Ludwig Losacker

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Ludwig Losacker (1943)

Ludwig Losacker (born July 29, 1906 in Mannheim , † July 23, 1990 in Heidelberg ) was a German lawyer, SS leader and functionary of business associations.

Early years

Losacker, whose father owned a factory and worked in business, finished school in 1922 at a secondary school. From December 1922 he completed a traineeship at Boehringer Mannheim and from May 1924 headed the comb and hair jewelry factory of his late father in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . He then attended the secondary school again, which he finished in 1927 with the Abitur . At the University of Heidelberg he studied economics and political science and a doctorate in 1933 for Dr. jur. Losacker passed the second state examination in law in 1934.

Losacker turned to National Socialism during his studies and eventually belonged to the National Socialist German Student Union . Losacker's anti-Semitism became apparent early on, as he took part in protests against the pacifist-minded professor Emil Julius Gumbel at the University of Heidelberg, who came from a family of Jewish religion and who lost his teaching license in 1932 because of the actions of the students. At the beginning of December 1931, Losacker joined the NSDAP ( membership number 918.802), and at the beginning of June 1933 the SS (SS number 200.256). He resigned from the church and called himself a believer in God from 1937 . In the SS Losacker achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer in 1942 .

After completing his legal clerkship, Losacker embarked on a career in the civil service and from July 1934 was a government assessor at the Baden-Baden Police Department and was transferred from there in January 1936 to the Reich Ministry of the Interior . In 1937 he switched to the private sector and was an intern at IG Farben in Berlin . From the end of 1938 he was employed as a company lawyer at Wanderer-Werke AG and at the same time set up as a lawyer in Chemnitz . He also worked for the SD from 1936 .

Second World War

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Losacker worked as a councilor in the Krakow district of the so-called Generalgouvernement (GG) from October 1939 after the attack on Poland . There he held from September 1939 until mid-January 1941, the Office of the District Chief of Jasło . In this function he revealed an extreme anti-Semitism which shows his agreement with the goal of murdering all Jews. Losacker decreed on May 25, 1940:

“In addition to the special measures I have issued, I therefore order that from today, May 25, 1940, no Jew , no Jewess, no Jewish child may enter the street. Looking out of the windows is also prohibited. "

In mid-January 1941 Losacker became head of office at the Lublin district governor and from the beginning of August 1941 he was employed in the same function at the Lemberg district governor . When the governor of the Galicia district, Karl Lasch, was arrested for corruption in January 1942, the governor general Hans Frank Losacker temporarily appointed the district's lieutenant governor. At the beginning of January 1943 Losacker was appointed President of the Main Office for Administration in the GG. In addition, he was appointed lieutenant governor of the Krakow district in February 1943 and was entrusted with the war-like administrative structure in the GG. From the end of May 1943 Losacker was provisionally used as governor of the Krakow district.

Losacker was considered an effective administrative specialist who succeeded in curbing corruption in the GG and downsizing the civil servants. In his function as an administrative specialist, Losacker was "a central figure for the murder of Jews in the Galicia district", as he helped organize the "resettlement of Jews" in the Lemberg district as part of the " Final Solution ". On the other hand, he took an offensive against the anti-church policies of the National Socialists and turned to Adolf Hitler personally . He also spoke out openly against the Zamość action and rejected reprisals against the Polish population. Ultimately there was a violent conflict between Losacker and the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger over the shooting of Polish landowners and a doctor. This conflict finally led to Losacker's impeachment in mid-October 1943. Then Losacker was transferred to the Waffen SS , where he was deployed until the end of the war. Losacker was involved in fighting in Italy , where he was wounded.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Losacker was captured by the US and was initially held in Kornwestheim and then in the Dachau internment camp . The Republic of Poland requested extradition for Losacker because of his participation in mass murder and other crimes. During his internment Losacker wrote two self-portraits in which he denied, among other things, his involvement in the persecution of Jews and ascribed responsibility for the crimes of the SS and the police. His justifications showed gaps with regard to his work in the GG, as he kept from him potentially burdensome activities there. Losacker also named Polish witnesses who made exonerating statements for him. In addition, around his impeachment in the GG he built up the legend that Himmler even wanted to have him sentenced to death in this context. This version was supported by the former State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart , who was also incarcerated in the internment camp and who - possibly for his own relief - stated that he later dissuaded Himmler from this project. The Polish Military Mission did not pursue her extradition request any further.

