Karl Gengenbach

Karl Gengenbach (born November 9, 1911 in Pforzheim ; † January 25, 1944 near Bad Tölz ) was a German lawyer , SS-Standartenführer in the National Socialist German Reich , head of Office Group III A (questions of the legal order and the structure of the Reich) in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA ), Supreme SD leader in the occupied Netherlands .

Education

Gengenbach first studied physics at the TH Munich, then from 1931 to 1935 law and political science at the LMU Munich . In 1931 he became a member of the Cimbria Munich fraternity . Since 1930 he was a member of the NSDAP . From the summer semester of 1932 he represented the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) in the general student committee of the LMU, of which he also chaired. Until the summer of 1933 he appeared as the "Leader of the Student Union of the University of Munich". In February 1933 he was also appointed district leader of the district of Bavaria (District VII) in the German Student Union. In this role, Gengenbach played a key role in the organization and implementation of the book burning on May 10, 1933 in Munich - and in Bavaria as a whole. At an event at the LMU a few days before the book burning he gave a speech in which he said: "Folk culture should be folk-bound, pure and German ... Heinrich Heine is to be thrown into the fire and replaced by Eichendorff ". Gengenbach also appeared as a speaker at the book burning itself in Munich. By skillfully using his offices and with the support of violent members of the NSDStB, he also played a central role in the National Socialist conformity of the Munich University. At Gengenbach's suggestion to the Bavarian Minister of Culture in September 1933, the practice, which had consequences for many emigrants, of combining the expatriation of emigrated scientists with the revocation of their doctorate, was also reduced.

In October 1933 Gengenbach resigned as district leader of the Nazi student union. Thereupon he became deputy leader of the SA-Hochschulamt Munich and from autumn 1934 liaison leader Munich of the head of training. Gengenbach did his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1939 under the constitutional lawyer Reinhard Höhn .

At the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) and in the Reich Security Main Office

Gengenbach was a member of the SA from 1933–1935 , joined the SS and since 1935 has been a full-time speaker and department head in the SD Upper Section South in Munich. With the establishment of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in September 1939, he was transferred to Berlin as head of Office Group III B (community life) , where he also took over the management of Divisions III B 1 (law) and III B 2 (administration). From the summer of 1940 Gengenbach was employed as the leader of the SD with the commander of the security police and SD in the occupied Netherlands, Hans Nockemann . His SD-Kommandos searched the German-language publishers for émigré literature in Amsterdam and confiscated a large part of the holdings found. Gengenbach was responsible, among other things, for the destruction of the Amsterdam-based Querido publishing house .

After the reorganization of the RSHA at the beginning of 1941, Gengenbach became office group leader III A (questions of the legal order and the building of the empire) in office group III (German areas of life - SD-Inland) under SS-Standartenführer Otto Ohlendorf . The area of responsibility of his office group also included the review of the criminal judgments of the German judiciary , with the aim of recording all judgments that " grossly contradict the healthy public sentiment" in order to work on the part of the RSHA on the judicial organs in terms of tightening them.

Gengenbach was a participant in a meeting of the Abwehrdienststellenleiter of the Stapo agencies (State Police) and the SD-Section Leader on May 18, 1942 in Prague , which aimed at better coordination of the various task forces and ended with a significant increase in the RSHA's competence in relation to the military defense . Furthermore, like almost all office group leaders , he took part in a follow-up meeting led by Adolf Eichmann to the “Wannsee Conference ” on the “ final solution to the Jewish question ” on October 27, 1942 at the RSHA.

In the spring of 1943 Gengenbach held a meeting with the SD employees of Department III at the commander of the Security Police and SD Estonia in Tallinn , during which he set the guideline for German occupation policy to be primarily pro-German rather than pro-Estonian .

On January 25, 1944, Gengenbach had a fatal accident on a business trip together with Heinz Gräfe , the head of the VI C office of the RSHA near Bad Tölz .

literature

Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 57.
Stefanie Harrecker: Graduated doctors. The revocation of the doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich during the Nazi era. Utz, Munich 2007 (= contributions to the history of the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, 2), ISBN 3-8316-0691-9 .
Michael Wildt : Generation of the Unconditional. The leadership corps of the Reich Security Main Office . Hamburger Edition , 2002, ISBN 3-930908-75-1 .
Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? , Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2003; 2nd edition 2005, 732 pages, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
Volker Bendig, Jürgen Kühnert: The Munich book burning of May 10, 1933 and the Nazi student leader Karl Gengenbach. In: Leipziger Jahrbuch zur Buchgeschichte, Volume 18. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2009, pp. 347–364, ISBN 978-3-447-06130-8 .
Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 2: F-H. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0809-X , pp. 115-116.

Individual evidence

^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 178.
^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 178.
↑ Thomas Brix: The normative foundations of depromotions and the procedure , in: Thomas Henne (Hrsg.): The withdrawal of doctoral degrees at the law faculty of the University of Leipzig 1933 - 1945 . Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verlag 2007, pp. 51–71.
↑ Stefanie Harrecker: Degraded Doctors. The revocation of the doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich during the Nazi era. Utz, Munich 2007 ISBN 3-8316-0691-9 , p. 38 f.

personal data
SURNAME	Gengenbach, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lawyer, SS standard leader, office group leader in the Reich Security Main Office
DATE OF BIRTH	November 9, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Pforzheim
DATE OF DEATH	January 25, 1944
Place of death	Bad Tölz

[1] Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 178.

[2] Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 178.

[3] Thomas Brix: The normative foundations of depromotions and the procedure , in: Thomas Henne (Hrsg.): The withdrawal of doctoral degrees at the law faculty of the University of Leipzig 1933 - 1945 . Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verlag 2007, pp. 51–71.

[4] Stefanie Harrecker: Degraded Doctors. The revocation of the doctorate at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich during the Nazi era. Utz, Munich 2007 ISBN 3-8316-0691-9 , p. 38 f.