Karl Burmester

This article deals with the SS leader Karl Burmester, for other people see Carl Burmester .

Karl Burmester (born October 17, 1911 , † after 1976) was a German civil servant and SS leader.

Life

Burmester was the son of a pastor from North Schleswig . After graduating from high school in 1932, he worked as an import and export merchant in Hamburg . In 1934 he joined the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) (SS No. 107.304). In the following years he worked in the SD main office , where he worked in the press evaluation department.

According to the business distribution plan of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) of February 1940, Burmester was in charge of Section II A 4 ("Information Office") in Office II (ideological research on opponents) at that time. According to the business distribution plan of March 1941, Burmester was in charge of Section VII A 3 ("Credit Information Agency and Liaison Office") in Office VII ("Philosophical Research and Evaluation - SD-Abroad") with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer. According to Michael Wildt , Burmester was one of the few employees in Franz Alfred Six's office who hadn't studied. Probably on the initiative of Six, Burmester made up for this parallel to his work at the RSHA: He finally completed his studies in early 1943 with a thesis on the subject of England as the country of birth of Freemasonry .

From April 1942, Burmester headed the central library of the RSHA, which was housed in the building of Office VII at Eisenacher Straße 12 and which, according to its founding statute, was intended as a scientific training facility for all RSHA staff. This was divided into three main groups (1. German Reich and Generalier; 2. Opponent; 3. Abroad) and comprised several hundred thousand volumes, most of which were booty that the SS had looted from all over Europe. B. tens of thousands of volumes from the Warsaw Synagogue Library.

literature

• Gideon Botsch : "Political Science" in World War II. The "German Foreign Studies in Action 1940–1945" (= Dissertation FU Berlin 2003.) Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-506-71358-2 .
• Regine Dehnel (Ed.): Jewish book ownership as looted property. Second Hanover Symposium. Klostermann, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-465-03448-1 .
• Lutz Hachmeister : The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six. Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43507-6 .
• Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office. Hamburger Edition, revised and updated new edition Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-930908-87-5 .