Konrad Nussbaum

Konrad Nussbaum (born November 3, 1893 in Linz am Rhein , † May 2, 1945 in Wilhelmshaven ) was a German police officer.

Life

Early life (1883-1919)

Nussbaum came from a long-established family from Linz on the Rhine. His father Konrad Nussbaum was a wealthy innkeeper and butcher. The paternal grandfather was a blacksmith. Nussbaum's mother Agnes Scharrenbroich was the daughter of a brandy distiller.

In his youth, Nussbaum attended elementary school and grammar school , before he joined the merchant navy in 1911 after obtaining the upper secondary qualification.

Nussbaum experienced the beginning of the First World War on a ship in the Middle East . In order to prevent the Royal Navy from taking possession of their ship , the crew sank it at the beginning of August 1914. Together with other younger sailors from his ship, Nussbaum soon traveled back overland to the German Reich via Beirut , where he spent several months in hospitals, seriously ill . For health reasons he was postponed from active military service until autumn 1915 and trained as a ship officer. From 1916 to 1918 he took an active part in the war as a naval officer on various ships: Among other things, he was leader of the 3rd Company of the 2nd Marine Division in Wilhelmshaven . Most recently he reached the rank of lieutenant in the reserve sea .

After the collapse of the Empire and the founding of the Weimar Republic joined Nussbaum some months of the Marine Brigade Loewenfeld to, a right-wing Free Corps , with whom he dated May 8 to August 7, 1919 in Berlin and Upper Silesia fought. He then worked in his parents' business.

Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933)

On July 12, 1920, Nussbaum joined the Prussian Rhine Police , which he was to belong to until 1926: in 1923 he was arrested by the French occupation authorities in the Rhineland and expelled from his homeland. In 1926 he switched to the state criminal police , where he devoted himself to setting up and managing defense units, particularly in Kassel . Before 1933, he belonged briefly to the Catholic Center Party .

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1933 Nussbaum was transferred from Kiel to the Secret State Police Office in Berlin . On July 1, 1933, he was promoted to the Kriminalrat and in January 1934 he was entrusted with the management of the intelligence service in Movement Department III. In connection with the arrest of a spy in January 1934 and probably also in connection with the personnel restructuring of the authority after it was taken over by Reinhard Heydrich in April 1934, Nussbaum apparently came under pressure from the SD , whereupon he became deputy head on May 1, 1934 the police station in Frankfurt am Main was relocated .

On July 2, 1934, Nussbaum was taken into " protective custody " in the course of the Nazi government's political cleansing operation in the summer of 1934, known as the Röhm Putsch . In the following period he was detained in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp for almost two months before he was released again as a result of the amnesty decree of August 10, 1934. He then returned to his position with the Frankfurt police.

On May 1, 1937, Nussbaum joined the NSDAP ( membership number 4,497,672). In 1939 he was entrusted with the management of the crime department in Brüx in the Sudeten region. In 1941 he was appointed criminal director and head of the German criminal police in Brno . In 1943 he was transferred to Wilhelmshaven.

Nussbaum was accepted into the SS on October 8, 1940 (SS no. 386.262). In 1943 he was promoted to Sturmbannführer . The SA had he belongs since 1934th

In 1945 Nussbaum was repeatedly noticed when he told colleagues that he thought the war could no longer be won and that it would soon be time to put aside "stamps and uniforms" and switch sides. In March 1945 he was shot by Fritz Lotto, the representative of the Werwolf organization for the Gau Weser-Ems: Lotto attacked Nussbaum in a room in the Hotel Heines in Wilhelmshaven, where he was living at the time, and accused him of being a "traitor" knocked him down with two shots. He then fired a third shot into the body of the man lying on the ground.

family

Nussbaum was married in his first marriage and had two children.

On May 9, 1934 Nussbaum married Magda Hinz (born December 30, 1904 in Kiel) for the second time. From this marriage two more children were born.

estate

Documents on Nussbaum's conflict with the Gestapo leadership in 1934 and his subsequent protective custody are in the Secret State Archives (Rep. 90 P, No. 64/3, cases 329 to 333; and Rep. 90 P, No. 183/1, Operations 43-47).

literature

• Walther Hofer (ed.): The Reichstag fire. A scientific documentation. 2 volumes. 1972 and 1978.
• LG Oldenburg, October 27, 1948 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicides 1945–1966, Vol. III, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1969, No. 91, pp. 298–322. Two civilians and a detective director were shot because of derogatory words about Hitler and the German war situation

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martina Neumann: Theodor Tantzen , 1998, p. 407.
2. ↑ Perr Biddiscombe: The last Nazis. SS Werewolf Guerilla Resistance in Europe 1944-1947 , 2004, p. 142.