Karl Hermann Frank

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Karl Hermann Frank (around 1939)
Horst Böhme (left), Reinhard Heydrich (center) and Karl Hermann Frank (right) in Prague at the end of September 1941
from right: Frank, Kurt Daluege and Emil Hácha , President of the Protectorate

Karl Hermann Frank (born January 24, 1898 in Karlsbad , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary , † May 22, 1946 in Prague ) was a National Socialist party functionary and a politician . In 1939 Frank became State Secretary for the so-called Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia , making him de facto deputy of the National Socialist Reich Protector in occupied Czechoslovakia . After the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, as Higher SS and Police Leader, he was responsible for the mass murders of Czechs. From 1943 he was German Minister of State in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with the rank of Reich Minister. On July 1, 1944, he was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Police . Under his responsibility, which found special offer Prague as well as the massacre of Lidice and Ležáky instead. For these reasons, he was tried in Prague in 1946 and sentenced to death.

Life

After completing an apprenticeship as a bookseller, Frank was initially active in ethnic and then National Socialist groups. His younger brother was the writer Ernst Frank . From 1918 KH Frank devoted himself to the nationality struggle in Czechoslovakia and was the founder of several DNSAP local groups . He belonged to the party from 1919 to 1923. Between 1919 and 1920 Frank volunteered for the Silesian border guard. Until the mid-1920s, Frank worked as a civil servant, first at the ironworks in Witkowitz and then at the coal union Dux-Bodenbacher Eisenbahn . Between 1924 and 1925 he was a publishing assistant at the Erich Matthes publishing house in Leipzig and then worked as an independent bookseller in Elbogen near Karlsbad until 1933 .

Frank worked as an association official, among other things as administrator of the German Gymnastics Association until 1936 . From October 1933 Frank was deputy chairman of the "Sudeten German Home Front". After the outstanding electoral success of the organization, now known as the Sudeten German Party (SdP), he became a member of the Prague Parliament and a faction leader on May 19, 1935. From 1936 he was Konrad Henlein's deputy, head of the central chancellery and the propaganda office of the SdP. During the Sudeten crisis , Frank was deputy commander of the Sudeten German Freikorps from September 17, 1938 to October 10, 1938 . As a representative of the Sudeten Germans, he was entrusted with the preliminary negotiations in autumn 1938 that led to the Munich Agreement .

After the occupation of the Sudetenland by the German Wehrmacht in October 1938, he was first deputy Gauleiter of the Sudetengau at the end of October 1938 and held this post until March 1939. After joining the SS , he was SS Brigadefuehrer from November 1938 . On the occasion of the supplementary election to the Reichstag elected in April 1938 on December 4, 1938, Frank became a member of the National Socialist Reichstag , to which he was a member until the end of Nazi rule in spring 1945.

After the occupation of the so-called "remaining Czech Republic " he was appointed State Secretary on March 19, 1939 under the Reich Protector for Bohemia and Moravia Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath . In addition, at the end of April 1939 he was appointed Higher SS and Police Leader of Bohemia and Moravia and promoted to SS group leader in November 1939.

In his "Memorandum on the Treatment of the Czech Problem and the Future Design of the Bohemian-Moravian Region" of August 28, 1940, Frank outlined the main features of the Nazi occupation and protectorate policy. This memorandum speaks of the “ carrot and stick ” principle as well as the “intention to depoliticize the Czech population”. The concept of administrative reform left the actual administrative work to the Czech administrative apparatus under the control and direction of relatively few German civil servants.

According to the information in his SS leader personnel file, Frank was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer in the Black Corps on June 21, 1943 and to General of the Waffen SS and Police on July 1, 1944 . From August 20, 1943, he was appointed German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia, " equal in rank to a Reich Minister ".

Furthermore, Frank was an honorary member of the People's Court and a member of the supervisory board of the Witkowitzer Eisenwerke , for which he worked between 1918 and 1921 as an "official". (SS leader master card from Karl Hermann Frank. SSO files from Karl Hermann Frank; RuS questionnaire from Karl Hermann Frank. RuSHA files from Karl Hermann Frank. SS no. 310.466).

As Undersecretary of State, Frank's deputy was the administrative expert Curt Ludwig Ehrenreich von Burgsdorff .

A letter from Frank to Himmler from September 1943 shows that Frank - and thus Himmler -, although nominally subordinate to Reich Protector Wilhelm Frick , exercised actual power in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia :

“ Reichsführer ! I announce that the Führer will contact me on August 20th of the year. appointed German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia. At the same time, the Führer issued an order on the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, according to which the Reich Protector is responsible for representing the head of the Reich in Bohemia and Moravia, while the State Minister is responsible for safeguarding the interests of the Reich. In my new office, too, I will endeavor to do my duty as an SS man in loyal allegiance. ” (Letter from SS-Obergruppenführer Frank to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler dated September 1, 1943. SSO files Karl Hermann Frank ).

