Karl Ernst (SA member)

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Karl Ernst (1933)

Karl Gustav Ernst (born September 1, 1904 in Wilmersdorf near Berlin ; † June 30, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ) and group leader of the SA . He was best known as the leader of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg . He was a member of the Reichstag from 1932 to 1934 and a member of the Prussian State Council from 1933 until his death . According to some theories, Karl Ernst played an important role in the Reichstag fire of February 1933.

Live and act

Early years (1904–1929)

Karl Ernst was born in Berlin in 1904 as the elder of two sons of Carl Ernst (1860–1941) and his wife Martha, née Schröder. His father was a cavalryman ; after the First World War he worked as a bodyguard for the industrialist Friedrich Flick . His younger brother was Gustav Ernst.

After attending elementary schools in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and Berlin-Grunewald , he completed a commercial apprenticeship as an export merchant between 1918 and 1921.

After he had already started to get involved in the national youth movement in 1918, Ernst first joined the German National Youth Association in 1920 , and later also the Freikorpsverband "Eskadron Grunewald". He belonged to the latter as a wheel reporter of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division . From 1920 to 1923 he was also a member of the Wiking Association .

Until 1923 he worked as a commercial clerk in Berlin and Mainz . In the same year he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA).

After the failure of the Munich putsch in November 1923 and the ban on the NSDAP, Ernst became active in various other right-wing extremist organizations that were hostile to the state. Between 1924 and 1926 he was a member of the Frontbann , a rescue organization of the banned SA, and of the organization "Ulrich von Hutten" of the Freikorpsführer Gerhard Roßbach . As a result of his conflicts with the law, Ernst was charged at the time with secret bundling, breach of the peace and freeing prisoners.

During these years Ernst pursued various activities in the service industry. He was successively a commercial clerk, bank clerk, buyer, secretary, head of department, traveler, correspondent, waiter and bellhop in Berlin , Mainz and Danzig .

In the newly founded NSDAP, Ernst was a member of the Supreme SA leadership in Munich from 1927 to March 1931 .

Later years (1929–1934)

Karl Ernst (second from left) in the circle of the NSDAP Gau leadership of Berlin. Group portrait on the occasion of Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor. Next to Ernst on the left: Hans Meinshausen , on the right: Count Helldorff , Joseph Goebbels and Karl Hanke . Behind Ernst in a light suit: Albert Speer .

From 1929 to 1931 Ernst attended the Berlin School of Politics for three semesters .

In connection with the so-called Stennes revolt , a dispute within the Berlin SA, Ernst became adjutant of the Gausturm in April 1931. In June of the same year he was named in the social democratic Munich Post and the reprints based on it as one of Röhm's best-known homosexual friends . Forged letters from First Lieutenant a. D. Paul Schulz , according to which Ernst is said to have been generally called "Frau von Röhrbein" because of his long-term relationship with Paul Röhrbein , who had helped him to rise within the party. At the time of the Stennes revolt in the spring of 1931, the outrage over the alleged homosexual triple alliance “Röhm-Röhrbein-Ernst” was particularly great among the supporters of Walther Stennes . Ernst and Röhrbein were literally besieged by Stennes people in a Berlin pub on the night of June 26th to 27th, 1931. When a loyal SA storm called by Ernst arrived, the arrest of the Stennes partisans by the police was in progress. According to a surviving protocol, the leader of the Stennes people described Ernst and Röhrbein as "party pests" and made harshly disparaging comments about their alleged homosexuality. Ernst gave an SA man the word of honor not to be homosexual. In 1931 he also had friendly contact with Arnolt Bronnen . After Harry Wilde he is on the Wannsee - yacht by Erik Jan Hanussen celebrated with his SA comrades "orgies".

As adjutant of the Gausturm, Ernst and Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff helped prepare and carry out the anti-Semitic Kurfürstendamm riot of September 12, 1931. On the evening of the Jewish New Year, around 1000 SA men attacked with slogans such as “Juda, verrecke” and “ Beat the Jews to death! ”Assaulted Jews leaving the synagogue and pedestrians on Kurfürstendamm. Charges were brought against Helldorff and Ernst, who were initially in hiding, for breach of the peace . Defended by Roland Freisler and Hans Frank , they were both sentenced to six months in prison in November 1931. This judgment was overturned in February 1932; Ernst received a fine for insulting.