After his release from internment custody in September 1947, he was provisionally admitted to the Nuremberg Trials in March 1948 as an auxiliary defender for the defendant Stuckart, but he could not dispel his doubts about himself and resigned as early as March, after which he went unofficially intensively to cooperate in the defense of Stuckart. In 1948 he was initially a consultant, managing director and then managing director of the employers' association of the chemical industry. At the end of August 1948 Losacker was denazified as exonerated . Losacker also worked as a federal labor judge. From the beginning of 1960 until his retirement in 1971 he was director of the German Industrial Institute in Cologne . Losacker also lectured at the Munich School of Politics from 1963 to 1964 .

Losacker was the founder of the circle of friends of former government officials. Losacker was investigated for the crimes committed in the Basic Law, but the investigation was discontinued in 1963. Losacker appeared as an exonerating witness in several Nazi trials against general government officials. By the beginning of the 1980s at the latest, Losacker wrote his unpublished memoirs under the title: On the Difficulty Being a German , which he later handed over to the Federal Archives in Koblenz with additional documents . In his memoirs, Losacker tried to present his activities in the GG as positively as possible and to stylize himself as a resistance fighter.

literature

  • Gerhard Hirschfeld, Tobias Jersak: Careers under National Socialism: Functional elites between participation and distance. Campus, Frankfurt New York 2004, ISBN 3-593-37156-1 .
  • 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 .
  • Thomas Sandkühler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives of Berthold Beitz 1941-1944. Dietz successor, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-8012-5022-9 .
  • Dieter Pohl : National Socialist Persecution of Jews in East Galicia, 1941-1944. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-56233-9 .
  • Wilfried Loth and Bernd-A. Rusinek : Transformation policy: Nazi elites in West German post-war society. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-593-35994-4 .
  • 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. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0477-2 .
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition).
  • Hubert Seliger: Political lawyers? : the defenders of the Nuremberg trials . Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016 ISBN 978-3-8487-2360-7 , p. 546

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ludwig Losacker in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  2. ↑ a b c d e Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen. Göttingen 2009, p. 490.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Ulrich Herbert: Who Were National Socialists? Typologies of political behavior in the Nazi state. In: Gerhard Hirschfeld, Tobias Jersak: Careers under National Socialism: Functional elites between participation and distance. Frankfurt / New York 2004, p. 17 f.
  4. ↑ a b c Thomas Sandkühler: Final solution in Galicia. The murder of Jews in Eastern Poland and the rescue initiatives by Berthold Beitz 1941-1944 , Bonn 1996, p. 449 f.
  5. ^ A b Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement. Wiesbaden 1999, p. 389 f.
  6. ↑ Roth, Herrenmenschen. P. 490.
  7. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 381.
  8. ↑ Ludwig Losacker on May 25, 1940 Quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 381.
  9. ↑ Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945. Stuttgart 1975, p. 950.
  10. ^ Thomas Sandkühler: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Holocaust. In: Die Zeit 44/1995 from October 27, 1995.
  11. ^ Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen. Göttingen 2009, p. 290 ff.
  12. ↑ Hubert Seliger: Political Lawyers? , 2016, p. 109; P. 150f.
  13. ^ Ulrich Herbert: Nazi elites in the Federal Republic. In: Wilfried Loth, Bernd-A. Rusinek: Transformation policy: Nazi elites in West German post-war society. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 93.
  14. ^ Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen. Göttingen 2009, p. 417 f.
personal data
SURNAME Losacker, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, SS leader and functionary of business associations
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1990
Place of death Heidelberg