Hugo Stoltzenberg

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Hugo Stoltzenberg (born April 27, 1883 in Strengen near Landeck (Tyrol) , † January 14, 1974 in Hamburg ) was a German chemist who developed chemical weapons and was the founder of the Stoltzenberg chemical factory in Hamburg-Veddel in 1923 . In the 1920s he was involved in secret undertakings aimed at the chemical armament of the Reichswehr .

Origin and early years

Hugo Gustav Adolf Stoltzenberg was born on April 27, 1883 in Strengen near Landeck / Tyrol. His father Karl Theodor Stoltzenberg (1854-1893) was an engineer and owned his own company for advising and helping to shape large construction companies such as river regulation and bridge construction. Stoltzenberg attended school in Vienna, Leipzig and East Cambridge and finally passed his Abitur in 1904 in Frankfurt / Oder. From 1905 to 1907 he studied law in Halle, then mathematics and finally switched to chemistry. In 1907 he went to Giessen for a year. Back in Halle, he was a lecturer at Daniel Vorländer (1867–1941) until 1910 . Finally, in 1910, he became an assistant at the physiological institute of the Royal Veterinary Academy in Berlin. His dissertation with Vorländer from 1911 was titled Optical activity and crystalline-liquid state . In the same year Stoltzenberg became assistant to Heinrich Biltz (1868–1943) in Breslau, where he also met Margarete Bergius (1892–1950), sister of the later Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Bergius (1884–1949). Margarete Bergius was also a chemist. She and Stoltzenberg married in 1915 during the First World War .

First World War

In the second battle of Ypres from 22 April to 22 May 1915 opened Stoltzenberg, then assistant to the chief war chemist Fritz Haber , the Pioneer Regiment 35 on April 22, the chlorine gas taps , which poison gas for the first time Western Front was used. Canadian soldiers and goumiers , soldiers of the French colonial army from Africa , were hit by this gas attack . In Munsterlager-Breloh , Stoltzenberg was involved in leading the construction of the filling and testing center for gas ammunition . Here grenades were filled with mustard gas ("lost"). Mustard gas is also called Yperite, after Ypres , the place where it was first used in autumn 1917. After several serious wounds on the western front, Lieutenant Stoltzenberg was deployed to the Adlershof field ammunition facility near Berlin and then to Lot I on the Breloh gas station, the largest filling plant for gas ammunition in Germany. In 1918 Stoltzenberg went to Berlin and also worked in cancer research. At the beginning of 1920 there were tank wagons filled with warfare agents in Breloh , the contents of which were to be deconstructed.

The Stoltzenberg chemical factory until the end of the Second World War

Warfare agent recycling

The Treaty of Versailles prohibited the German Reich from any activity in relation to gas warfare, including protective and defensive measures.

The Reichswehr defeated the Versailles Treaty with funding from the Reich government . On the recommendation of Fritz Haber , Stoltzenberg was commissioned by the Reichswehr to maintain the technical-industrial side of the military capability of the German people in the gas area. His management of warfare agents in Munsterlager-Breloh was aptly characterized by the British Military Intelligence, Section 10 as an effort to prevent the destruction of gas weapons.

Formally, Stoltzenberg dealt with the clearance and destruction of chemical warfare agents. In October 1919, a large part of the buildings at the Breloh gas field was destroyed by an explosion: a staged "accident" in order not to let the ultra-modern filling plant fall into the hands of the Allies. Stoltzenberg sold various chemical warfare agents and preliminary products all over the world. The sales to the USA and Sweden were notorious. Stoltzenberg can also be assigned a transport of warfare agents in the direction of Leningrad, which, however, went down in the Baltic Sea. The Stoltzenberg Chemical Factory (CFS) was established in Hamburg in 1923 .

Poison gas accident in Hamburg in 1928

In 1928 the Reichswehr delivered some phosgene boilers to the Stoltzenberg chemical plant in the port of Hamburg. Stoltzenberg wanted to dump the war gas into the North Sea . On May 20, 1928, one of the phosgene containers exploded and a phosgene cloud passed through Georgswerder , killing at least ten people and injuring around 300.

