Kurt Wagner (DRK)

Kurt Wagner (born June 29, 1911 in the Döbeln district ; † 2006 ) was the technical director of the NSDAP's high school and from 1946 to 1976 head of the DRK tracing service .

Study of physics and professional orientation

Wagner studied physics and mathematics at the University of Leipzig from 1930 , and his fellow students included Helmut Schelsky and Fritz Arlt . On February 1, 1932, Wagner became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 907.370). The dispute over German physics came to a head in 1935 with the fall of Emil Rupp . This contributed to the fact that Wagner professionally reoriented himself from physics to the educational policy of the NSDAP. On February 7, 1935, the training center of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP (APA) was opened in Berlin-Dahlem Rheinbabenallee 22-26. On February 1, 1938, Kurt Wagner was hired by Alfred Rosenberg in this facility . The list of lecturers in 1938/1939 contains numerous high functionaries, several of whom were later convicted as war criminals: August Heißmeyer , Franz Six , Heinrich Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich , Hans Severus Ziegler , Helmut Bone , Herbert Backe , Alfred-Ingemar Berndt , Reichsamtsleiter Karl Böhmer , State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Economics Rudolf Brinkmann , Otto Dietrich , Franz Xaver Dorsch , Hans Frank , State Secretary Hans Fritzsche , the director of Lufthansa Carl August von Gablenz , Friedrich Grimm , SA-Obersturmbannführer Georg Haller , Albrecht Haushofer , Werner Otto von Hentig , Wilhelm Keppler , Werner Lorenz , Head of the Reich Main Office Hermann Reischle , Main Office “Blood and Soil” in the Reich Office for Agricultural Policy, Joachim von Ribbentrop , Deputy Reich Press Spokesman for the NSDAP Helmut Sündermann , Wilhelm Weiß , Viktor Lutze . The list contains numerous employees of the Reichsführer SS security service . In the second half of the 1930s there was an academization of the SD, which was pushed by Reinhard Höhn and the dean of the "Faculty of Foreign Studies" of the German University of Politics , Franz Six.

This patronage and the fact that Rosenberg organized the civilian part of the warfare as Reich Ministry for the occupied eastern territories from June 22, 1941 , initially protected both Rosenberg and Wagner from being used in the Wehrmacht .

Career in the time of National Socialism

DRK regional offices

On the basis of the "Law on the German Red Cross" of December 9, 1937, a statute of the German Red Cross was issued and the regional offices were formed, which corresponded to the 15 military districts of the Wehrmacht. (compare with German Reich within the borders of December 31, 1937 )

Wagner had numerous meetings with Gerhard Utikal , the head of the task force Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR). The ERR stole all kinds of art and cultural assets in the German sphere of influence and partially destroyed them. A collection point for books from these raids was the " High School of the NSDAP " in Berlin , which Wagner technically ran, and another was the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question in Frankfurt. In January 1940 Rosenberg was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to build the "High School of the NSDAP". In 1940 Wagner was employed at the APA school and submitted a memorandum on the organization and research of the high school.

The institute for research into the Jewish question was opened as the first student council of the high school of the NSDAP on March 26, 1941 in Frankfurt, Bockenheimer Landstrasse 68. On June 5, 1942, an institute for German folklore under the direction of Dr. Karl Haiding founded. In mid-1942 Wagner developed a nine-page treatise on the idea and task of the high school . On August 12, 1942, Alfred Baeumler was appointed head of the high school and Wagner named as his representative. In an expert opinion on a book by Philipp Lenard , dated October 27, 1942, Wagner criticized his German physics and made him responsible for the paralysis of the National Socialist scientific planning in the field of physics.

On February 20, 1943, an agreement was reached between Bormann and Rosenberg to close the high school "for the duration of the special situation" and to limit the branch offices to professors who do not need an indispensable position . On November 25, 1943, the main building of the NSDAP High School in Berlin was destroyed. On December 15, 1943, Wagner announced to SA-Sturmbannführer Werner Koeppen , Adjutant von Rosenberg, that Haiding would be limited to technical matters. He wanted to know that Karl von Spieß would not get a professorship. On January 10, 1944, Gerhard Utikal discussed in the party chancellery the effects of the Fiihrer's decree V 7/43 on the "Fiihrer's agent for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP". Regarding UK positions of employees of the “Rosenberg Office” such as Wagner, the requirement of 6 months at the front “with a generous design” was met.

On May 8, 1944, there was a meeting with the representative of the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, Franz Xaver Schwarz , about the high school. Participants included Werner Koeppen, Alfred Baeumler and Wagner. Wagner proposed to come to an agreement with the Reich Auditor that the archives would be brought from Frankfurt to Hungen . He was supposed to come to Hungen himself. On August 12, 1944, Wagner drafted a letter to the party chancellery in which he described what could be shut down in the high school and when.

Participation in the NSV

After a trip to the Munich party chancellery of the NSDAP, Wagner was employed by the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) with a UK position from October 1944 . The NSV block control rooms were decentrally integrated into the Post's investigation service to identify the recipient and sender. In a mobilized society, a functioning mail dispatch system with a mail investigation service was of decisive importance in the war. In the territory of the NSDAP, plausible whereabouts or causes of death were provided and mediated for a very large number of people who were deported to concentration camps and some were murdered. According to the ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of the people and the state , Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich were suspended from February 1933 "until further notice".

