Karl Mummenthey

Karl Mummenthey during the Nuremberg Trials . Photo taken in January 1947.

Kunz Andreas Emil Karl Mummenthey (born July 11, 1906 in Aue ; † unknown) was a German lawyer and SS-Obersturmbannführer . Mummenthey was sentenced to life imprisonment as part of the Nuremberg Trials .

Life

Mummenthey, whose father was a bank director, finished his school years in 1924 with the secondary school leaving certificate. Mummenthey then completed an apprenticeship as a banker, which he completed in 1926. After completing an external high school diploma, Mummenthey studied economics and law at the University of Leipzig and the University of Frankfurt am Main . Mummenthey successfully passed the first state examination in law in 1934 and the second state examination in 1937.

From 1925 to 1933 Mummenthey was a member of the Stahlhelm-Kampfbund . Mummenthey became a member of the SA in 1933 and switched from there to the SS in 1934 (SS no. 221.079). In the SS he rose to SS-Obersturmbannführer in the reserve of the Waffen-SS until 1943 . Mummenthey was a member of the NSDAP from 1937 ( membership number 4,302,359).

From the beginning of 1938 Mummenthey worked in the SS administration office under Walter Salpeter . Mummenthey worked there initially in the legal department and then in the SS economy. In order to avoid military service after the outbreak of the Second World War , he was accepted into the Waffen SS with the support of Salpeter and continued to work in the SS administration office. In the newly created Main Office for Administration and Economics (HAVW), Mummenthey was also the head of department III A 1 and III A 3 from the beginning of December 1939 . After the restructuring of the HAVW, he became deputy head in Office W 1 at the beginning of September 1941.

In September 1939 Mummenthey became the second managing director and in September 1941 the first managing director of the SS company Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH . In addition, from the beginning of February 1942, after the establishment of the main economic and administrative office, until the spring of 1945 , Mummenthey was head of Office W 1 - Stones and Earths in the Reich.

For the Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke, concentration camp prisoners had to do forced labor under inhumane working conditions, including in stone quarries . Mummenthey was therefore jointly responsible for the concentration camp prisoners who perished according to the principle of extermination through work .

After the end of the war

After his arrest, Mummenthey was interned from November 1946 to January 1947 together with Hans Hohberg and Leo Volk by the British War Criminals Holding Center in Minden . There the internees had to write the “Minden Report”. This 244-page report should present the structure of the WVHA and its economic ventures comprehensibly. According to Naasner, the report was not used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials .

In the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office trial , Mummenthey was found guilty of war crimes , crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations on November 3, 1947, by the United States Military Tribunal II . Mummenthey was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was reduced to twenty years in late January 1951. On December 18, 1953, he was released early from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . After his release from prison, Mummenthey worked as editor-in-chief of the press publishing house of the German Reich Party .

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Walter Naasner (ed.): SS economy and SS administration. The SS Economic Administration Main Office and the economic enterprises under its supervision. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1603-3 ( publications of the Federal Archives 45a).
• Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination. The economic empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 (also: Bochum, Univ., Diss., 1999).
• Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 5 of the " Green Series ")

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung , Düsseldorf 1998, p. 350f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 473
3. ^ ^{A b} Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 10151f.
4. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 425.
5. ↑ Walter Naasner (Ed.): SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung , Düsseldorf 1998, p. 10f.
6. ^ Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 433