"One reads the lamentable statements of Dr. Stoltzenberg, who laments that he has been cheated of his precious property. One forgets that the deadly poison stored in the neighborhood of human dwellings has brought a constant threat of death to the second largest German city for years [...] And the lucky owners of these gas tanks also knew why they turned to Hamburg, where they got the Hanseatic munici-license not only made a storage space available, but also gave generous supervision. "

- Carl von Ossietzky : Weltbühne from May 29, 1928

Rif War in Morocco

After the defeat of July 22, 1921 in the Battle of Annual , the Spanish military tried to gain an advantage over the Rifabyls by using the new weapon, poison gas . Therefore the Spanish military started negotiations with Stoltzenberg in 1921 through the Madrid middleman Julio Kocherthaler from the German-Spanish banking group Kocherthaler / Ullmann / Lewin . In November 1921, Stoltzenberg negotiated with other officers in Madrid. At the beginning of January 1922 a Spanish commission visited Munsterlager. A poison gas plant was decided on June 10, 1922 for Madrid. Stoltzenberg supplied the raw material Oxol for mustard gas to Spain. Up to 1923, 500 to 600 tons of phosgene were supplied to the Spanish military from Germany. Stoltzenberg made contributions to the development of a new gas bomb for the Air Force. Hugo Stoltzenberg developed a contamination strategy for the use of chemical weapons in the Rif War , which mainly provided for the use of mustard gas in the hinterland. This concept was based on the fact that people staying in villages, holding markets and working in the fields became deadly with the gas attacks. The population was to be forced to surrender with undifferentiated terror. If the mustard gas hit people without special protective clothing, it led to wounds that were painful and difficult to heal. The mustard gas also stuck to food in the long term; if these were consumed, it led to ulcers and necrosis on the internal organs, which could also lead to death. Hugo Stoltzenberg received Spanish citizenship.

During the landing operation at Al-Hoceima in 1926 , the Spanish troops under Miguel Primo de Rivera used mustard gas on a massive scale. Today 60% of the lung cancer patients at the cancer center in Rabat come from the area where chemical weapons are deployed around Al-Hoceima.

Soviet Union

After the German-Soviet military cooperation , Stoltzenberg planned the construction of a poison gas factory in Trotsk near Samara and contracted it on May 14, 1923 in coordination with the Reichswehr leadership . As a facade company of the Reichswehr, Friedrich Tschunke founded the Society for the Promotion of Commercial Enterprises (GEFU), through which the Reichswehr channeled its economic and legal external relations for the concession agreements with the Soviet Union. The construction of plants for the production of poison gas was agreed as part of these concession agreements. The German-Soviet joint-stock company Bersol was founded to operate the poison gas production. By January 1925, the company erected the required buildings and installed the systems supplied by GEFU ready for production. The contract then concluded with the Army Weapons Office in October provided for the delivery of phosgene and warfare agents. Since then, 1,230 tons of mustard gas have been produced per year, which the Reichswehr and Red Army each split half. In 1926, disguised as “agro-chemical experiments”, an agreement was reached with Stolzenberg to test the poisonous gases on the territory of the Soviet Union. To this end, a total of 20 German warfare agent experts stayed in Podosinkie, near Moscow, in 1927, and carried out warfare agent exercises with machines from the Junkers factories. The joint production of poison gas was ended by the Soviet Union in 1928 because it believed that Germany had been duped by the amount made available to it and the use of outdated technology. However, the combat-like testing was continued until 1933 with the participation of German specialists, from the extension of the effective times of the poison gas to the bombing of phosgene and irritant gas concentrations. Stoltzenberg was also involved in the development of chemical mines and the development of portable sprayers for use in the front line.

Yugoslavia

In the pulp factory planned and built by Stoltzenberg in 1928 in Ravnicä, south of Belgrade , mustard gas leaked from a production facility in 1938.

