Karl Linder (politician, 1900)

Karl Linder

Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Linder (born April 5, 1900 in Frankfurt am Main , † March 17, 1979 in Groß-Bieberau ) was a German politician (NSDAP).

Live and act

Life in the Empire and the Weimar Republic (1900 to 1933)

Linder attended elementary and middle school. Then he passed the one-year exam at the Klinger secondary school. In 1916, Linder joined the Reich Finance Administration as a civilian candidate , where he served as senior tax secretary until 1923. This training was interrupted in 1918 by taking part in the First World War for a few months as a Landsturmmann with a telephone replacement company (intelligence gathering department 18) and in infantry regiment No. 81. After the war, Linder belonged to a volunteer corps .

From 1919 to 1920 Linder studied economics in Frankfurt am Main . After completing his studies, he began to work as a senior tax clerk at the Frankfurt tax office. From 1923 to 1933 he worked as a tax officer. In 1923 Linder also joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) ( membership number 5284). In the same year he married.

In 1926/27, Linder began his career as a provisional district administrator in the Hessen-Nassau-Süd district . In the following two years he took over the post of Gauschatzmeister of the NSDAP for Hessen-Darmstadt. In 1928 Linder became a member of the four-member NSDAP parliamentary group in the city council of Frankfurt am Main. Linder's sponsor at this time was the Gauleiter of Hessen-Nassau , Jakob Sprenger , who valued Linder's organizational talent, his propaganda skills and his knowledge of public finances. From 1928 to 1932, Linder was Sprenger's deputy Gauleiter. In the Sturmabteilung (SA), Linder made it to the brigade leader and leader of the SA Brigade 43 (Thuringia North).

In 1930 Linder was given leave of absence from the Reich Finance Administration for his political work in the state parliament. In 1933 he finally left them with the rank of tax inspector. In the general election of September 1930 Linder was a candidate of his party for the constituency 19 (Hesse-Nassau) in Reichstag elected, which he henceforth belonged in May 1945 without interruptions until the end of Nazi rule. At this time Linder also became a member of the provincial and municipal parliaments in Wiesbaden and Kassel, which automatically resulted in his resignation from the city council.

On October 1, 1932, Linder was appointed Gauleiter of Hessen-Nassau-Süd by Gregor Strasser . But on February 28, 1933, Linder resigned from this post and returned to his old post as deputy Gauleiter. This is probably due to the fall of his sponsor Strasser, who had to resign from all party offices in December 1932.

Period of National Socialism (1933 to 1945)

In March 1933, Linder was appointed second mayor and head of human resources for the city of Frankfurt am Main. The appointment was made together with the appointment of the new mayor of Frankfurt, Friedrich Krebs, by the new provisional Wiesbaden district president Werner Zschintzsch . As Frankfurt mayor, due to the law for the restoration of the professional civil service in the Frankfurt city administration , he dismissed numerous unpleasant civil servants, ie civil servants who were actually or potentially critical of the NS. From 1933 to 1939 Linder was a member of the German parish council , on whose board he sat. In 1933 he was also the Prussian State Councilor and the Prussian Provincial Councilor .

On July 1, 1937, Linder was appointed deputy Gauleiter of Hessen-Nassau. He held this office until the end of the Nazi regime in May 1945. Following a regulation of February 1937, according to which the simultaneous exercise of bureaucratic and political functions was no longer compatible with the "tasks and methods of political leadership", Linder was dismissed from the post of second mayor of Frankfurt in June and replaced by Joseph Kremmer.

Furthermore, during the Nazi era, Linder was editor of the magazine Das Rathaus , member of the Hesse Chamber of Commerce, chairman of the Hesse municipal administration and savings bank school, student council leader of the Reich tax administration, district manager for local politics in the rank of Gauleiter, member of the board of the German municipal council, head of the local political community he founded School in Frankfurt am Main and chairman of the Hesse state industry office of the German Municipal Association.

Life after 1945

Linder went into hiding in the last days of the war. He disappeared for the next five years. On March 8, 1950, he was arrested by American military authorities in Brensbach im Odenwald and imprisoned in a work camp in Darmstadt . Since he had already volunteered in a letter to the Frankfurter Spruchkammer four days before , he was released for the time being. The Central Arbitration Chamber of Hesse closed the case against Linder in November 1951. She saw no requirement for classification as a main culprit or activist and beneficiary of National Socialism within the meaning of the law on the conclusion of political liberation in Hesse.

According to Bettina Tüffers in a study from 2004, nothing more can be inferred from the official sources about Linder's further life.

literature

• Bettina Tüffers: The brown magistrate. Personnel structure and power relations in the Frankfurt city government 1933–1945. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-7829-0558-X , ( Studies on Frankfurt History 54), (Simultaneously: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2004).
• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).

Web links

• Karl Linder in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Linder, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm. Hessian biography. (As of April 5, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Linder, Karl in the Frankfurt personal dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry for Karl Linder in the Reichstag handbook for the 9th electoral period (1933), p. 245.
2. ^ Entry for Karl Linder in the Reichstag handbook for the 11th electoral period (1938), p. 302.