Kurt Gildisch

Kurt Werner Rudolf Gildisch (* 2. March 1904 in Potrempschen , East Prussia ; † 5. March 1956 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf ) was a German police officer and SS - officer . Gildisch became known as the temporary commander of the SS escort command of the Führer and as the murderer of Erich Klausener , whom he shot during the Röhm affair .

Life

Early life (1904 to 1931)

Gildisch was the fourth child of the teacher Paul Gildisch and his wife Marie, née Riel. In his childhood he attended elementary school in Potrempschen. He was then trained at the teachers' college in Kaalene, Insterburg , until 1922 . He passed the teacher examination in 1924. Since he could not find a way to practice teaching, he applied to the police. In January 1925 he was sent to the Sensburg Police School, which he left in September 1925 with the qualification for accelerated promotion to officer.

On October 1, 1925, Gildisch was transferred to Berlin, where he served in various police stations for the next five and a half years. After his reputation in Berlin had suffered for a number of years due to severe carelessness and a tendency to drink, he was dismissed from the police force without notice in March 1931 because of National Socialist activities. The direct cause was singing tendentious songs in police barracks.

Führer Accompanying Command and Röhm Putsch (1931 to 1934)

After leaving the police, Gildisch got by with odd jobs. He also officially joined the NSDAP ( membership number 690.762). He also became a member of the SA , the party's street combat organization, before joining the SS at the end of 1931 (SS No. 13.138), which at the time was a kind of internal police force.

In the spring of 1932 Gildisch was accepted into the so-called "shading service" of the NSDAP, which was responsible for Hitler's safety in the Hotel Kaiserhof when he was in Berlin. Officially, he had been part of the NSDAP since March 23, 1932. In the summer of 1932, on the intercession of Kurt Daluege, he was assigned to the so-called Führer Accompanying Command, the personal bodyguard of Adolf Hitler, which was formed at the time. On April 11, 1933, he was appointed commander of this unit. In this position he was promoted in quick succession to SS-Sturmführer (July 1, 1933), SS-Obersturmführer (September 1, 1933) and SS-Hauptsturmführer (November 9, 1933).

Due to alcohol problems, Gildisch was recalled by Heinrich Himmler from the leadership of the escort command on May 1, 1934 and transferred to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler in Berlin-Lichterfelde. From June 10th to October 1st, 1934, he underwent information training with this troop.

On June 30, 1934, in the course of the Röhm affair , Gildisch was commissioned by Reinhard Heydrich with the murder of Erich Klausener , Ministerialdirektor in the Reich Ministry of Transport and head of the Catholic Action , whom Heydrich viewed as a "dangerous Catholic leader". Together with an unknown Gestapo officer, Gildisch visited Klausener in his office in the Reich Ministry of Transport, where he informed him of his arrest. When Klausener took his hat from the coat hook to accompany the two men, Gildisch shot him in the head from behind. He then disguised the murder as suicide by putting the murder weapon in Klausen's hand and having the office cordoned off by two guards. Later that same day, Gildisch flew to Bremerhaven, where he took over the Obergruppenführer of the SA Karl Ernst , who had been arrested shortly before when he was about to board a cruise ship for his honeymoon to Madeira. With Ernst in custody, Gildisch flew back to Berlin, where he delivered his prisoners to the Lichterfelde cadet institution . There Ernst was shot dead in Gildisch's presence that same evening. On the following day Gildisch arrested two more SA leaders on Heydrich's behalf, namely SA doctor Erwin Villain and a man whom he identified in court as Klein (probably Karl Ernst's adjutant Willi Klemm ), whom he took to Lichterfelde to be shot .

On July 4, 1934, Gildisch was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer on June 30 and July 1, 1934 because of his "achievements" .

Further career in the SS and exclusion from it (1934 to 1936)

After completing a course at the Leibstandarte, Gildisch was transferred to Dresden . There he was first used until October 1934 as an adjutant of SS Section II. After that he was appointed leader of a Sturmbannes of the 48th SS standard in Leipzig .