Brazil

From 1937, Stoltzenberg supervised the construction of a plant for the production of mustard gas in the Estado Novo des Getúlio Dornelles Vargas as part of a state contract with the German Reich , until 1942 Brazil declared war on the German Reich.

Lost in drinking water

Stoltzenberg developed connection equipment that enabled Lost to be introduced into the public water network. In 1929 the International Committee of the Red Cross offered a prize of 10,000 gold francs for finding an easy-to-use lost detector. The search was unsuccessful.

“There are no warning signs for the perception of mustard gas and, with the exception of the smell, there is no practical way of determining its presence. [...] The droplets that get on the skin reveal themselves neither by feeling cold nor by other sensations, such as burning, so that they are usually not perceived. "

- Otto Muntsch : Military doctor who took part in the Reichswehr gas fight tests in the Soviet Union in 1926

The poisonous effect of mustard is not neutralized by the stomach, but lasts for a disproportionately long time. The clinical picture is strongly reminiscent of typhus .

After the Second World War

After the Second World War, poison gas deliveries from Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Poland were found on the territory of the German Empire, which suggest that Stoltzenberg was also active in these countries. In 1941, during World War II , Stoltzenberg joined the NSDAP . Stoltzenberg provided sample sets for those who wanted to have first-hand experience with chemical weapons. The sample set contained 60 chemical warfare cartridges, each five of 12 different poison gases. The instruction leaflet instructed the contents of the cartridges to be fired into an airtight space with a suitable target - preferably cats. Stoltzenberg was appointed administrator of Tesch & Stabenow by authorities in the British zone of occupation in 1946 . After 1945 Stoltzenberg maintained close contact with the Hamburg police and the German armed forces . Around 1960 Stoltzenberg received 73 orders for 2.3 million German marks from the German Armed Forces for warfare agent tracer powder, practice ammunition, smoke candles. Filters for protective masks and 15 kilograms of lost items were also there. He supplied the Federal Border Guard with chemical tracer powder.

In 1970 Günter Wallraff reported that the Bundeswehr had obtained 35 kilograms of lost items from Stoltzenberg.

"The Federal Office for Defense Technology and Procurement and also other departments have never obtained Lost from the aforementioned company or from any other company in the Federal Republic of Germany."

- Ministry of Defense under Helmut Schmidt

According to Defense State Secretary Karl Schnell , test quantities would be “obtained by the gram” from “friendly powers”. The files of the Federal Ministry of Defense make it clear that the responsible authorities have been informed about the Bundeswehr's purchase of lost items, as has the public. The Bundeswehr admitted to having obtained 15 kilograms of lost from the Stoltzenberg company. By joining the Western European Union (WEU), the Federal Republic of Germany committed itself to renounce chemical weapons. There is no large-scale production.

The Stoltzenberg Chemical Factory (CFS) on the corner of Farnhornstieg and Schnackenburgallee in Hamburg was a disordered warehouse for chemical warfare agents. In 1969 Hugo Stoltzenberg sold CFS to his colleague Martin Leuschner. He himself died on January 14, 1974 in Hamburg. On the evening of September 6, 1979, the eleven year old Oliver Ludwig died in an explosion while experimenting with the unsecured materials.

Stoltzenberg route

Jean-François Rioux coined the term Stoltzenberg Route for the turnkey delivery of chemical weapons production facilities . He distinguishes this from the Hippenstiel- Imhausen route, where dual use chemical plants are built and subcontractors are instructed to convert them into chemical weapons production sites.