Karl Ernst

In December 1931, Ernst became an adjutant of the Berlin SA group as SA Oberführer. From July 1932 to March 1933 he led the SA sub-group East Berlin. Promoted to SA Group Leader on March 1, 1933, he took over the newly formed SA Group III. From March 20, 1933, he was the successor of Helldorff as a special representative of the Supreme SA Leadership (OSAF) ​​for the area of ​​Berlin and the province of Brandenburg . On December 1, 1933, he also took over the office of site manager of the SA for Berlin. From March 1933, Ernst was subordinate to the so-called SA field police , which were directly involved in the persecution of opponents of the regime. On March 24, 1933, Ernst had the clairvoyant Hanussen murdered.

Ernst ran for the NSDAP for the Reichstag and was a member of the constituency 3 Potsdam II from July 1932 to March 1933. He held a further mandate from March 1933 to November 1933 for the constituency 2 Berlin. A third term of office followed from November 1933 to June 30, 1934. On July 11, 1933 Ernst was appointed to the Prussian State Council.

Revenge on Albrecht Höhler

In January 1930, Albrecht Höhler , at the head of a communist "storm department", attacked the Berlin SA leader Horst Wessel in his apartment and shot him in the head. As a result, the Nazi propaganda built Wessel into its greatest martyr figure in the five weeks of his death . When the Justice of the Republic sentenced Höhler to six years and one month imprisonment for manslaughter in September 1930 , the supporters of the National Socialists were outraged. The rise of Hitler allowed the spring of 1933, the SA a brutal reckoning with their opponents, among whom Hohler was particularly hated. In August 1933, three Gestapo members, including Walter Pohlenz , transferred Höhler from the Wohlau prison to Berlin, under Rudolf Diels' headquarters . Höhler was supposed to testify in preparation for a second Wessel trial against other participants in his assault department that had been identified in the meantime. He was believed to have been tortured in the process. In September, Höhler wrote to Diels to request that he be transferred back to Wohlau. Diels and Ernst used this wish to murder him.

With a certificate of discharge signed by Diels, Pohlenz and the SA man Willi Schmidt ordered there by Ernst picked up Höhler from the Alexanderplatz police headquarters in a car on September 20, 1933 . The car was followed by two more Diels and Ernst, including Adjutant Walter von Mohrenschildt , as well as about eight proven figures from the Berlin SA who Wessel had known, such as Richard Fiedler , Willi Markus and August Wilhelm von Prussia . On the drive to the east, the vehicle column stopped at a forest near Müncheberg : Pohlenz and Schmidt, who led Höhler on a toggle chain , were led to the edge of the forest by the others. There Ernst gave a short speech in which he sentenced Höhler to death as the "murderer of Horst Wessel". Several of those present, including Ernst, shot at Höhler, inflicting further fatal injuries and burying his body on the spot.

While Diels informed the Wohlau prison director that Höhler had died in custody, he told his employer, Hermann Göring , that the transfer car had been intercepted by seven to eight armed men in SA clothing. The officers were forced to surrender Höhler under threat of violence, which the men then kidnapped with an unknown destination. Diels moved the crime scene by more than 20 kilometers southeast to "12 km from Frankfurt an der Oder ". Göring had the investigation stopped in 1933. When Höhler's body was found in August 1934, the Berlin Murder Inspectorate handed the investigation over to the Gestapo, which sacked it. It was not until the 1960s that the West Berlin criminal police were able to determine who was involved in the Höhler's murder through the interrogations of Willi Schmidt and Karl Ernst's chauffeur.

