Kurt Schmidt-Klevenow

Kurt Schmidt-Klevenow (born August 19, 1906 in Cuxhaven ; † January 30, 1980 in Hamburg ) was a German lawyer and SS leader .

Kurt Schmidt-Klevenow during the Nuremberg Trials .

Life

Schmidt-Klevenow as a student in the corps, depicted in the painting “The Second” by Karl Prahl

Schmidt-Klevenow, son of a naval officer, finished his school career in 1926 with the Abitur . He then studied political science and law in Innsbruck and at the University of Hamburg . He passed this in Hamburg with the German state examination. In Hamburg he became a member of the Corps Irminsul , whose old gentlemen's association he left in 1935 in protest because the Corps Irminsul refused to participate in the NSDStB and instead preferred a suspension. After the reconstitution of the Irminsul Corps after the end of the Nazi regime, Schmidt-Klevenow was allowed to resume at his request.

Schmidt-Klevenow doctorate in 1933 with the thesis Legal implications of sterilization for Dr. jur. After his legal clerkship and second state examination, Schmidt-Klevenow worked for the Hamburg public prosecutor's office from 1935. He was also employed at the Institute for Foreign Policy and the Adult Education Center in Hamburg and was involved in the establishment of the Hamburg Hereditary Health Court . He was admitted to the bar in 1938.

Schmidt-Klevenow joined the NSDAP in 1933 ( membership number 3,026,478) and SS (SS number 259,637). In the SS, Schmidt-Klevenow rose in November 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer of the Waffen-SS .

In July 1935, Schmidt-Klevenow was appointed to the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) of the SS in Berlin and was a co-founder of the local legal department. In the RuSHA, Schmidt-Klevenow finally became head of department. He later belonged to the personal staff of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler . Schmidt-Klevenow was the author of several articles in legal journals, for example on the topics of illegitimate children and mixed marriages . In June 1939 Schmidt-Klevenow was transferred to Prague , where he was initially an employee of the General Directorate of State Forests and Goods in the German-occupied Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and from November 1939 its head.

At the beginning of April 1940, Schmidt-Klevenow became Oswald Pohl's legal advisor . In the following years Schmidt-Klevenow became head of the main legal department in the main office administration and economy as well as the main office budget and economy . After establishment of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) Schmidt-Klevenow headed there when Pohl directly imputed judicial and welfare officer from February 1942 until the end of the Second World War , the District Court and care .

In the context of a corruption affair in the Warsaw concentration camp , Schmidt-Klevenow's employees, SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann Korshenrich, arrested members of the camp management of this concentration camp in spring 1944. In particular, the camp leader SS-Hauptsturmführer Nikolaus Herbet , the protective custody camp leader Obersturmführer Wilhelm Haertel and the camp elder Walter Wawrzyniak had illegally extorted valuables from concentration camp inmates. In addition, prisoners escaped from the Warsaw concentration camp. The accused were interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The investigation remained unsuccessful and the accused were released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Herbet and Haertel returned to concentration camp service and Wawrzyniak was drafted into the SS Dirlewanger special unit .

After the end of the war, Schmidt-Klevenow testified as a defense witness in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office trial ( USA vs. Oswald Pohl et al. ). He later worked as a lawyer in Hamburg. In the Soviet occupation zone , his writings Graphical Representation of Mixed Marriage Regulations (Deutscher Rechtsverlag, Vienna 1938) and Mixed Marriage Regulations (Deutscher Rechtsverlag, Berlin 1938) were placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

literature

• Werner Schubert, Werner Schmid, Jürgen Regge: Academy for German Law, 1933–1945. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986, Volume 1: Committee for Stock Corporation Law, ISBN 3-11-010671-X .
• Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 .
• Klaus Großweischede: 100 years Corps Irminsul , Hamburg 1980.
• Hartmut Elers & Andreas Walther: 125 years Corps Irminsul , Hamburg 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Werner Schubert, Werner Schmid, Jürgen Regge: Academy for German Law, 1933–1945. Berlin / New York 1986, Volume 1: Committee for Stock Corporation Law, p. 51.
2. ^ Famous (and notorious) corporates at www.frankfurter-verbindungen.de
3. ^ ^{A b} Jan Erik Schulte: Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933-1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 476.
4. ↑ Kurt Schmidt-Klevenow on www.dws-xip.pl
5. ↑ Jan Erik Schulte : The SS, Himmler and the Wewelsburg , Paderborn 2009, p. 31
6. ^ Andreas Mix: Subcamp Warsaw. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 7: Niederhagen / Wewelsburg, Lublin-Majdanek, Arbeitsdorf, Herzogenbusch (Vught), Bergen-Belsen, Mittelbau-Dora. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-52967-2 , p. 110.
7. ↑ Introduction to NMT Case 4 - USA v. Pohl et al. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www. nuremberg.law.harvard.edu 
8. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation, list of literature to be sorted out , Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1946
9. ^ German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, List of Literature to be Separated, Second Addendum , Berlin: Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1948