literature

  • Rudibert Kunz:  Stoltzenberg, Hugo Gustav Adolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , pp. 430-432 ( digitized version ).
  • Rudibert Kunz, Rolf-Dieter Müller : Poison gas against Abd el Krim . Germany, Spain and the gas war in Spanish Morocco 1922–1927 . Rombach, Freiburg 1990, ISBN 3-7930-0196-2 , ( individual publications on military history 34), (description of the activities of the Reichswehr and Stoltzenbergs during the Weimar period in the production and sale of war gas and war gas factories).
  • Henning Schweer: The history of the Stoltzenberg chemical factory up to the end of the Second World War. An overview of the period from 1923 to 1945, including the historical context, with an outlook on developments after 1945 . GNT, Diepholz u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-928186-87-2 , (also: Hamburg, Univ., Dipl.-Arbeit, 2007), (Company history of the Stoltzenberg chemical factory until 1945 with an outlook on the development until 1979).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henning Schweer: The history of the chemical factory Stoltzenberg up to the end of the Second World War . GNT, Diepholz, 2008, p. 15
  2. ↑ He attended the Royal Gymnasium from Easter 1894 to Easter 1895. Cf. King Albert Gymnasium (until 1900 Royal Gymnasium) in Leipzig: Student Album 1880–1904 / 05 , Friedrich Gröber, Leipzig 1905
  3. ^ Henning Schweer: The history of the chemical factory Stoltzenberg up to the end of the Second World War . GNT, Diepholz, 2008, pp. 15-16.
  4. ^ A b c Hugo Stoltzenberg and Chemical Weapons Proliferation . ( Memento of November 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Monitor , 1995, University of Georgia, Volume 1, Number 2, p. 11
  5. ↑ A life for death . In: Die Zeit , No. 40/1979
  6. ↑ Experimental field Africa . In: Der Spiegel Spezial , May 22, 2007,
  7. ^ Dirk Sasse: French, British and Germans in the Rif War 1921–1926
  8. ↑ Gassed German, forgotten Moroccan . In: taz , January 26, 2002. mondeberbere.com (PDF)
  9. ↑ The poison gas factory in Trotzk. In: Vorwärts , January 11, 1927, morning edition No. 16, p. 3, accessed on October 1, 2019.
  10. ↑ Olaf Groehler: Suicidal Alliance. German-Russian military relations 1920–1941 . Vision Verlag, Berlin 1992, p. 39 ff.
  11. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Warfare agents research under National Socialism, on the cooperation of Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry . Wallstein-Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-89244-880-9 , p. 124ff.
  12. ↑ Poison gas systems compliant! In: Die Zeit , No. 6/1989
  13. ↑ Rudibert Kunz, Rolf-Dieter Müller : Poison gas against Abd el Krim Germany, Spain and the gas war in Spanish Morocco 1922–1927 . Rombachverlag, Freiburg 1990, p. 125.
  14. ^ Karl Willibald Hetzel: Dichlordiäthylsulfid. An addendum to the result of the competition of the International Committee of the Red Cross . In: Gasschutz und Luftschutz , 1932, pp. 112–115, p. 112.
  15. ↑ a b Otto Muntsch: Guide to the pathology and therapy of warfare agent diseases . Leipzig 1939, p. 74.
  16. ↑ Ernst Gillert: Die Kampfstofferkrankungen . Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin 1938, p. 45.
  17. ↑ Olaf Groehler : The silent death. Use and development of German poison gases from 1914–1945 . Reinbek 1989. Jürgen Kalthoff: The dealers of the Zyklon-B. Tesch & Stabenow. A company history between Hamburg and Auschwitz . Hamburg 1988, after Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer 2005.
  18. ↑ a b Poison Affair: Then it goes boom . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 1979 ( online ).
  19. ^ Henning Schweer: The history of the chemical factory Stoltzenberg up to the end of the Second World War . GNT, Diepholz, 2008. p. 103.
  20. ↑ Stoltzenberg scandal first a child died . In: Hamburger Abendblatt September 7, 2004.
  21. ^ Jean-François Rioux: Limiting the proliferation of weapons: the role of supply-side strategies . McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 1992, ISBN 978-0-88629-193-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
personal data
SURNAME Stoltzenberg, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Strengen near Landeck / Tyrol
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1974
Place of death Hamburg