In this position there was a momentous incident in December 1935 that cost him his SS career: On the night of December 5th to 6th, 1935 Gildisch stayed with his friend Huck in the restaurant of the Central Theater-Betriebe in Leipzig . After they had already had a violent clash with a waiter around midnight, Gildisch and Huck had a serious argument between Gildisch and Huck with various people present at around 3 a.m. when the night porter pointed out that they had to go home, since it was now police hour: They refused to leave and Gildisch threatened the Leipzig police chief Knofe and indulged in further violent attacks under the influence of alcohol. Huck physically assaulted a waiter. The desolate behavior of both men continued in the anteroom of the restaurant and finally on the street. Walter Rentmeister, the head of the Reichsleitung of the DAF, who asked Gildisch and warned him to behave, covered Gildisch with verbal injuria as well as two policemen who appeared (“You assholes have nothing to say to me!”). He also made further attacks on the police chief ("Bring your button here, we'll hit him in the face too!"). He refused to be asked to give his name. Instead, he sat at the wheel of his car, completely drunk, zigzagged down the street for a few hundred meters and then hit a traffic sign that overturned. He got out of the badly damaged car and simply left it standing so that traffic was severely obstructed until the police had the car towed away.

The police chief then filed a criminal complaint against Gildisch for insulting himself and his police officers. Likewise Walter Rentmeister. Gildisch was charged with violating the road traffic regulations. The trial took place before the 38th large criminal chamber of the Leipzig Regional Court. Gildisch claimed that the dispute was triggered by the fact that the waiter in the Central Theater companies had made derogatory comments about the SS and that the street sign he had driven around was not illuminated so that he could not see it. The court was convinced that these statements about the SS had not been made and also assessed Gildisch's other objections as refuted. On December 2, 1936, Gildisch was sentenced to five months in prison. He served his sentence in 1937 in the Berlin-Moabit prison.

On May 18, 1936, Gildisch had already been expelled from the NSDAP by order of the Gauleiter of Saxony. By Himmler's decree of June 3, 1936, he was demoted to an SS man and expelled from the SS.

After his release from Moabit, Gildisch worked for one year at IG Farben and then at the wholesale purchasing cooperative in Lichterfelde. On July 8, 1939, Gildisch married Herta George. The marriage was divorced on March 30, 1949.

Second World War (1939 to 1945)

Immediately after the start of the Second World War , Gildisch volunteered for the Waffen SS in September 1939 . He was accepted into the General SS on November 1, 1939, with the prospect of rehabilitation and resumption. On January 2, 1940, he was assigned to the "Lost Heap", a probation unit. Due to his achievements in 1940 and 1941, his commander recommended that Gildisch be re-accepted into the SS. Himmler decided, however, that re-entry into the SS would only be possible after the end of the war and after the Führer’s office had approved his re-entry into the NSDAP. A corresponding application that Gildisch made to the party chancellery of the NSDAP on February 2, 1942 - and which Himmler endorsed - was rejected by the latter for that time. Instead, it proposed to postpone a renewed examination of the mercy of the applicant until the end of the war.

After the campaign in the west , disciplinary proceedings were initiated again against Gildisch, who this time caused an incident in a French pub while drunk. Gildisch, feeling threatened, ostentatiously placed his pistol on the table where he was sitting, and then took his briefcase from a guest. Subsequently, he refused, first to a military officer who had been summoned, later to a Stabsscharführer and finally to a lieutenant to provide information about himself. Only after repeated requests did he go to the police station to identify himself there. The case was eventually dropped without a judgment.

After attending a course at the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz , Gildisch was promoted to Oberscharführer of the Waffen SS and shortly thereafter, effective April 20, 1941, to Untersturmführer of the Waffen SS.

From 1942 Gildisch took part in the German-Soviet War . From February 1, 1942 to September 15, 1943 he was a member of the SS Panzer Grenadier Division " Totenkopf ". On June 24, 1942 he was again noticed because of a drunkenness: he insulted non-commissioned officers and soldiers of Construction Battalion 25 in a slightly intoxicated state when they hesitated to help him to get stuck vehicles free. When the NCOs declared that they had to get their officers' decision first before they could help his trucks that got stuck in the swamp, he became insulting. Theodor Eicke sentenced Gildisch on December 27, 1942 as court lord to several weeks of arrest. From November to December 1943 Gildisch spent a few days in the rehab clinic in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Since 1944 Gildisch was used with the SS Division Nordland in the Soviet Union. He was wounded in August 1944 and returned to the Nordland Division after hospital stays in Cracow and Berlin, where he remained until the end of the war. On May 2, 1945, Gildisch fell into Soviet captivity during the Battle of Berlin , from which he was released in August 1946.

