed list of ancestors contains on p. 10f. a short biography , probably written by Rechenbach himself .
• Isabel Heinemann: Race, Settlement, German Blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe . Göttingen: Wallerstein 2003, ISBN 3-89244-623-7 .
• Ulrich Kimpel: About Rechenbach . In: Kahrs, Horst et al .: Models for a German Europe. Economy and rule in the greater economic area . Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag 1992, pp. 203–204 (= contributions to National Socialist health and social policy 10)
• Katarzyna Leszczyńska: witches and Germans: the interest of National Socialism in history . (Diss.) Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1169-4 (passim).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rechenbach, Horst: The living and working conditions of the rural population of Northern Thuringia. Göttingen, Dissertation 1926, attached curriculum vitae on the last page
2. ^ Koehl, Robert Lewis: The SS: a history 1910 - 45. Stroud: Tempus 2004, p. 93
3. ↑ Ulrich Kimpel: On the person of Rechenbach . In: Kahrs, Horst et al .: Models for a German Europe. Economy and rule in the greater economic area . Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag 1992, pp. 203-204
4. ↑ Bastian Hein: Elite for people and leaders? The General SS and its Members 1925-1945. Munich: Oldenbourg 2012, pp. 119–121
5. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Göttingen: Wallstein 2003, p. 55
6. ^ Rüdiger Ahrens: Bündische Jugend. A new story 1918 - 1933. Göttingen. Wallstein 2015, p. 144
7. ↑ Isabel Heinemann: Race, settlement, German blood. The Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS and the racial reorganization of Europe. Goettingen. Wallstein 2003, p. 640f., Short biography based on the documents of the BDC for Rechenbach, Dr., Horst
8. ↑ The ancestors of German peasant leaders. Volume 16: Horst Rechenbach. Berlin: RN publishing company 1936.
9. ↑ The disputes between the Reichsnährstand and the Reichssippenamt about the mapping of church records. A contribution to the history of genealogy in the time of National Socialism. Genealogy 49th year (2000) pp. 1–17, here p. 5
10. ↑ Horst Rechenbach: The assessment of the human body . Goslar: Verlag Blut und Boden 1940
11. ↑ Ulrich Kimpel: On the person of Rechenbach . In: Kahrs, Horst et al .: Models for a German Europe. Economy and rule in the greater economic area . Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag 1992, pp. 203-204
12. ↑ Wolf Gruner (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 . Munich 2008, Volume 1, ISBN 978-3-486-58480-6 , p. 506.
13. ↑ The disputes between the Reichsnährstand and the Reichssippenamt about the mapping of church records. A contribution to the history of genealogy in the time of National Socialism. Genealogy 49th year (2000) pp. 1–17, here p. 15
14. ↑ Wolf Gruner (Ed.): The persecution ... . Munich 2008, Volume 1, p. 391 with note 3.
15. ↑ The disputes between the Reichsnährstand and the Reichssippenamt about the mapping of church records. A contribution to the history of genealogy in the time of National Socialism. Genealogy 49th year (2000) pp. 1–17, here p. 11
16. ↑ Horst Rechenbach: Krallinger Zuchtwahlmethodik. German commercial poultry farming 5 (1953) 338-341. - The herdbook work in Switzerland. Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeflügelzucht 6 (1954) 523-525; and other articles in this journal
17. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html
18. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-q.html