Julius La Fontaine

Julius August Heinrich La Fontaine (born October 21, 1891 in Gondelsheim , † January 25, 1947 in Karlsruhe ) was a German lawyer in the police and local government who resisted National Socialism .

Life

After attending grammar school from 1910 to 1915, La Fontaine studied law at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Munich . Then La Fontaine was used in the medical service during the First World War . From 1922 La Fontaine entered the higher civil service career in the interior administration in Baden and in August 1922 he became a bailiff at the Mannheim district office. La Fontaine joined the board of the Karlsruhe Police School in 1928 with the rank of government councilor . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933 , La Fontaine was removed from this post . Then La Fontaine worked at the Karlsruhe District Office. La Fontaine, close to the SPD , was subject to a promotion freeze and joined the NSDAP in 1937 - probably out of opportunism .

After the outbreak of World War II , La Fontaine was in German-occupied Poland from September 15, 1939 to October 16, 1939 district administrator in the Błonie district , west of Warsaw . In this function, La Fontaine witnessed mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen . After that, La Fontaine suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to the German Reich due to illness , where from 1940 he worked as a councilor at the Heidelberg district office . In Mannheim, where he lived, he came into contact with a resistance group made up of young teachers. This Francophile resistance group rejected the Nazi regime. The resistance group, which in addition to La Fontaine and his wife included about six young teachers of both sexes, met regularly in his apartment from 1941 onwards. As a "listening community", it illegally listened to " enemy stations ", discussed and documented the reports brought there. La Fontaine also reported on the mass shootings in the east, which he witnessed. The group supported French prisoners of war conspiratorially and also helped a prisoner of war escape. The group was denounced and their members arrested by the Gestapo . La Fontaine himself was arrested on January 27, 1943. On October 25, 1943, La Fontaine was sentenced by the 1st Senate of the People's Court , chaired by Roland Freisler, to ten years ' imprisonment and ten years of loss of honor for radio crimes and the implementation of “subversive community evenings” . La Fontaine was attested "basically not hostile to the Empire" and his poor health was credited to him. A young teacher who was co-accused received a death sentence. His " defeatist speeches" and La Fontaine's founding of a "treasonable circle" were known to the senior Reich attorney , but were not included in the indictment. The reasons for this are unknown - the well -reputed administrative lawyer La Fontaine may have had an accomplished defense attorney or was protected by advocates. After the verdict, La Fontaine was initially imprisoned in Bruchsal prison until April 1945 and then in Vaihingen workhouse .

After the liberation from National Socialism , La Fontaine became director of the Vaihingen workhouse . From mid-July 1945 La Fontaine was acting district administrator in the district of Vaihingen . At the beginning of October 1945 he became a ministerial advisor in the internal administration department of the president of the Baden district . In addition, La Fontaine was there from November 14, 1945 State Police Director . In January 1947, La Fontaine died of the consequences of imprisonment.

literature

• Markus Roth: Gentlemen. The German District Chiefs in Occupied Poland - Career Paths, Rule Practice and Post-History. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009. ISBN 978-3-8353-0477-2 .
• Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Michael Ruck (eds.): Regional elites between dictatorship and democracy: Baden and Württemberg 1930–1952 , Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-486-55950-8 .
• Eberhard Stegerer: Julius La Fontaine. Lawyer in the Baden police force, democrat and resistance to the Nazi regime , Göttingen: Cuvillier 2018, ISBN 978-3-7369-9876-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} short biography in Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen , Göttingen 2009, p. 487.
2. ↑ Michael Ruck: Administrative Elites in Democracy and Dictatorship. Civil service careers in Baden and Württemberg from the twenties to the post-war period in: Regional elites between dictatorship and democracy: Baden and Württemberg 1930–1952, Oldenbourg Verlag, ed .: Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Michael Ruck, Munich 1993, p. 58f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Jürgen Sikinger / Michael Ruck: Model of faithful fulfillment of duty? Baden officials before the Mannheim special court 1933-1945 in: Regional elites between dictatorship and democracy: Baden and Württemberg 1930-1952, Oldenbourg Verlag, ed .: Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Michael Ruck, Munich 1993, p. 116ff.