Post-war period (1945 to 1956)

After his release from captivity, Gildisch had to have his right leg amputated, which had not healed properly after being wounded in 1944. This was replaced by a prosthesis . The leg injury required twelve operations and he was hospitalized for eighty-eight weeks. As a result, he was unable to work for a long time. After retraining as a bookbinder, he finally found work as a severely disabled person in the social works of the Evangelical Aid Service. He married again on July 18, 1949.

In 1949 Gildisch met an old acquaintance by chance at the Friedrichstrasse train station in Berlin, to whom he had boasted of the murder of Klausener in 1934. He asked for his address and then reported him to the police. In the first interrogations he was subjected to in this matter, Gildisch denied the alleged act and claimed that although he had been given an order to shoot Klauseners, he had been withdrawn from this task even before he had carried it out and had instead been sent to Bremen to pick up the SA group leader Ernst who was arrested there and bring him to Berlin. Klausener's shooting was therefore not carried out by him, but instead it must have been transferred to another person. The public prosecutor's office then initiated an in-depth investigation, in which the suspicion brought against Gildisch was finally confirmed. In particular, a statement by Ernst's adjutant Martin Kirschbaum was incriminating, from which it emerged that Gildisch did not travel to Bremen until June 30, 1934 so late that he would have had the opportunity to carry out the execution of Klausener's shooting at lunchtime that day. On August 24, 1950, an arrest warrant was therefore issued against him. He was sent to Moabit Detention Center for pre-trial detention.

According to a method the Berlin District Court in 1951 to 1953 by the Circuit Court of Berlin, he was born on May 18, 1953 for the murder of Klausener to a penitentiary convicted of fifteen.

On January 5, 1956, Gildisch was admitted to a private clinic in Wilmersdorf because of meteorism . He died of an incurable liver disease in early March after the execution of his sentence was interrupted due to incapacity for detention and a lack of treatment.

Promotions

• July 1, 1931: SS squad leader
• October 1, 1931: SS troop leader
• July 1, 1933: SS-Sturmführer
• September 1, 1933: SS-Obersturmführer
• November 9, 1933: SS-Hauptsturmführer
• 4th July 1934: SS-Sturmbannführer
• 1936 Demotion to simple SS man and expulsion from the SS
• 1939: Joined the Waffen SS
• 1941: Oberscharführer of the Waffen SS
• April 20, 1941 Untersturmführer of the Waffen SS

Archival tradition

The investigation and trial files for Gildisch's murder of Erich Klausener are kept in the Berlin State Archives (Berlin State Archives: B.-Rep. 058, No. 1493: Public Prosecutor's Office at the Berlin Regional Court: Criminal case against Kurt Gildisch (1904–1956) because of the Assassination of Dr. Erich Klausener in the course of the so-called Röhm Putsch). Copies of the judgment of the jury court at the Berlin Regional Court of May 21 and 24, 1951 and of the judgment of the jury court at the Berlin Regional Court of May 18, 1953 as well as the appeal request by Gildisch's defense attorney can be found as an attachment published by Bernhard Sauer in Heydrich's order. Kurt Gildisch and the murder of Erich Klausener during the “Röhm Putsch” , Berlin 2017 (pp. 95–113, pp. 123–146 and pp. 114–122).

The Federal Archives Berlin has various personal files on Gildisch, in particular his SS personal file and a personal index card in the holdings of party correspondence (PK microfilm D 54 “Gigler, Maria - Gilg, Karl”, photos 2403–2408).

Digital copies of the interrogation protocols Gildisch, Sepp Dietrich and Ernst Brandenburg on the murder of Klausener are also available on the website of the Institute for Contemporary History .

literature

• Robert MW Kempner: SS cross-examined. Munich 1964, p. 256ff. (Excerpts from the judgment of the jury court in Berlin).
• Bernhard Sauer : On Heydrich's behalf. Kurt Gildisch and the murder of Erich Klausener during the "Röhm Putsch" , Metropol, Berlin 2017.

Web links

• Documents on the proceedings against Gildisch at the Institute for Contemporary History (PDF; 3.2 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the Wilmersdorf registry office in Berlin No. 521/1956.
2. ↑ Hsi-Huey Liang: The Berlin Police in the Weimar Republic , 1977, p. 185.
3. ↑ See Institute for Contemporary History : Statement by Ernst Brandenburg on the murder of Erich Klausener (PDF; 1.6 MB).