Karl Ostberg

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Karl Ostberg (born March 4, 1890 in Buchloe ; † May 29, 1935 in Würzburg ) was a German police officer and Nazi functionary.

Life and activity

Ostberg took part in the First World War with the Bavarian Army from 1914 to 1918 . During the war he was used as a reporter in the 1st company of the Royal Bavarian 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment "List" , where he met Adolf Hitler , who was also used as a reporter there.

After the war he joined the police in Munich as a policeman . During this time he also became a member of the German-Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. On March 1, 1920 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 1.035).

In November 1923, Ostberg took part in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch in Munich, which is why he was dismissed from the police force.

After the re-establishment of the NSDAP in February 1925, Ostberg rejoined the party (membership number 10.166). From 1925 to 1927 he was the second assessor of the investigative and arbitration committee at the NSDAP Reich leadership and thus one of the three most important functionaries of this party institution alongside Walter Buch and Ulrich Graf .

In 1926 Ostberg took over the leadership of the NSDAP section in Munich-Neuhausen . He was then a party employee until 1933. In addition, he had been a member of the SS since February 9, 1929 (SS No. 1.315). In this he was successively promoted to Sturmbannführer (November 15, 1931) and Standartenführer (April 20, 1934). On October 1, 1932, Ostberg was finally given the position of Führer z. b. V. on the staff of the 1st SS standard .

As a party functionary, Ostberg was active primarily in propaganda for the party in the Munich area: the authorities noticed him in particular through sticky notes that he carried out with the SS under his control. From the mid-1920s, but increasingly in the second half of 1931 and again during the presidential election in 1932 , Ostberg had the Munich SS distribute large quantities of colored sticky notes, which he presumably had printed at his own expense. These were particularly notable for their anti-Semitic thrust. According to Rösch, Ostberg's SS men literally “showered” the city with their sticky notes. They affixed these to the dials of grandfather clocks, on posters advertising Hindenburg (on which those placed above the eyes of the incumbent president), on shop windows and on park benches. They also littered tram cars, the interiors of inns and department stores with their notes, stuffed them into mailboxes and deposited them in sandboxes themselves.

In addition to round sticky notes calling for the election of Hitler, Ostberg and his people also distributed rectangular pieces of paper containing slogans against “the Jews” and against the Catholic Bavarian People's Party . So z. B .:

“Once upon a time there was a pious man, / Scharnagl started the matter. / The bread was getting smaller and smaller; / The price for this was even meaner! / They always raved about price reductions; / The Bavarians. People's Party knows exactly! "

Ostberg was sentenced to a penalty for one of his sticky notes. In the appeal proceedings he was acquitted in October 1930 by the Munich Regional Court I "for lack of evidence" of the charge of producing and distributing unapproved sticky notes. Rösch notes that the Ostberg apparently well-meaning judiciary has deliberately ignored that many of the pieces of paper distributed in Munich bore Ostberg's name and that the police confiscated 300,000 pieces of the anti-Semitic pieces of paper in Ostberg's apartment during a house search. Seized sticky notes with Ostberg's drafts are now in the Munich State Archives . The envelopes and the anti-Semitic stickers were on view in mid-2017 in the special exhibition "Zettelt - Anti-Semitic and Racist Stickers from 1880 to Today" of the Munich National Socialist Documentation Center , which was designed together with the Center for Research on Antisemitism and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg .

According to a report by the Munich Police Department on May 9, 1927, he and his roommate Heinrich Trambauer were suspected of planning and carrying out the attack on the main synagogue at 7 Herzog-Max-Straße .

A few weeks after the National Socialists came into power in Berlin on January 30, 1933 and a few days after they took over the Bavarian state government in March 1933, Ostberg was accepted into the civil service on April 1, 1933: Heinrich Himmler , who was then police chief of Munich , had Ostberg set as a civil servant with the rank of Oberkommissar (arrest administrator) at the Munich police department. In this position he was responsible for the police prison in Ettstrasse ("Löwengrube"), where prominent inmates such as Erwein von Aretin , Fritz Gerlich and Paul Röhrbein were held at the time.

Ostberg died on May 29, 1935 in Würzburg . He was buried on June 3, 1935 in Munich's Westfriedhof in the presence of Adolf Hitler . A newspaper advertisement quoted in the work For example Neuhausen 1918–1933 published by the Neuhausen History Workshop in 1993 can be seen:

“[...] The funeral turned out to be one of the largest that this Munich cemetery has seen in a long time. The Fuehrer himself came with Obergruppenführer Brückner and Brigadefuehrer Schaub to pay his respects to this well-deserved, tireless and far too early fighter of the National Socialist movement. [...] "

Posthumously a storm of the SS standard " Julius Schreck " was named after Ostberg.

Awards

literature

  • Günther Baumann: Karl Ostberg - "loyal fighter". In: For example Neuhausen 1918–1933. The National Socialist 'fighting time' in a district of the former 'capital of the movement'. Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen (ed.), Buchendorfer Verlag, 1993, p. 111 ff. ISBN 978-3-927984-22-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Clemens Vollnhals (arr.): Hitler. Speeches, writings, orders, February 1925 to January 1933 , Vol. I, Munich / London / New York / Paris 1992, p. 152 / annot. 7th
  2. ^ Mathias Rösch: The Munich NSDAP 1925-1933. An investigation into the internal structure of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic , Berlin 2002, p. 321. ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  3. ^ Mathias Rösch: The Munich NSDAP 1925-1933. An investigation into the internal structure of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic , Berlin 2002, p. 71. ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  4. ↑ Propaganda material 1920–1938. StAM, Police Directorate Munich (Pol.Dir.) 6775. State Archives Munich.
  5. ^ Wolfgang Görl : National Socialism. How big hatred is spread with little pieces of paper. Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 7, 2017.
  6. ↑ a b For example Neuhausen 1918–1933. The National Socialist 'fighting time' in a district of the former 'capital of the movement'. Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen (Ed.), Buchendorfer Verlag, 1993, p. 111.
  7. ↑ Clemens Vollnhals (arr.): Hitler. Speeches, writings, orders, February 1925 to January 1933 , Vol. I, Munich / London / New York / Paris 1992, p. 152 / annot. 7; Bahar / Kugel: Reichstag fire, p. 665.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h Thierry Tixier: SS STAF- Karl Ostberg. In: Allgemeine SS - Polizei - Waffen SS. Biographies. Volume 1. Lulu.com, 2017. ISBN 978-1-326-41182-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  9. ^ Pg. Karl Ostberg. Holder of the golden party badge , advertisement in: For example Neuhausen 1918–1933. The National Socialist 'fighting time' in a district of the former 'capital of the movement'. Geschichtswerkstatt Neuhausen (Ed.), Buchendorfer Verlag, 1993, p. 117.
personal data
SURNAME Ostberg, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer and Nazi functionary
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Buchloe
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1935
Place of death Wurzburg