Julius Bergmann (SA member)

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Julius Bergmann , called Kalte Wade (born June 3, 1894 in Schwarzburg , † August 30, 1952 in Dresden ) was a German SA leader and convicted murderer.

Live and act

Empire and Weimar Republic

After attending a secondary school , which Bergmann completed with primary school, Bergmann was trained as an engineer. During the First World War he worked as a construction supervisor during the inspection of the air force. In the immediate post-war period he belonged to the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division.

At the end of 1921, Bergmann joined the right-wing sports association Olympia. From 1925 to 1926 he was a member of the Berlin section of the Frontbann military association.

During the time of the Great Inflation of 1923, Bergmann was the sole managing director of Kosmos Germania and Pallas. He then founded an electro-mechanical workshop, with a particular interest in radio. His workshop ended up doing so well that his operations eventually included five radio equipment and accessories stores.

On September 1, 1928, Bergmann joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), the NSDAP's street combat group, for the first time . From 1930 to 1933 Bergmann acted as training manager of the technical news information of the Berlin SA.

On August 1, 1930, Bergmann joined the NSDAP (membership number 474.008). While he was working as a section head for the party, his main field of activity was working in the SA: Gert Buchheit later described him as a "bad thug" who, alongside Willi Schmidt, was one of the most notorious figures in the Berlin SA. In 1932, Bergmann's business was looted and demolished by communists.

On December 8, 1932, Bergmann was shot in the leg (thigh shot) in an attack - probably carried out by communists - so that from then on he had to wear a wooden leg as a prosthesis. In SA circles this earned him the nickname "Cold Wade".

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Bergmann took over as SA-Sturmbannführer in the group staff of the SA-Group Berlin-Brandenburg, the management of the department Ic (department for communications). In addition, he was appointed Commissioner in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior by the Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Göring . As one of the main people responsible for the fact that SA men were used as auxiliary police in Berlin in the spring of 1933, Bergmann was also subordinate to the wild prison established after the Reichstag fire of February 28, 1933 in the SA headquarters in Hedemannstrasse, in which he was after numerous identical witness statements had many prisoners (especially communists, social democrats and Jews) cruelly tortured and ill-treated. On March 31, 1933, the SA moved to the nearby Vossstrasse. There are a few contemporary witnesses who also reported torture in Hedemannstrasse afterwards.

On April 18, 1933, Bergmann wrote a letter to his superior, Karl Ernst , in which he justified the atrocities committed under his aegis by saying that “from a purely human point of view, the SA, which has been fighting for 12 years against terror and oppression, must be granted a certain right to take action , which in the end only arise from our comrade's sense of justice. "

Karl Dietrich Bracher interpreted this as an admission "that the SA only seized the auxiliary police functions in order to satisfy the thirst for vengeance and lower instincts in the worst possible way."

As the head of the Ic, Bergmann was the focus of the activities of the SA riot squads operating in Berlin and the surrounding area, which hunted down political opponents and otherwise unpleasant people. Jochen von Lang led to the assessment that Bergmann was the man who "organized the terror [of the SA] in the Reich capital [...] in 1933." Heinz Höhne states that Bergmann was - perhaps after the closure of Hedemannstrasse - as head of a “terror and intelligence center” that “controlled the SA manhunt [in Berlin] from a twelve-room apartment on Stresemannstrasse”. Bergmann was also instrumental in building up the SA's arsenal.

In the wake of the Röhm affair, the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg filed an application to the SA special court at the SA leadership to exclude Bergmann from the SA on October 23, 1934. Another SA disciplinary proceedings were discontinued on June 18, 1936 by the decision of the 2nd Chamber of the OSAF SA Disciplinary Court.

Due to his private and business relationships with a Jew named Kottow, Bergmann was found guilty of a violation of Article 4, Paragraph 2 b and c of the NSDAP statutes by decision of the Second Chamber of the Berlin Gaugericht on March 5, 1939. Thereupon he was expelled from the NSDAP at the request of the Gaues Berlin. As a result, he was expelled from the SA by decision of the OSAF on June 21, 1940.

Arrest and execution

Bergmann's wooden leg was a noticeable characteristic of the fact that many of the victims of the SA cellar in Hedemannstrasse remembered it and could be identified after the Second World War . He was arrested before January 1951 at the request of the East Berlin public prosecutor's office and brought before the East Berlin district court within the framework of intra-German mutual legal assistance . It sentenced him to death on February 3, 1951 for the torture and murder of prisoners on Hedemannstrasse . After the judgment was upheld by the Superior Court in East Berlin on August 28, 1951 and the responsible mercy commission at the magistrate in East Berlin had rejected the petition for clemency on June 9, 1952 (the magistrate joined on July 24, 1952), he became a miner on August 30, 1952, together with Emil Nitz in the central place of execution of the GDR in Dresden by a hangman of the German people's police with the guillotine executed .

family

Bergmann was married to Erna Dörschner (* 1896), with whom he had a daughter (* 1924).

Promotions

  • 1929: SA squad leader
  • 1929: SA troop leader
  • 1931: SA storm leader
  • May 1, 1933 : SA-Sturmbannführer

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date and place of birth according to Kurt Schilde: Columbia House. 1990, p. 148.
  2. ↑ Gert Buchheit: Soldiership and Rebellion. 1962, p. 23.
  3. ^ Letter from Bergmann to Karl Ernst dated April 18, 1933 to Karl Ernst (HAB, Rep 430, Grauert 31), quoted from Bracher: The Nazi seizure of power. 1960, p. 439f.
  4. ^ Bracher: The National Socialist seizure of power. 1960, p. 439.
  5. ^ Jochen von Lang: The Gestapo. Instrument of terror. 1990, p. 36.
  6. ↑ Höhne: Mordache Röhm. P. 161.
personal data
SURNAME Bergmann, Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cold Calf (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SA leader and convicted murderer
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwarzburg
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1952
Place of death Dresden