Kurt von Burgsdorff

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Curt Ludwig Ehrenreich von Burgsdorff (born December 16, 1886 in Chemnitz , † February 26, 1962 in Starnberg ) was a German lawyer. At the time of National Socialism he was a senior official in the “Anschluss” of Austria and the occupation of the Czechoslovak Republic and Poland , most recently as governor of the Krakow district . He was a member of the SA with the rank of general and a war criminal convicted in Poland .

Life

His grandfather Carl Ludwig Gottlob of Burgdorff (1812-1875) and his father Curt Ludwig Franz of Burgdorff (1849-1922) were county captains (provincial government) in Leipzig. Burgdorff visited a high school in Dresden and studied in Grenoble, Freiburg and Leipzig law . In 1911, with a thesis on the administration of justice in the colonies, he became Dr. iur. PhD . In 1914 he was appointed assessor of the Evangelical Lutheran State Consistory in Dresden.

From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War. Awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, Burgsdorff was discharged from the army in 1918 as captain of the reserve. Burgsdorff worked as a member of the government in the Grossenhain administration . In 1921 he was appointed director of the Bad Elster state spa. From the beginning of 1928 he was the official governor of Löbau .

Burgsdorff co-founded the DNVP .

time of the nationalsocialism

In March 1933 Burgdorff became the Acting District Chief in Leipzig appointed. Burgsdorff joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. Burgsdorff was an SA member and achieved the rank of SA brigade leader there . He was committed to the elimination of the Nazi commissioners in the administration and to the restoration of an orderly administration.

From the beginning of October 1933 to 1937 Burgsdorff was ministerial director and head of the 1st department of the Saxon Ministry of the Interior under Karl Fritsch , but was transferred to Leipzig as district chief due to disagreements with Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann . In 1938 Burgsdorff was appointed head of the office of the Reich Governor in Vienna ( Arthur Seyß-Inquart ). From April 20, 1939, he was Undersecretary of State at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia (under State Secretary Karl Hermann Frank ), until mid-March 1942. He was then called up to the Wehrmacht and on April 2, 1943 received as Major of the Reserve and Leader of the Grenadier Regiment 580 was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

From December 1, 1943, he became governor of the Krakow district in the Generalgouvernement under Governor General Hans Frank and his deputy Josef Bühler , after he had initially refused to leave the Wehrmacht to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler . At the same time he became the district leader of the NSDAP there.

After the end of the war

Burgsdorff was arrested by the CIC in mid-June 1945 . He was then by the Americans in internment camps Moosburg interned and as a witness of the defendant Hans Frank in Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals on 18 April 1946 by the defender Alfred Seidl summoned and also for the accused Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia , Konstantin von Neurath of its defenders Otto von Lüdinghausen interrogated. The intention of both surveys was to shift responsibility for all repression measures and for the crimes to the SS forces in the Generalgouvernement or in the Reich Protectorate, who were led directly from Berlin: Neurath and Frank were thus the victims of Hitler and Himmler, and so it was Burgsdorff in his work , which they all exercised in the "now once broken out" war in " loyalty to the German people " in order to "prevent worse things", so Neurath said.

Burgsdorff testified under oath that he first heard of the existence of the Majdanek concentration camp and the Treblinka extermination camp on April 1, 1946, and that he had heard of the existence of the Auschwitz concentration camps as well as Dachau and Buchenwald beforehand. Burgsdorff was also active in the NSDAP organization in an outstanding position, he was district location leader in Krakow , but he declared that he was a "staunch ecclesiastical Christian", this also in connection with his SA general rank, which was only a " Honorary rank " was. In addition, his activity as an officer of the Wehrmacht on leave from 1942 had been under the concept of military honor .

In May 1946 Burgsdorff was extradited to Poland and sentenced there for war crimes on December 6, 1948 to the minimum sentence of three years in prison. In July 1949 Burgsdorff was released from prison. Josef Bühler, Hans Frank, Karl Hermann Frank, Martin Mutschmann and Arthur Seyß-Inquart were sentenced to death as war criminals and executed by his immediate superiors. Konstantin von Neurath was released prematurely from prison after nine years. Nothing is known about investigations and proceedings into war crimes in Czechoslovakia , nor about the denazification proceedings in Germany.

In the Federal Republic of Germany Burgsdorff was accepted into the church administration of the Evangelical Church in Bavaria under Bishop Hans Meiser and worked as an administrator at the Evangelical Academy Tutzing .

Works

  • The development of the colonial administration of justice . Dissertation, University of Leipzig, 1911.

See also

literature

  • Towiah Friedman: The highest Nazi officials in the General Government in Poland in the war years 1939–45. Inst. Of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa 2002 DNB
  • International Military Tribunal Nuremberg (ed.): The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946). Official text in German.
  • Erhard Mäding : Curt von Burgsdorff (1886–1962) . In: Kurt GA Jeserich , Helmut Neuhaus (Hrsg.): Personalities of the administration. Biographies on German administrative history 1648–1945 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart, Berlin, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-17-010718-6 , pp. 421-425.
  • Bogdan Musial : German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04208-7 ; 2nd edition, ibid. 2004, ISBN 3-447-05063-2 .
  • Bogdan Musial: Nazi war criminal before Polish courts . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 1/1999 Institute for Contemporary History (PDF; 7.1 MB), pp. 25–56.
  • Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945 . Publications of the Institute for Contemporary History , Sources and Representations on Contemporary History Volume 20, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01700-X .
  • Markus Roth: Gentlemen. The German District Chiefs in Occupied Poland - Career Paths, Rule Practice and Post-History. Diss. Univ. Jena, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 9783835304772
  • Andreas Wagner : "Seizure of power" in Saxony. NSDAP and state administration 1930–1935 . (History and Politics in Saxony; Volume 22). Dissertation University of Leipzig. Böhlau, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-412-14404-5 , p. 185.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Werner Präg / Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939–1945 , Stuttgart 1975, p. 946
  2. ↑ a b c Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and the persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Wiesbaden 1999, p. 382f
  3. ^ Lutz Hachmeister: Schleyer. A German story. Beck, Munich 2004, p. 172 DNB . Towiah Friedman has a document after he was Obersturmbannführer. After his sworn testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, he was SS-Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General) and Supreme Leader of the Hitler Youth, Volume 12, p. 72.
  4. ↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 254.
  5. ^ Trial files of the Nuremberg Trial, Volume 8, p. 570; Volume 12, pp. 62ff
  6. ^ Statement by Neurath, Nuremberg Trials, Volume 12
  7. ↑ Trial files of the Nuremberg Trial, Volume 12, p. 73
  8. ↑ ibid., Volume 12, p. 64
  9. ↑ see Musial, who states a “constitutional and fair trial”
personal data
SURNAME Burgsdorff, Kurt von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burgsdorff, Curt Ludwig Ehrenreich from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative officer, National Socialist
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1962
Place of death Starnberg