Conflict with the Reichswehr and death

Karl Ernst with his wife Minnes at their wedding to Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm

On the question of the future military constitution of the Nazi regime, the role of the SA remained unresolved. Ernst Röhm had heavily armed forces deployed from January 1934. Ernst also had a guard regiment and a guard battalion for each SA brigade. The conflict with the Reichswehr seemed to be predetermined, because the SA leaders wanted to integrate these units into the Reichswehr. However, Hitler had decided in favor of the Reichswehr and against the SA. The murder of Röhm and about 90 other SA functionaries was referred to as the Röhm putsch by Nazi propaganda . This sealed Ernst's fate. On June 18, 1934, Göring presented Hitler with a report by the SS group leader and chief of the police, Kurt Daluege , in which it was described that Ernst would disseminate details about the Reichstag fire .

On June 29, Ernst traveled to Bremen with Minnes Wolff (born December 11, 1903 in Mainz), whom he had married on September 17, 1933 in Berlin. From there he planned to travel to Madeira on a Deutsche Lloyd ship , where he intended to spend his honeymoon. When he wanted to board the ship at noon on June 30th with his bride and his friend Martin Kirschbaum , who had financed the passage, he was arrested on the basis of an arrest warrant arriving from Berlin. Before that, Ernst had been looked for in Berlin in vain. After his arrest, he was handed over to an SS commando who had come from Berlin in a special aircraft, led by Kurt Gildisch , who also took him back to Berlin by plane. After landing on the Tempelhof airfield, he was transferred to the barracks of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and shot there by an SS commando. His shooting had been reported on the radio a few hours earlier. Since Ernst believed himself to be the victim of an unfortunate error until the very end, he died with the Hitler salute on his lips. Most of Ernst's close associates were shot soon after him on the evening of June 30th ( Daniel Gerth and Gerd Voss ) or in the course of July 1st ( Wilhelm Sander and Walter von Mohrenschildt ). The assertion that emerged several times later that Ernst's wife was also murdered is not correct. She was released from protective custody on July 14, 1934 and then lived in Berlin. She is registered as "Widow Minna Ernst" in the Berlin address books for the years 1936 to 1943.

Role in the Reichstag fire in 1933

Karl Ernst during a speech at an SA sports festival in Berlin-Köpenick (1932), image from the Federal Archives

Since his death, Karl Ernst has repeatedly been associated with the Reichstag fire of February 1933: Various theories about the Reichstag fire see him as the organizer or leader of an alleged SA troop who moved from Hermann Göring's official apartment in the Reichstag President's Palace through an underground heating corridor to the The Reichstag had penetrated and distributed gasoline or other oxidizing chemicals there, only to then leave the building the same way. Marinus van der Lubbe , who was officially arrested and condemned as an arsonist, was either left behind by Ernst's SA as a scapegoat in the Reichstag or was only maneuvered into the building after the SA had left the building in order to set on the prepared incendiary material.

The allegation of Ernst's perpetration was first made in the so-called White Book on the shootings of June 30, 1934 , which appeared in Paris in autumn 1934, a few months after Ernst's murder. The so-called "Ernst Testament" printed in this book, a self-written declaration allegedly deposited by Ernst as a "life insurance" abroad, which was to be published in the event of his violent death and in which he allegedly openly admits his arson in the Reichstag fire, was later than a forgery from the workshop of the communist publisher Willi Münzenberg unmasked. Nevertheless, until the late 1950s, Ernst's authorship of the fire was widely accepted as the most likely variant, especially since numerous important contemporary witnesses of the Nazi years after the Second World War were firmly convinced of Ernst's responsibility for the fire or even had precise knowledge of it have meant. For example, B. Hans Bernd Gisevius that his former supervisor Arthur Nebe , the chief of the criminal police, told him that during his research into the case he found that Ernst had organized the fire.

Even among contemporaries it was rumored that Ernst had proclaimed on the occasion of an SA festival in 1933:

"If I say I started the fire, I'm a fucking fool, if I say no, I'm a fucking liar."

Ernst Röhm and Karl Ernst in the car (1933). At the wheel of the Oberscharführer Johann Heinrich König, in the passenger seat the chief of Röhm's staff guard Julius Uhl . All four were shot a year later as part of the Röhm affair .

