Karl Lämmermann

Friedrich Karl Lämmermann (born March 20, 1914 in Buenos Aires , † July 1, 1934 in Plauen ) was a German Hitler Youth leader.

Friedrich Karl Lämmermann (around 1932)

Life

Lämmermann grew up with his mother, Gerda Lämmermann, in Plauen, Saxony. The father had died in the First World War . In the 1920s, Lämmermann was involved in the Saxon Freischar, which belonged to the Bündische Jugend . From this he switched to the Hitler Youth around 1930 . In this he took over the leadership of the HJ-Bannes 133 in Plauen. In the Saxon HJ he came as a representative of the Bundische Jugend in 1933 in opposition to Hannes Melchior, the local HJ-Oberbannführer. He accused Melchior of embezzling funds from the Hitler Youth and of conducting intrigues against a superior whose position he sought for himself.

Melchior, who viewed Lämmermann's behavior as treason and a threat to his position, then tried to marginalize it by accusing him of intending to infiltrate the Hitler Youth with other former alliances and to falsify the ideas of the National Socialist youth organization. In September 1933, various Unterführer Lämmermanns resigned from their posts, which Melchior interpreted as a mutiny instigated by Lämmermann to shake his position.

In the first half of 1934 the tensions between Lämmermann and Melchior intensified. Melchior used his position as an undercover agent in the security service of the Reichsführer SS to report negative reports about Lämmermann to him and to further compromise him.

On June 30, 1934, in the course of the Röhm affair , the SS in Plauen received the order to shoot Lämmermann as a participant in the alleged high treason of the SA chief of staff Ernst Röhm. Lämmermann was then summoned by the Plauen police and shot by members of the SS in the morning hours of July 1st.

The later investigations by the party court of the NSDAP were ambiguous: It could not be clarified whether the SD ordered the shooting of Lämmermann on its own initiative, after the criticism of Lämmermann had been overestimated in its reports without a shooting of Lämmermann with Melchior's intention or whether Melchior was working on June 30th to have Lämmermann executed in order to take advantage of the opportunity of the day to settle his private feud. It is unclear what role the Saxon Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann , a former Plauen man and friend of Melchior, played in the murder of Lämmermann. In any case, his sister, whose daughter was friends with Lämmermann, accused him of having had a hand in it.

The police initially covered up the act and the state judicial authorities prevented a closer investigation. Probably with the intention of justifying the act and establishing a connection between Lämmermann and Röhm and his followers, the rumor was also spread that Lämmermann had previously performed courier services for Röhm and had given him a motorcycle.

After a few weeks, however, due to the general unrest among the population of Plauen, the case was reopened: Melchior and his two subordinates Schmidt and Suss were arrested and held in Lichtenburg concentration camp until December 1934 . However, a party court case in 1935 largely exonerated them and came to the conclusion that the consequence of killing Lämmermann was not in their intentions in their actions against him. A temporary expulsion from the party was withdrawn.

Lämmermann's mother succeeded in achieving extensive rehabilitation of the deceased. A parade of honor from the Hitler Youth and local NSDAP functionaries attended his funeral, and numerous wreaths were laid by party officials, including one from Hitler. In addition, an obituary saying "He died guiltless and upright" was allowed to be placed in the local newspaper for him.

Various attempts by Lämmermann's mother and a close friend in the years 1935 to 1938 to hold Melchior, Suss and Schmidt accountable for the murder of Lämmermann in a more severe manner than had happened were rejected by the relevant party and state authorities in order to attract renewed attention in the Thing to avoid.

A renegotiation of the Lämmermann murder case before the district court in Kiel in the 1960s ended without result.

Archival material

• Documents of the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP on the Lämmermann case (Federal archive: OPG inventory)

literature

• Wolfgang Eckert: Saxon murders. Criminal cases . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-360-01225-9 .
• Wolfgang Hess: The murder of Karl Lämmermann on July 1, 1934 in Plauen. A documentation . Vogtland-Verlag, Plauen 1993, ISBN 3-928828-11-8 .
• Fritz Schmidt: The men on the other side are threatened with murder. Case studies on the threat and murder of young people in movement in the Third Reich. Karl Lämmermann and Günther Wolff in connection with June 30, 1934 . Achims Verlag, Edermünde 2003, ISBN 3-932435-12-5 .

TV documentaries

• Ernst-Michael Brandt: Mordsache Lämmermann , MDR, 2002.