A letter from Reich Minister and Head of the Reich Chancellery Hans Heinrich Lammers to Frank in September 1943 shows that Himmler intended to use Frank's new position of power in Bohemia and Moravia in his favor :

“Dear Minister of State! With reference to our meeting in Berlin on August 26th of the year I inform you that, if the Reichsführer SS so desires, the Führer fully agrees that you will remain in the Protectorate after you have been appointed Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia as Higher SS and Police Leader . Accordingly, I got in touch with the Reichsführer SS. He told me he think it is important that you continue to stay in your position as Higher SS and Police Leader in the Protectorate, because with that he considers the union of the office of the State Minister for Bohemia and Moravia in a person very convenient. " ( Letter from the Reich Minister and Head of the Reich Chancellery Dr. Lammers to Karl Hermann Frank regarding Higher SS and Police Leader in the Protectorate dated September 9, 1943. SSO file (Karl Hermann Frank).

In 1944 Frank donated the Honor Shield of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

Frank was married twice. On January 21, 1925, he married Anna Müller (born January 5, 1899 in Karlsbad). The couple had two sons Harald, b. on January 20, 1926, and Gerhard, geb. on April 22, 1931. They divorced on February 17, 1940, and in the same year Müller married SA Brigade Leader Dr Fritz Köllner , Frank's successor as Deputy Gauleiter of Sudetenland. On April 14, 1940 Frank married the doctor Karola Blaschek (born on August 13, 1913 in Brüx). The couple had three children together, two daughters Edda (born on August 16, 1941) and Holle-Sigrid (born on March 8, 1944), and one son, Wolf-Dietrich (born on August 20, 1942). Karola Frank spent eleven years in Soviet captivity after the end of World War II , and her children grew up with foster parents. Her brother Hans (Johann) Blaschek (1907–1989) was a high-ranking functionary as well as SS and SD employees in the Protectorate; he was also Karl Hermann Franks' private secretary until the end.

On May 8, 1945, Karl Hermann Frank was able to withdraw from Prague, which had been shaken by the Czech revolt against the remnants of the Nazi occupying power and the German population group. At Pilsen he went first into American captivity. But as one of the most responsible for the Nazi occupation policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Frank was from the United States back to Czechoslovakia shipped there for treason sentenced to death and on 22 May 1946 in Prague in prison Pankrác by the train at Würgegalgen , a Austrian type of execution, publicly executed .

In February 1946, members of the US Army recovered the service archive of Karl Hermann Frank in a secret operation from a tunnel near Štěchovice .

Awards

See also

Works

  • Karl Hermann Frank: The final battle 1918 to 1938. In: The Bohemian and Moravian Book, People's Struggle and Reichsraum. Volk und Reich, Prague / Amsterdam / Berlin / Vienna 1943, pp. 210–214.
  • Karl Hermann Frank: My life for Bohemia. As Minister of State in the Protectorate. Ed. V. Ernst Frank. Arndt-Verlag , Kiel 1994. ( apologetic )

literature

  • Tôviyyã Friedman (ed.): SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Hermann Frank, Higher SS and Police Leader for Bohemia-Moravia in Prague 1939–1945. Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa 1998.
  • René Küpper: Karl Hermann Frank as German Minister of State for Bohemia and Moravia. In: Monika Glettler, Ľubomír Lipták, Alena Míšková: Divided, occupied, dominated. Czechoslovakia 1938–1945: Reichsgau Sudetenland, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Slovakia. (= Publications by the German-Czech and German-Slovak historians' commission. 11; = publications on culture and history in Eastern Europe. 25). Essen 2004, ISBN 3-89861-126-4 , pp. 31-52.
  • René Küpper: Karl Hermann Frank (1898–1946). Political biography of a Sudeten German National Socialist (= publications of the Collegium Carolinum, Volume 119). Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59639-7 .
    • Review on: hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de
    • Review on: sehepunkte.de
  • Ruth Bettina Birn : The Higher SS and Police Leaders. Himmler's representative in the Reich and in the occupied territories. Droste, Düsseldorf, 1986, ISBN 3-7700-0710-7 .
  • Marc Oprach: National Socialist Jewish Policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Decision-making processes and radicalization (= series studies on contemporary history. Volume 54). Kovač, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-8300-2555-6 . (Dissertation Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg 2006)
  • Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague 1942–1945 (= reports and studies. Volume 28). Hannah Arendt Institute, Dresden 2000, ISBN 3-931648-31-1 .
Fictional representations
  • Egon Erwin Kisch : The last steps of the KH Frank. In: Bodo Uhse , Gisela Kisch (eds.): Prager Pitaval - Late Reportages. Collected Works in Individual Editions II / 2. Berlin 1969, pp. 347-350.
  • Jürgen Thorwald : The end on the Elbe. The last months of World War II in the east. Knaur TB, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-426-80068-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf Gruner: Protectorate of Greater Bohemia and Moravia . in Wolf Gruner; Jörg Osterloh: The "Greater German Reich" and the Jews - National Socialist persecution in the "affiliated" areas . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-593-39168-7 , p. 147.
  2. ↑ a b c Joachim Lilla: The representation of the "Reichsgau Sudetenland" and the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" in the Greater German Reichstag . In: Bohemia. Journal of History and Culture of the Bohemian Lands , Volume 40, Issue 2, 1999, p. 457
  3. ↑ wwwg.uni-klu.ac.at
  4. ↑ recensio.net
  5. ↑ Miller, Michael (2006). Leaders of the SS and German Police, Vol. 1. R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-93-297-0037-2 . P. 364

Web links

Commons : Karl Hermann Frank  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Frank, Karl Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad)
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1946
Place of death Prague