Hermann Göring also admitted during an interrogation by the US prosecutor Robert MW Kempner at the Nuremberg trials on the question of Ernst's possible involvement in the fire of the Reichstag:

“Yes, I thought of this man when any other hand [besides van der Lubbe] was involved. As for seriousness, I believe anything is possible. "

In the further questioning by Kempner, Göring stated: “I am really considering what interest Ernst could have had in it. I suspect he said, 'We want to set him on fire and then spread the word that it was the communists.' I can only imagine that in this context the SA believed that it could then play a bigger role in the government. "

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the thesis advocated by the lay researcher Fritz Tobias , that Marinus van der Lubbe was a single perpetrator, became the predominant opinion in historical studies. In the following years, most historians classified Ernst's involvement as a legend without a historical core. This was countered by the research group around Walther Hofer and Edouard Calic in particular in the 1970s , who presented new archival finds and eyewitness accounts that were again in Ernst's responsibility, some of which were extremely controversial in research and in some cases even accused of forgeries moved into the realm of the possible. The controversy that ensued continued into the late 1980s. The single perpetrator thesis - without the involvement of Ernst - turned out to be the dominant view, to which the majority of historians later leaned.

In the more recent past, the Ernst thesis received support from the Reichstag fire study published in 2000 by Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel , who, based on new archive finds, represent the thesis that Ernst organized the Reichstag fire as a planner without being directly involved in the Execution of the fire: Kugel and Bahar come to the conclusion that initially an SA troop around Ernst's friend Hans Georg Gewehr prepared the plenary hall of the Reichstag with a self-igniting liquid and that after this troop had withdrawn, van der Lubbe only remained was maneuvered into the building as a puppet to ignite the fire material that had been laid out.

In 2019, Fritz Tobias' estate revealed an affidavit of the former SA man Martin Lennings, which had been hidden by the former SA man Martin Lennings, in which he stated that he had driven van der Lubbe to the Reichstag on the evening of the Reichstag fire on the order of Karl Ernst when it already burned there. The historian Sven Felix Kellerhoff considers this representation to be implausible, as it contradicts the investigation files.

Aftermath

Karl Ernst was on one to the Nazi Party mapped published in 1936 Jewelry Telegram. After the jewelry sheet was published in various newspapers, printing was discontinued and the 35,000 copies that had already been delivered were withdrawn.

Promotions

  • 1931: SA Oberführer
  • March 1933: SA group leader (the rank of brigade leader was only introduced in SA, SS and NSKK from July 1, 1933, so that his promotion from Oberführer to Gruppenführer corresponded to the "normal route of promotion" according to Ernst's position.)

Archival tradition

To Ernst some short personal files have been preserved in the Federal Archives: The holdings of the former BDC contain an SA file (microfilm 130 "Erd, Karl-Ertl, Anton", pictures 383–385), a PK file and an OPG file (Microfilm E 60 “Hoppe, Paul – Horn, Heinrich”, pictures 2957–2974).

Fonts

  • The Suez Canal Policy of Great Britain , Berlin 1931. (unpublished thesis at the Berlin School of Politics)
  • SA in battle. In: Wilhelm Kube (Ed.): Almanach of the National Socialist Revolution. Berlin 1933, pp. 113-120.
  • Foreword to: Werner Schäfer : Oranienburg concentration camp. The anti-brown book about the first German concentration camp. Book and Gravure Printing Society, Berlin 1934.
  • Foreword to: Hans Hoepner : Brown column. A book by the SA. Berlin 1934.
  • Julius Karl von Engelbrechten: Out and about with Gruppenführer Ernst , 1934. (Collection of speeches from Ernst)

literature

Essays with a focus on seriousness :

  • Hans Rudolf Wahl: “'National Pederasts'? on the history of the (Berlin) SA leadership 1925–1934 ”, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 56 (2008), pp. 442–459.

