Karl Julius Witt

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Karl Witt (actually Carl Julius Witt , born October 14, 1885 in Trupermoor / Osterholz district ; † October 19, 1969 in Wedel ) was a teacher , politician ( DNVP / NSDAP ) and Hamburg school senator during the National Socialist era .

Life

After attending the teachers' college in Bederkesa , Witt joined the Hamburg school service in 1906, initially as a primary school teacher , later as a trade teacher . From 1911 he attended lectures at the Hamburg Colonial Institute and at the university that emerged from it in 1919. During the First World War he served as a volunteer in the Imperial Navy in Flanders and was dismissed from service in December 1918 with the rank of lieutenant captain . He returned to school and joined the völkisch and anti-Semitic young teachers' association Baldur , which was founded in November 1920 and became its chairman in 1922, shortly before the federal ban. Even after that, Witt appeared in professional politics, among other things as an elected member of the teachers' chamber and on the school advisory board (from 1922) and as a deputy in the school authorities (from 1931).

MP

In 1924 Witt was elected to Hamburg's citizenship for the German Volkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP), a radical-ethnic split from the German National People's Party (DNVP) . After the prohibition of the DVFP in the same year, Witt joined the DNVP parliamentary group and belonged to the DNVP parliamentary group until 1933 (most recently under the name Kampffront Schwarz-Weiß-Rot ). In 1932 he also ran for the DNVP in the Reichstag elections. Witt was best known in the citizenry for his anti-Semitic speeches.

senator

When the Senate was formed in March 1933, the DNVP pushed through parliamentary group leader Max Stavenhagen and Witt, who was not wanted by the NSDAP, as senator. On March 8, 1933, Witt was elected to the Hamburg Senate, led by Carl Vincent Krogmann , as Senator for school administration with 79 votes . On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP. When the Senate was downsized in September 1933, Witt resigned from the committee and, as President of the newly formed state education authority, was formally subordinate to the new Senator Wilhelm von Allwörden . Nevertheless, Witt not only retained his senatorial title, but also in fact the leading position in the Hamburg school administration and was thus responsible for the personal cleansing and the National Socialist orientation of the Hamburg school and university system.

As soon as he took office as Senator, Witt sent his goals to the schools, which could also be endorsed by conservative-nationalist forces and were therefore seen as an offer of integration to these circles. The religious education was made compulsory again accounted for the subject "life skills". On August 20, 1933, under Witt's responsibility, a total of 315 headmasters were removed from office and replaced by politically acceptable teachers; in addition, 171 married teachers were dismissed as "double earners". By 1935, 637 teachers had been dismissed who were politically unpopular with the National Socialists.

After the Greater Hamburg Law and the subsequent division of the Hamburg administration into a state and a municipal level, Witt was assigned to the municipal administration as head of the school system in 1938. The state school councilor Wilhelm Schulz , who had previously been subordinate to him , however, became the responsible department head in the "state administration" and thus in fact Witt's superior. Witt evaded the associated creeping disempowerment in November 1940 by voluntarily drafting into the Navy and only returned to the school administration shortly before the end of the war in early 1945.

After the war

On May 11, 1945, Witt was dismissed from his position as a full-time assistant to the school administration by order of the British military government . In the denazification process as a “fellow traveler” (category IV), later classified as “unencumbered” (V), he received the retirement pension of a senior professor in 1949 and in 1954 won the retirement pension of a high school councilor as part of a court settlement. In this legal dispute, Witt asserted that he was "internally not a National Socialist".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annett Büttner, Iris Groschek: Jewish students and “ethnic” teachers in Hamburg after 1918. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History . Vol. 85, 1999, pp. 101-126, here p. 121.
  2. ↑ See Uwe Schmidt: Teachers in lockstep. The National Socialist Teachers' Association Hamburg. Hamburg University Press, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-937816-26-7 , p. 26, footnote 18.
  3. ^ Research center for contemporary history in Hamburg (ed.): Hamburg in the "Third Reich". Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-892-44903-1 , p. 64.
  4. ↑ Reiner Lehberger : The "conversion" of the Hamburg elementary school. In: Reiner Lehberger, Hans-Peter de Lorent (Hrsg. :) “The flag high”. School politics and everyday school life in Hamburg under the swastika. Results-Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-18-7 , pp. 15–33, here pp. 15–16.
  5. ↑ Hans-Peter de Lorent: Personnel Policy. In: Reiner Lehberger, Hans-Peter de Lorent (Hrsg. :) “The flag high”. School politics and everyday school life in Hamburg under the swastika. Results-Verlag, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-18-7 , pp. 203-211.
  6. ^ Uwe Schmidt: National Socialist School Administration , p. 24 f.
  7. ↑ a b Hamburg Biography, Vol. 4, p. 384.
  8. ↑ Annett Büttner, Iris Groschek: Jewish students and “ethnic” teachers in Hamburg after 1918. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History. Vol. 85, 1999, pp. 101-126, here p. 126.
personal data
SURNAME Witt, Karl Julius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Witt, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DNVP / NSDAP), Member of the Bundestag, Hamburg Senator
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Trupermoor , Osterholz district
DATE OF DEATH 19th October 1969
Place of death frond