Karl-Friedrich Kolbow

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Karl-Friedrich Kolbow (born November 20, 1899 in Schwerin , † September 14, 1945 in Thorée-les-Pins ) was a German National Socialist politician. Between 1933 and 1944 he was governor of the province of Westphalia . As such, he was responsible, among other things, for the implementation of the National Socialist racial ideology . He was also the chairman of the Westphalian Heimatbund and, as such, one of the leaders of the Heimat movement at the time of National Socialism .

Life

Kolbow, whose father was a judiciary, attended grammar school in Schwerin and was influenced by the youth movement of the time. After graduating from high school in 1917, he did military service in the First World War . His unit guarded the port of Sevastopol in the Crimea and later a coal mine near the Georgian city of Kutaisi . Most recently he took part in securing a railway line north of Odessa .

After the war, Kolbow began studying geology , geography and history in Jena and Munich in 1919 . In February 1921 he attended a mass event of the NSDAP with Adolf Hitler for the first time in Munich and soon afterwards joined the party (membership number: 2,900). He later belonged to the so-called "Old Guard". In May 1921 Kolbow joined the Freikorps Oberland and fought in Upper Silesia . He became a member of the SA a year later. In the SA he reached the rank of Obersturmbannführer. He then took up a degree in mining at the Bergakademie Freiberg , which he graduated in 1925 as a qualified mining engineer. During this time Kolbow founded the local NSDAP group in Freiberg .

After the exam, Kolbow worked as an assistant and deputy manager of a lead and silver ore mine in Erbendorf (Upper Palatinate). He then worked for a short time as an engineer and operations manager at a mine lamp and accumulator factory in Chemnitz, and from 1927 as an operations engineer in Neunkirchen in Siegerland . Kolbow became district leader of the NSDAP for Siegerland in 1929 . In addition, since 1931 he was a Gaufach advisor for questions relating to mining. Since 1932 he was a member of the Provincial Parliament of the Province of Westphalia .

1933 Kolbow state commissioner for the Provincial Association of Westphalia and was governor of the province elected Westphalia. This was preceded by the forced resignation of his predecessor Franz Dieckmann . The Gau Westfalen-Süd was probably behind Kolbow's appointment by the Oberpräsident Ferdinand Freiherr von Lüninck . Kolbow was supposed to transform the provincial administration into a "National Socialist bastion". Immediately after taking office, he had left-wing, liberal and “politically unreliable” workers removed. As a non-lawyer and non-Westphalian, he initially encountered reservations within the provincial administration. Lüninck gave Kolbow, who was actually subordinate to him, considerable room for maneuver. Both rejected democratic self-government, but tried to protect the interests of the Province of Westphalia vis-à-vis government agencies and the party. At Kolbow, this was based on the model of regionalism on a "tribal culture basis." For example, he rejected the creation of an independent Ruhr district because, among other things, he believed that the population groups that had immigrated from the east could only be assimilated to the Rhine province and Westphalia . Kolbow also accepted conflicts with the leadership of the Gaus Westfalen-Süd, to which he owed his rise. Based on Lüninck, he became one of the most influential governors in Prussia.

Kolbow was also chairman of the Westphalian Heimatbund and was one of the leading figures in the Heimat movement in Germany. As such, he also participated in the planning for the Germanization of the Warthegau , which was occupied in 1939 . For Kolbow, the east occupied by the Wehrmacht was a future settlement area of ​​a "Germanness" intended for the peasant-warlike "border struggle" (cf. German border colonialism ).

In his actual area of ​​responsibility, Kolbow was responsible for adapting youth welfare, welfare education and psychiatry in the area of ​​the Provincial Association of the Province of Westphalia to the National Socialist racial principles. In the course of the euthanasia actions during the Second World War , Kolbow was largely responsible for their implementation in the province of Westphalia. Under his aegis, the so-called children's departments for the murder of disabled children were set up in the provincial institutions in Niedermarsberg and Aplerbeck .

In 1944 Kolbow was arrested, expelled from the party, and dismissed from public office. The background was differences with the party leadership and the proximity to Lüninck, who was arrested in connection with the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . In a letter found at Lüninck, Kolbow criticized the " popular political " inadequacy of the "measured" and "barbaric" National Socialism. Kolbow was able to avoid the execution because Gauleiter Meyer stood up for him. Kolbow had to register for military service and was a simple soldier (construction pioneer). After the end of the war, he was arrested and interned by the French occupation authorities as contaminated by the Nazis. Kolbow died in a French camp.

After the war he was stylized by former employees and representatives of the Westphalian homeland movement as a “decent Nazi” who was guided by ideals that were moved by young people and who was committed to nature and the idea of ​​homeland in Westphalia. His shared responsibility for the crimes of the regime, for example in the context of euthanasia, was forgotten. This characterization of Kolbow, which was not shaken until the 1970s, was based on a very selective analysis of his diaries.

In the Soviet occupation zone , his writings Die Kulturpflege der Prussischen Provinces ( Kohlhammer , Stuttgart 1937) and Kulturpflege der Gemeinde und Gemeindeverände , attached Helmut Bojungas Das Schulwesen (= Die Gemeindeverwaltungs- und Sparkasse School , Vol. 12; Eher , Munich 1937) were added to the list the literature to be discarded.

Fonts

  • The cultural maintenance of the Prussian provinces . Stuttgart 1937
  • Questions about inland navigation between the Rhine and Elbe . Munster 1937
  • History of Westphalia . Bochum 1941
  • Nature and home . Wolfshagen-Scharbeutz 1939

literature

  • Martin Dröge: Masculinity and 'national community'. The Westphalian governor Karl Friedrich Kolbow (1899-1945) . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 2015.
  • Martin Dröge (ed.): The diaries of Karl Friedrich Kolbows (1899-1945): National Socialist from the very beginning and governor of the province of Westphalia . Paderborn, 2010.
  • Bernd Walter : Karl Friedrich Kolbow (1899–1945). In: Westfälische Lebensbilder , Vol. 17, Münster 2005, pp. 203–240.
  • Willi Oberkrome : "Deutsche Heimat." National conception and regional practice of nature conservation, landscape design and cultural policy in Westphalia-Lippe and Thuringia (1900–1960). Paderborn 2004, ISBN 3-506-71693-X .
  • Rainer Bookhagen: Protestant child care and the inner mission in the time of National Socialism. Vol. 2. Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-525-55730-2 , p. 1018.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. 2nd updated edition, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 328.
  2. ^ Andreas Wagner: "Seizure of power" in Saxony. NSDAP and state administration 1930-1935. Böhlau, Cologne, 2004. p. 56 ISBN 3412144045
  3. ↑ Oberkrome, Deutsche Heimat, p. 153.
  4. ^ Christoph Schmidt: National Socialist cultural policy in the Gau Westfalen-Nord. Paderborn, 2006 p. 53f.
  5. ↑ Oberkrome, Deutsche Heimat, p. 10.
  6. ↑ Borkener Zeitung March 4, 2010 Digitized version ( memento of the original from March 8, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.borkenerzeitung.de
  7. ^ Regional dictionary of persons on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein, article by Karl Friedrich Kolbow
  8. ↑ message on westfaelische-geschichte.de
  9. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-k.html
  10. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-b.html
personal data
SURNAME Kolbow, Karl-Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP)
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1945
Place of death Thorée-les-Pins