Leopold Gutterer

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Leopold Gutterer (born April 25, 1902 in Baden-Baden , † December 27, 1996 in Aachen ) was a National Socialist functionary and politician. During the Nazi era , he rose to the post of State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and was temporarily vice-president of the Reich Chamber of Culture . Gutterer was considered a close confidante of Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels .

Wilhelm Kreis (left) received the eagle shield from Goebbels on his 70th birthday in 1943 , in the background Speer and Leopold Gutterer as Vice President of the Reich Chamber of Culture

Life

After graduating from high school , Gutterer began working as an editor in 1922 , before studying German, theater studies and ethnology for nine semesters in 1923. It is unclear whether he obtained a degree.

In 1925 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 6.275). At the Nazi newspaper Frankfurter Beobachter , which he co-founded in Frankfurt am Main , he was again employed as an editor from 1927, because he also performed publishing duties at the same time. In the meantime, Gutterer also acted as district leader in Göttingen and Hanover and also joined the SS in Frankfurt am Main in 1927 (number 1.028). From 1929 Gutterer worked full-time for the NSDAP. At first he acted briefly as Gau managing director of the Gau Hesse of the NSDAP, before he took up the post of Gau propaganda leader in the Gau South Hanover-Braunschweig on May 1, 1930 . In the same year he joined the SA . At the same time, Gutterer also acted as a so-called Reich speaker of the NSDAP, that is, he was rhetorically so versed that he could be used as a speaker at party events throughout the Reich without hesitation. Because of this political commitment, he was convicted several times in the early 1930s and served several prison terms.

On April 1, 1933, he was accepted into the service of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP) , which was newly founded on March 13, 1933, with the rank of government councilor . There he was in Department II (“Propaganda”) “for state holidays and the like. Large rallies as well as for the organization u. Supervision of the 31 regional offices of the RMVP. In addition to the staging of the Berlin celebrations on May 1, and the party rallies of the Nazi Party in Nuremberg and the coordination was one of the 1,933 to 1,937 every year on the Bückeberg the former site of is Empire harvest festivals still clearly visible. Reichsbauerntag held near Hameln to his tasks He was also responsible for running the winter aid organization within the RMVP. As head of the Nazi election campaign in the successful election in Lippe-Detmold in early 1933 from the NSDAP's point of view , Gutterer had recommended himself as an organizational talent for such tasks.

On January 1, 1935, Gutterer was promoted to the higher government council. After he had initially been deputy head of department in the RMVP and was appointed ministerial advisor on April 20, 1937 , he took over the management of department II himself in the spring of 1938. In March 1938, the next promotion took place directly, skipping the rank of ministerial conductor to the Ministerial Director . In August 1940, as Director II, all specialist departments of the Ministry with the exception of the press departments were subordinate to him. In May 1941, Gutterer officially followed Karl Hanke, who had fallen out of favor because of his dubious role in the marital crisis of Magda and Joseph Goebbels , and Karl Hanke was on leave as State Secretary in August 1939 . Gutterer held this office until 1944, before he was replaced by Werner Naumann from Goebbels . Gutterer had also gotten involved in black market deals and was briefly appointed CEO of Universum-Film AG ( UFA ). A little later he was appointed sergeant for armed forces convened. Gutterer, most recently in the rank of SS brigade leader, was deployed at the front as a simple SS tank destroyer at the end of the war.

During his time as State Secretary from 1940 to 1944, Gutterer introduced the “mandatory labeling for Jews” in the German Reich . After the obligation to wear the “ Jewish star ” was introduced in occupied Poland from September 1939 , this marking was also required in the German Reich from September 1941. Not least because of Gutterer's commitment in this regard, he was invited to the infamous Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 as a representative of the RMVP . Due to scheduling reasons, Gutterer was ultimately unable to take part, but in his rejection let it be known that he was fundamentally interested in the topic and would like to be invited to follow-up meetings.

After the war, lived Gutterer until October 1947 initially unrecognized as a farm laborer in the village moths (Kreis Bad Kissingen) before he tracked down, arrested and in a denazification process as part of the denazification as the main culprit to five years in labor camps was sentenced. In a hearing before the Nuremberg Appeals Chamber on December 14, 1948, however, this judgment was reduced with reference to his allegedly mild stance on the “ Jewish question ”; The verdict was now one year in a labor camp, life-long pension withdrawal, surrender of 80 percent of personal assets and eight years of professional bans. In the mid-1960s, Gutterer then worked as director at the Aachen Theater .

In 1985, Gutterer was available to the American historian Nathan Stoltzfus as one of the few contemporary witnesses with a National Socialist past to help him research the Rosenstrasse protest .

Note

The explanations are essentially based on a personal form drawn up on the occasion of Gutterer's promotion to ministerial director in March 1938 with personal details of Gutterer's biography and professional career. The material has been preserved in the Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde (BAB) , inventory R-43 II ( Reich Chancellery ), file no. 1150c, p. 3 a. 4th

literature

Notes on the RMVP's participation in the introduction of the "Jewish star" (vol. 1, p. 186 f.)
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 , S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2003 ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
The brief article contains z. Sometimes incorrect information about Gs promotions.
  • Fritz Koch: "The Artillery of National Socialism". The NS-Gau-Presse from "Frankfurter Beobachter" to the "Rhein-Mainische Zeitung" 1927–1945 , in: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art 65 (1999), pp. 9–52.
About Gutterer as an editor
  • Stefan Krings: The Propaganda Ministry. Joseph Goebbels and his specialists , in: Lutz Hachmeister / Michael Kloft (eds.): The Goebbels Experiment. Propaganda and Politics , Stuttgart 2005, pp. 29-48, ISBN 3-421-05879-2 .
A few brief remarks on G's role as the unofficial SS liaison between Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler .
  • Bernd Sösemann: Roll call under the harvest crown. The Reichserntedankfest in the National Socialist dictatorship , in: Yearbook for Communication History 2 (2000), pp. 113–156, esp. P. 119.
Short excerpt from G's personal file in the Berlin Federal Archives, formerly Berlin Document Center (BDC)
  • Nathan Stoltzfus: Resistance of the Heart. The uprising of the Berlin women in Rosenstrasse 1943 , Munich et al. 1999, pp. 13, 51 f., U.ö. ( ISBN 3-446-16123-6 ).
About G. as a source of information about the Rosenstrasse protest with isolated references to his work in the RMVP.
  • Willi A. Boelcke (Ed.): War Propaganda 1939–1941. Secret ministerial conferences in the Reich Propaganda Ministry. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1966.

Web links

Commons : Leopold Gutterer  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. Willi A. Boelcke (Ed.): War Propaganda 1939–1941. Secret Ministerial Conferences in the Reich Propaganda Ministry , 1966, p. 57.
  2. later, probably in 1933, renamed to Frankfurter Volksblatt , https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/wertvoll/ffmztg1.html
  3. http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/posters/freisler.jpg
  4. http://www.munzinger.de/search/go/document.jsp?id=00000001312