Karl Raapitz

Karl Raapitz (born December 2, 1894 in Aken (Elbe) , † July 3, 1944 in Paris ) was a German customs officer , mayor of Bad Bentheim and politician ( NSDAP ).

Life

The Evangelical Lutheran, later “God-believing” Raapitz was born in the Calbe a./S. born. In 1914 he was a high school graduate and joined the German army in August as a war volunteer. Although he was wounded and poisoned three times during the First World War , the lieutenant, who was decorated with a total of seven military awards (including EK I , Silesian probation badge ), served in the army until December 1918. Raapitz was married and had a daughter.

In 1919 he joined customs in Upper Silesia. In 1921 he became customs secretary and took an active part in the Upper Silesian self-protection struggles. In 1925 he was promoted to customs inspector, and in March 1933 to chief customs inspector. This promotion was "pre-patented" (backdated) to February 1929 because of his "services to the NSDAP".

politics

On December 1, 1930, Raapitz joined the NSDAP in Racibórz / Upper Silesia (No. 384 145) and founded local groups of the Nazi officials' department in various districts. In March 1932 he joined the SA, became a troop and storm leader and founded SA departments in neighboring communities. In March 1933 he was elected to the municipal and district parliaments of Annaberg and Ratibor and appointed parliamentary group leader, district court chairman, district office manager, district propaganda leader, imperial speaker , district specialist group leader customs of the province of Upper Silesia and a member of various committees.

He was transferred to the Grafschaft Bentheim district in December 1934 as part of the reorganization of the customs administration. Shortly afterwards, he was reinstated as a district training leader in the local NSDAP.

The previous mayor Christian Mikkelsen left Bentheim in autumn 1937 to take a position as city tax director in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel . Raapitz, an old fighter of the NSDAP, applied (formally) for the vacancy and was awarded in March 1938 "by the trust of the district leader" Dr. Josef Ständer is the new mayor of Bentheim.

With his communal political goals ("How do I make Bentheim healthy, how do I make the city beautiful and big?") He pretended to be particularly committed to tourism and the design of the cityscape. As mayor and local police chief, he also understood this to mean his active participation in a special kind of reorganization: the continued displacement of Jews from business life, the "Aryanization" of private property (houses / land, transfer to party members), arrests of Jews and Dutch people , Forced laborers and other "opponents", the systematic control of emigrants and the robbery of their (remaining) assets in the emigration hall of the border station of the Reichsbahn by the SA and the destruction of the Bentheim synagogue.

While the supra- local NSDAP saw Raapitz in 1935 on the occasion of a course at the NS-Führerschule Bernau as an “eccentric”, “who likes to put himself in the foreground and always strives to play the first role”, the local NSDAP assessed him posthumously in 1944 as an indispensable "loyal employee of the district leader" and as a fighter with "irrepressible energy" for the National Socialist cause.

Mayor Karl Raapitz (as first lieutenant in winter 1943/1944)

During the Second World War , Raapitz took part in a four-week Wehrmacht training course (June 1940). In April 1941 the 46-year-old volunteered again for military service, was deployed on the Western Front and promoted to lieutenant in 1942. In July 1944, Karl Raapitz, who in the meantime stayed in Bentheim again and again to take care of his mayor's business, suffered an accident in Paris, succumbed to his injuries the next day in a hospital and was buried in Paris.

"A heavy loss for the city of Bentheim" judged his party comrades. His “heroic death will be a sacred obligation for all of us,” it said in supra-local condolences.

literature

• Johann Bardenhorst, Hubert Titz (Red.): Bad Bentheim - Aspects of a city history . In: Volkshochschule des Grafschaft Bentheim, Heimatverein Grafschaft Bentheim (ed.): Series of publications by the Volkshochschule and the museum coordination of Grafschaft Bentheim . tape 21 , volume 138 . Bad Bentheim 1996, ISBN 3-922428-43-6 .
• The Gestapo was not alone ... Political social control and state terror in the German-Dutch border area 1929–1945 . LIT publishing house. Münster 2004. ISBN 978-3-8258-7448-3 .

Web links

• Raapitz application letter / "Persilschein" 1948