Kurt Mende

Kurt Mende

Kurt Mende (born October 10, 1907 in Auerbach / Vogtl. , † July 16, 1944 in Samulino, Latvian SSR ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ) and SA leader .

Live and act

Empire and Weimar Republic

From 1914 to 1922 Mende attended elementary school. His father was killed in the First World War in 1915 . His mother was employed in an ammunition factory at the time.

In the early 1920s, Mende moved with his mother, four brothers and a sister to Paul-Singer-Straße in Berlin, where his mother ran a small laundry and ironing shop in a cellar. After school, Mende came to a nursery in Falkenrade near Ketzin as an apprentice. From 1926 to 1930 he worked as a gardener at the tree nurseries Späth , Ketzin and Berlin-Baumschulenweg.

In September 1927, Mende joined the NSDAP (membership number 71.237) and the SA. In September 1928 he founded the NSDAP local group Ketzin together with others and set up the town's first storm department there. He later moved to Berlin, where he became a squad leader in SA Storm 1, to which Richard Fiedler belonged , among others .

In 1929, after an evening of propaganda in the Petri parish hall in connection with the referendum against the Young Plan on the street , Mende was seriously injured by a shot in the stomach during a confrontation between the SA and communists, which brought him the attention of Joseph Goebbels, among others .

From 1930 to 1931 Mende worked as a transport worker, moving with his family to Heinersdorf in North Berlin around 1930 to avoid confrontations with the Marxist neighborhood on Singer Strasse. From 1930 to 1933 Mende was unemployed.

In the early 1930s, Mende then led Sturm 77 in the Berlin SA, which had emerged from his old band.

time of the nationalsocialism

From August 6, 1933 to January 29, 1936, Mende led SA Standard 12 of the SA Group Berlin-Brandenburg , to which two of his brothers also belonged. As leader of Standarte 12, in 1933 he also took over the old Pankow district court prison, in which he set up the Karl Ernst House as a standard house, where more than a hundred unemployed SA people were housed.

From January 30, 1936 to July 31, 1943, Mende then led SA Standard 4 of the Berlin SA. In this position he was promoted to SA Oberführer in 1937. On August 1, 1943, he was appointed head of the personnel department of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg.

Since 1933 Mende was also a district councilor in Berlin-Pankow and from 1935 a city councilor in Berlin . After the beginning of the Second World War he did military service.

On March 6, 1942, Mende became a member of the National Socialist Reichstag . In this he entered in the replacement procedure in place of the deputy Moritz Kraut, who died in the war . He was a member of the Reichstag until his death in July 1944 as a representative of constituency 3 (East Berlin).

Promotions

• July 1, 1932 SA-Sturmbannführer (leader order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. II)
• August 6, 1933: SA Obersturmbannführer
• November 9, 1933: SA Standartenführer (leader order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 19)
• November 9, 1937: SA-Oberführer (leader order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 57)

estate

Personnel records on Mende have been preserved in the Federal Archives. In the former Berlin Document Center there is a file with party correspondence and an SA personnel file (SA microfilm 44-B, photos 391–396).

literature

• "The way of the SA leaders" Berliner Illustrierte night edition of May 31, 1934.
• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 . , P. 411
• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).
• E. Kienast (ed.): The Greater German Reichstag 1938, IV. Electoral period, R. v. Decker's Verlag, G. Schenck, June 1943 edition, Berlin