Monographs in which seriousness is dealt with on a larger scale

  • Alexander Bahar , Wilfried Kugel : The Reichstag fire. How history is made. edition q, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86124-513-2 .
  • Karl-Dietrich Bracher , Wolfgang Sauer , Gerhard Schulz : The National Socialist seizure of power. Studies on the establishment of the totalitarian system of rule in Germany in 1933/34 (= writings of the Institute for Political Science. Vol. 14). Westdeutscher Verlag, Cologne a. a. 1960.
  • Alexander Zinn: The social construction of the homosexual National Socialist. On the genesis and establishment of a stereotype. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 978-3-631-30776-2 .

Entries on Ernst in reference works :

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , p. 127f.
  • Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Personal Lexicon 1933–1945. License issue. Tosa, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85492-756-8 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Ed.): Md R. The Reichstag deputies of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. A biographical documentation. 2nd, unchanged edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, ISBN 3-7700-5169-6 (publication by the Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties) .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememorde. A milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 , p. 295.
  2. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller : Man for Man - A biographical lexicon. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-518-39766-4 .
  3. ↑ a b H. S. Hegner (d. I. Harry Schulze ): The Reich Chancellery 1933–1945. Beginning and end of the Third Reich. Verlag Frankfurter Bücher, Frankfurt 1959, p. 62 (to be used with reservation after Hergemöller).
    Hergemöller: Man for man. 2001 (next to the entry in Ernst) in Helldorf, p. 342: "[...] Harry Schulze (alias Wilde) also knows about 'orgies' in the circle of Helldorf , Hanussen and Karl Ernst."
  4. ↑ Ted Harrison: "Old Fighter" in the Resistance. Count Helldorff, the Nazi movement and the opposition to Hitler (PDF; 6.5 MB). In: VfZ. 45 (1997), pp. 385-423, here pp. 391 ff. See also: Heinrich Hannover , Elisabeth Hannover-Drück : Politische Justiz 1918–1933. 2nd Edition. Attica-Verlag, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-88235-001-6 , p. 283 ff.
  5. ↑ a b On the role of Ernst in the murder of Hanussen and the fire in the Reichstag .
  6. ^ On the "Revenge of the National Socialists" for Wessel see Daniel Siemens : Horst Wessel. Death and Transfiguration of a National Socialist . Siedler, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-926-4 , pp. 207 f. (general), 211–213 (course of events and cover-up), 219 (Prince August Wilhelm's involvement in the crime), 221 (Wohlau-Berlin transfer), 222 (finding the corpse and investigation 1934)
  7. ^ Vossische Zeitung No. 446 of September 18, 1933
  8. ↑ Max Gallo : The black Friday of the SA. The destruction of the revolutionary wing of the NSDAP by Hitler's SS in June 1934. Nolden, Vienna / Munich / Zurich 1972, p. 257.
  9. ↑ William L. Shirer : Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. 1961, p. 189.
  10. ↑ Alexander Zinn: On the social construction of the homosexual National Socialists. The "Röhm Putsch" and the persecution of homosexuals in 1934/35 in the mirror of the exile press. In: Capri. No. 18, February 1995, pp. 21-48.
  11. ↑ Hergemöller: Man for Man. 1998, p. 207.
  12. ^ Joe Julius Heydecker : The Nuremberg Trial: new documents, findings and analyzes. 1985, p. 132.
  13. ^ Robert MW Kempner : The Third Reich in cross-examination. From the unpublished interrogation protocols of the prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. With an introduction by Horst Möller . Herbig, Munich 2005 (= new edition of the title published in 1969 by Bechtle Verlag), ISBN 3-7766-2441-8 , p. 45 f.
  14. ↑ Conrad von Meding: Who was the real arsonist? . In: HAZ , July 26, 2019, pp. 2–3, print of the affidavit as photos.
  15. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: What the new affidavit of an SA man means . welt.de , July 26, 2019.
  16. ↑ Helmut Heiber (ed.): Record by Ministerialrat Alfred-Ingemar Berndt ( Reich Propaganda Ministry ) from the summer of 1936. In: The normal madness under the swastika. Trivial and strange things from the files of the Third Reich. Herbig, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7766-1968-6 , Doc. 207.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Ernst, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ernst, Karl Gustav (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP) and group leader of the SA
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Wilmersdorf near Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1934
Place of death Berlin-Lichterfelde