Johannes Engel (politician)

Johannes Engel

Johannes Engel (born May 15, 1894 in Ernsthausen ; † July 18, 1973 in West Berlin ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ), member of the Reichstag , founder of the National Socialist Company Cell Organization (NSBO) and SS leader .

Life

Engel learned the lathe trade after leaving school. He then worked in his parents' farm and then briefly in mining in Westphalia. After participating in the First World War , he left the army in March 1920 with the rank of NCO and resumed his professional activity. From 1925 to 1928 he worked as a lathe operator at Knorr-Bremse AG in Berlin. From 1928 to 1930 he was unemployed, from 1930 to 1932 he was employed by a printing company.

His political career began with the German Social Party , to which he belonged from 1922 to 1925. In 1927 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 72,201). From 1929 to 1933 he represented the NSDAP in the Berlin city council . In 1932 he received a mandate from the NSDAP for the Prussian Landtag and was a member of the National Socialist Reichstag from November 12, 1933 until the end of the Nazi regime .

In April 1933 he became State Commissioner for Berlin's Transport System. As a result, he was also Chairman of the BVG Supervisory Board . With membership number 1 he founded the National Socialist Company Cell Organization (NSBO) at the Berlin transport company . Engel was involved in the smashing of the trade unions and under his leadership the “cleansing” of the BVG took place. This began with the exchange of board members and resulted in the dismissal of at least 3,396 BVG employees for political reasons.

Engel was a multifunctional member of the NSDAP. From 1933 to 1934 he was trustee of the work for the Brandenburg economic area. From 1934 he headed the tourism organization and Reichsverkehrsgruppe Eisenbahnbahnen in Berlin. In addition, he was Reichsamtsleiter of the DAF from 1938 .

In the SS he reached the rank of SS brigade leader in the General SS at the end of January 1942 (SS no. 186,488). At the beginning of August 1944 he joined the Waffen SS , where he held the rank of Untersturmführer.

In 1944 he was appointed deputy Gauleiter of Greater Berlin. On July 29, 1944, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords .

Shortly after the end of the war, Engel was arrested by the Soviet occupation authorities in Berlin on May 12, 1945 and was imprisoned in various prisons (including the notorious Moscow Butyrka ) and labor camps in the following years . In June 1950 he was routinely sentenced to 25 years of forced labor, but repatriated to Germany on October 7, 1955. Engel was then registered in Wannsee and was unable to work.

literature

• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .
• Joachim Lilla (arrangement): The deputy Gauleiter and the representation of the Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the "Third Reich" (= materials from the Federal Archives. Issue 13), Koblenz 2003, ISBN 3-86509-020-6 .

Web links

• Johannes Engel in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} German Biographical Encyclopedia (DBE). 2nd Edition. Volume 3 (Einstein - Görner), Munich / Leipzig 2006, p. 71
2. ↑ ^{a b} Wolf Gruner (arr.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , vol. 1., German Reich 1933–1937. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58480-6 , P. 194, note 4
3. ↑ ^{a b} Anja Stanciu: "Old fighters" of the NSDAP / A Berlin functional elite 1926–1949. (= Zeithistorische Studien , Volume 59, Ed .: Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam ) (= PhD thesis of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Potsdam revised for printing from August 2014), Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-50367-3 , P. 453
4. ^ ^{A b} Christian Dirks, Jörg Pache, Thorsten Beck: Red becomes brown / The BVG 1929–1945. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2015, ISBN 978-3-95462-542-0 , p. 35
5. ↑ Red becomes brown. the BVG after 1933. Exhibition in the Alexanderplatz underground station. May 16 - December 31, 2013 .
6. ↑ Christian Dirks, Jörg Pache, Thorsten Beck: Red becomes brown / The BVG 1929-1945. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2015, ISBN 978-3-95462-542-0 , p. 41
7. ↑ Christian Dirks, Jörg Pache, Thorsten Beck: Red becomes brown / The BVG 1929-1945. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2015, ISBN 978-3-95462-542-0 , p. 42
8. ↑ Joachim Lilla (edit.): The Deputy Gauleiter and the representation of the Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the "Third Reich" , Koblenz 2003
9. ↑ Irina Bezborodova: The Generals of the Second World War in Soviet captivity , Graz 1998, p. 69.