Leopold von Mildenstein

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Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein , pseudonym LIM (born November 30, 1902 in Prague ; † 1968 ), was an SS officer in the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) in the Third Reich . There he was head of Department II / 112: Jews , into which he brought Adolf Eichmann , who later used this experience to set up the so-called Eichmann department. From 1938 Mildenstein worked in the Propaganda Ministry. There he became head of the Middle East Department. He came from the Catholic Bohemian noble family Mildenstein.

Life

Mildenstein completed an apprenticeship as a graduate engineer, but mainly worked as a journalist. He was employed by the Berlin stock exchange courier . In 1929 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 106.678) and in 1932 the SS , in what later became Ostmark , the then state of Austria, in which the NSDAP and the SS were banned. According to Dieter Wisliceny , Mildenstein spent a lot of time in the Middle East (including Palestine ) after the First World War until 1935 .

During a six-month visit to Palestine in 1933, Mildenstein and his wife met the Tuchlers , who were also visiting Palestine. Tuchler was a member of the Zionist Association for Germany . Mildenstein was able to publish 12 travel reports from this period from September 26 to October 9, 1934 in the Berlin newspaper The Attack, edited by Joseph Goebbels (title: "A Nazi goes to Palestine"). Newspaper subscribers received a medal embossed with the series title, a swastika and the Star of David . Mildenstein identified the Zionist pioneers as having “something new in their being. Something lifts her shoulders, lets her lift her lowered ghetto view "(1st episode), and he spoke of a" recovery of a degenerate people through new roots in the old soil "(cf. blood and soil ideology ):" These new Jews become a new people. ”(12th episode) The trips to Palestine made Mildenstein a Middle East expert. Heydrich became aware of him and employed him from 1935 in the rank of SS-Untersturmführer as head of Department II / 112: Jews in the SD -Hauptamt. Until June 1936 Mildenstein represented the official party line to induce the Jewish population of Germany to emigrate to Palestine. Therefore he kept in contact with Zionist organizations. Mildenstein brought in Adolf Eichmann from another SD department as a consultant for his department , who in turn continued to work under Mildenstein's successor Herbert Hagen , before he set up the Jewish department in the Reich Security Main Office , which became known as the Eichmann department .

At the end of 1936 Mildenstein left the SD after a conflict with Reinhard Heydrich . In 1937 he went on a trip abroad and from 1938 he was a consultant in the Propaganda Ministry of Joseph Goebbels . There he acted as the head of the Middle East department and was responsible for the pro-Arab propaganda intended to incite the Arabs against the United Kingdom and the Jews in Palestine. He stayed abroad frequently and made trips to the Middle East during the war. His books Rings around the burning land on the Jordan (Stollberg, Berlin 1938) and the Middle East - experienced from the roadside (Union, Stuttgart 1941) were also published as experiences of this time .

After the war, these books were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone and in the German Democratic Republic . Around 1956 Mildenstein is said to have been a member of the FDP and to have established contacts with Egyptian propaganda agencies and American intelligence circles. According to the Federal Archives , Mildenstein published Orient-Informations from 1958 to 1960 . In the post-war period von Mildenstein worked for the German representation of Coca-Cola as a PR consultant.

reception

The career of Mildensteins is the theme of Arnon Goldfinger's documentary “ Die Wohnung ”, Israel 2011. Goldfinger is a grandson of Kurt Tuchler who was involved in the German Zionist movement in the early 1930s. Mildenstein, Tuchler and their wives traveled together to Palestine and had joint ship trips to and from this destination; A series of articles in The Attack is based on their impressions . Letters, diary notes and current interviews with Mildenstein's daughter Edda show that the couple Tuchler and Mildenstein kept in close contact even after the Holocaust , almost until their death. Goldfinger questions the culture of silence on the perpetrator and victim side of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question . He met the daughter of the von Mildenstein couple in the old family apartment in Wuppertal, which they now lived in again and which still contains numerous documents on von Mildenstein's life and activities.

The National Archives and Records Administration , NARA, in Washington DC holds the CIA dossier of Mildensteins on the numerous activities that he carried out for this client after 1945.

Publications

  • Around the burning land on the Jordan , Stollberg Verlag, Berlin 1938.
  • Middle East - experienced from the roadside , Union Verlag, Stuttgart 1941.
  • Orient information , published from 1958 - 1960.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Wildt: The Jewish policy of the SD 1935-1938. Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, p. 19 f.
  2. ↑ Joseph Verbovszky: Leopold von Mildenstein and the Jewish Question. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland / Ohio 2013, p. 10.
  3. ↑ K [arl] S [eeger]: Dipl [om] -Ing [enieur] and journalist who liked to travel, Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein †. In: Sports journalist. Vol. 18 (1968), no. 11, p. 16.
  4. ↑ Gerrit Liskow: The FDP, the unknown (?) Being. Legal. Illegal. Liberal:. January 16, 2013, archived from the original on February 23, 2015 ; accessed on February 23, 2015 .
  5. ^ Lenni Brenner : Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. Croom & Helm, London 1983 ( digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fia600806.us.archive.org%2F12%2Fitems%2FZionismInTheAgeOfTheDictators%2Fzionism-in-the-age-of-the-dictators-lenni-brenner-1983. pdf ~ GB% 3D ~ IA% 3D ~ MDZ% 3D% 0A ~ SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D ; PDF; 79.71 kB).
  6. ↑ Quoted from: Julia Bernhard, Joachim Schlör (Ed.): German, Jew, European in the 20th century. Arnold Zweig and Judaism. Bern, Berlin et al. 2004, p. 198 f.
  7. ^ A Christmas party with Himmler - Documentation of the memories of Adolf Eichmann (Part 5) in: Die Welt from August 17, 1999, accessed on October 12, 2014.
  8. ↑ Leopold von Mildenstein: Handwritten curriculum vitae (created after 1938), in the holdings of the Federal Archives , reproduced in the film "Die Wohnung", documentary by Arnon Goldfinger, Germany 2011. Detailed interview with the author, Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn, 18 November 2014
  9. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. In: Database writing and image 1900–1960.
  10. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. In: Database writing and image 1900–1960.
  11. ^ Breitman, Goda, Naftali, Wolfe: US Intelligence and the Nazis. 2005, p. 341 f. (engl.)
  12. ↑ Heinz Höhne: The order under the skull. In: Der Spiegel . March 6, 1967
  13. ↑ See also Arnon Goldfinger: Your friend, the enemy. In: Zeitmagazin . No. 21, 2012, pp. 28–33, as well as a detailed interview with the author, Federal Agency for Civic Education BpB, Bonn, November 18, 2014. a. a 1974 letter in the FRG to the Tuchlers in Israel.
  14. ↑ Niclas Sennerteg: Hakkorset och halvmånen: Nazister i Mellanöstern . Nature & Culture, Stockholm 2014, ISBN 978-91-27-14067-7 ( Google Books ).
personal data
SURNAME Mildenstein, Leopold von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mildenstein, Leopold Itz Edler von; lim (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, SS officer sympathetic to Zionism
DATE OF BIRTH November 30, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 1968