After the war: from the NSV to the DRK

Around May 8, 1945, Wagner appeared in Flensburg. It is unclear whether Wagner was in Rosenberg's entourage, who like Himmler was still trying to get into the Dönitz government . Wagner's formal superior Martin Bormann was in Berlin. It is unknown who Himmler determined the whereabouts of the prisoners in the concentration camps for his negotiations with Folke Bernadotte . The self-portrayals now describe Wagner as a studied mathematician who fought with his troops and Helmut Schelsky on the Eastern Front.

The NSV was banned by the Control Council Act No. 2 of October 12, 1945. In 1945 the “German Red Cross” was largely dissolved by the occupying powers, and the DRK was banned in the French and Soviet occupation zones . In the letter on the announcement of the recognition of the DRK by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of June 26, 1952, the circumstance was described as follows: “This national society founded in 1921 under the name 'German Red Cross', which extended its activity to the entirety of the German territory, was dissolved in the course of the summer of 1945 by an order of the occupation authorities. "

In the first months after the start of its work, the "Flensburg Group" sought out all state offices that corresponded to the military districts, the DRK in West Germany and many district offices and managed to get them to take over the "investigation service" according to the "Flensburg scheme". The search service of the nonexistent DRK was in Wagmüllerstrasse, Munich , a cross street to Prinzregentenstrasse at the height of the building complex that was being built for the Luftgau Süd. On March 15, 1952, Heinrich Weitz became President of the DRK. From June 26 to August 7, 1952, an International Red Cross Conference took place in Toronto, in which the DRK took part on an equal footing for the first time since the Second World War . Weitz, Etta Countess von Waldersee (Vice President), Walther Georg Hartmann (General Secretary) and Anton Schlögel (lawyer) were represented.

Support for prisoners of war in the Soviet Union

In July 1943, a few months after the defeat of the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Stalingrad , the office of Special Representative Walther Georg Hartmann , which had been relocated to the monastery wing of Ettal Abbey , received the "office in accordance with the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners of War Turkey “333 postcards from German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The German government saw the propaganda aspect - the USSR had not signed the Geneva Convention - in the foreground and initially prohibited the delivery of messages to the families concerned. In Ettal Abbey, Wagner reported, he had not yet received messages from Walther Georg Hartmann from the “Agence centrale pour les prisonniers de guerre” (ACPG).

On December 19, 1952, Wagner was a delegate at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the League of Red Cross Societies. On December 20, 1952, Weitz wrote to State Secretary Walter Hallstein that Wagner proposed to work with Dr. Boris M. Pashkov to get in touch. Konrad Adenauer shared the concerns of the USA and, in a letter dated January 23, 1953, assessed contact with Moscow as hopeless. In a letter dated February 3, 1953, Weitz Adenauer announced the unanimous decision of the Presidium of the DRK on January 27, 1953 to travel to Moscow. On May 8, 1953, Adenauer and Weitz had a last conversation. In January 1955 Adenauer traveled to Moscow and achieved the release of the last German prisoners of war from the Second World War, who were still in Soviet captivity as war criminals convicted by the Soviet Union. When a survey in 1967 asked about Adenauer's greatest achievement, the so-called " homecoming of the ten thousand " was mentioned the most.

War Crimes Warning Service

In the Hans Globke era , Nazi war criminals convicted in France were protected from criminal prosecution in the Federal Republic of Germany by the transfer agreement . In order to prevent these war criminals travel to France, commissioned Federal Justice Minister Thomas Dehler later the by the Foreign Office Affiliate " central legal office to determine" the search service, the addresses of Nazi criminals and these orally by stewards from the German Red Cross district associations - against receipt - warn allow. In April 1968, Wagner, the former technical director of the High School of the NSDAP, who had meanwhile been promoted to investigative service director Dr. Kurt Wagner had become, the Spiegel , to have “a full, good Red Cross conscience on this matter”.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ drk.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Hannjost Lixfeld, James R. Dow: Folklore and fascism: the Reich Institute for German Volkskunde . Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 259, FN. 146.
3. ↑ Congratulations in 2000 . Dr. Kurt Wagner (Bonn) on his 89th birthday .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Physikalische Blätter , 56th year, No. 5.  
4. ↑ bundesarchiv.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ State Secretary Hans Fritsche. In: The Guardian , May 3, 1945
6. ↑ Memoranda on the task of the high school  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ^ Ordinance of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State Text: verfassungen.de
8. ↑ Recognition of the DRK by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva on June 26, 1952 (PDF)
9. ^ Anton Schlögel: Rebuilding the German Red Cross after the Second World War. Bonn 1983, p. 81 ff.
10. ↑ If Pashkov comes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 51 , 1952 ( online ).
11. ^ Riesenberger, Dieter (ed.): The German Red Cross, Konrad Adenauer and the prisoner of war problem. The repatriation of German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union (1952–1955). In: History and Peace Series , Vol. 7, Donat Verlag , Bremen 1994, ISBN 3-924444-82-X .
12. ↑ Has been notified . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1968, pp. 51 ( online ).

literature

• Riesenberger, Dieter (ed.): The German Red Cross, Konrad Adenauer and the prisoner of war problem. The repatriation of German prisoners of war from the Soviet Union (1952–1955) . In: History and Peace Series , Vol. 7, Donat Verlag , Bremen 1994, ISBN 3-924444-82-X .
• Dieter Riesenberger: The German Red Cross. A story 1864–1990 . Verlag Schöningh, Paderborn 2002, ISBN 3-506-77260-0 .
• Birgitt Morgenbrod; Stephanie Merkenich: The German Red Cross under the Nazi dictatorship 1933 to 1945 . Verlag Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 3-506-76529-9 .