Manfred von Killinger

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Manfred von Killinger (1940)

Manfred Freiherr von Killinger (born July 14, 1886 on Gut Lindigt near Nossen ; † September 2, 1944 in Bucharest ) was a German naval officer, National Socialist politician and diplomat . After the end of the First World War , he joined the Freikorps Marine Brigade Ehrhardt and took over the management of the military department of its successor organization, the Consul organization . In this function he gave the order to murder Matthias Erzberger . For the NSDAP he was a member of the Saxon state parliament from 1929 and a member of the Reichstag from 1932 . After the National Socialist " seizure of power " he took over the leadership of the Saxon government for a short time and was also appointed Prime Minister of Saxony . In the wake of the so-called Röhm putsch , the SA Obergruppenführer lost his office and switched to the foreign service . As ambassador to Slovakia and Romania, he worked towards a pro-German and anti-Jewish policy under the sign of the Holocaust during World War II . Killinger also processed his experiences during the war and the Weimar Republic as a writer.

Life

Member of the Navy and the Ehrhardt Brigade

The Killinger, who comes from a Swabian - Franconian noble family in the knightly canton of Kraichgau, attended the princely school of St. Afra , the cadet corps in Dresden and the Freiberg grammar school . In 1904 he joined the Imperial Navy as a midshipman . During the First World War he commanded the large torpedo boats V 3 and V 45 and took part in the Skagerrak Battle in 1916 . After the November Revolution in 1918, he joined the Ehrhardt Brigade , with whom he took part as commander of their assault company in 1919 in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic and in 1920 in the right-wing Kapp Putsch . With the rank of lieutenant captain , he left the Imperial Navy in mid-1920 for political reasons .

Leading member of the Consul organization

Killinger went to Munich , where he joined the headquarters of the Consul Organization (O. C.) in early 1921 and took over the management of the military department. Like most of the O. C. members, he was also a member of the anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . After taking part in the suppression of the so-called Polish uprising in Upper Silesia in May 1921 as the leader of the Koppe Sturmkompanie , Killinger commissioned the O. C. members Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz , the former Reich Finance Minister and Center politician Matthias , at the end of July / beginning of August To murder Erzberger . After the murder, Killinger helped the assassins escape via Austria to Hungary . Killinger had given the murder order as an order of the Teutonic Order. The role of the Teutonic Order, possibly a subdivision of the O. C., is unclear.

In September 1921 Killinger was arrested for involvement in the murder plot and in June 1922 charged with aiding and abetting murder before the Offenburg jury . On June 13, 1922, despite incriminating evidence, he was acquitted after the jury ruled "not guilty". All efforts by the government and the democratic press to obtain a condemnation of Killinger were unsuccessful. The Reichsgericht upheld the judgment on February 28, 1923. As part of the investigation into the murder of Walther Rathenau in 1922, Killinger was arrested in 1924 and sentenced to eight months in prison for "secret bundling", but was released without execution.

National Socialist politician

In the meantime, Killinger had moved to Dresden , where in 1923 he took over the management of the Saxon Association of Wikings , which had been founded as the successor organization to the now banned O. C. After its ban in 1927, Killinger joined the NSDAP and the SA on May 1, 1928 . He moved into the Saxon state parliament for the NSDAP in 1929 , where he took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group. In 1932 he became a member of the Reichstag for the NSDAP in constituency 28, Dresden-Bautzen in Saxony. After Killinger was ousted from power in Saxony (see below), Hitler made him a candidate for constituency 14, Weser-Ems. Since, as is usual in a dictatorship, there was no alternative candidate, Killinger automatically won the seat in the election. From 1938 to 1944 he was appointed a member of the constituency 23, Düsseldorf West.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , Killinger was appointed Reich Commissioner for Police in Saxony on March 8, 1933 . Since February 1933 he was already serving as the leader of SA Upper Group I (Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Berlin-Brandenburg, Ostmark, Magdeburg-Anhalt, Halle-Merseburg, Silesia). After the resignation of the Saxon government under Walther Schieck on March 10th, Killinger took over the leadership of the state government as Reich Commissioner. His first official acts included the dismissal of Dresden's Lord Mayor Wilhelm Külz and the dismissal of Otto Dix , professor at the Dresden Art Academy , which its rector, the graphic artist Richard Müller , supported. However, Killinger had to hand over his leadership position in Saxony very quickly to the Saxon NSDAP Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann , who was appointed " Reichsstatthalter " in April 1933 . On May 6, 1933, Mutschmann appointed his predecessor and rival Killinger, whom he was not yet able to completely displace, as his subordinate Prime Minister of Saxony . In July 1933, Killinger took over the leadership of SA Upper Group IV (Saxony-Thuringia, Magdeburg-Anhalt).

In the actions of Hitler, Göring , Himmler and his SS against the SA in the context of the Röhm Putsch , in which almost the entire leadership corps of the SA was murdered around June 30, 1934, Killinger was also attacked. He was arrested on the way to Bad Wiessee with his adjutant Friedrich Günther at the train station in Munich. Hitler had him interrogated on June 30th and personally informed him of his removal as Prime Minister. Then he released Killinger. He returned to Dresden on July 1 and was arrested there a second time on the orders of Himmler - possibly at the instigation of his rival Martin Mutschmann - this time by the leader of the SS upper section Friedrich Karl von Eberstein . The former Prime Minister and SA-Obergruppenführer was sent to the Hohnstein concentration camp. Killinger was released after a short time. His adjutant Friedrich Günther remained in custody in an unknown location for a long time. Mutschmann was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to lead the state government on February 28, 1935 .

In the foreign service

In 1935, Killinger was appointed a member of the newly created People's Court. On April 30, 1937 he was appointed to the Foreign Service and took over the business of the Consul General in San Francisco on June 14, 1937 . However, joint efforts by the German-American Cultural Association and the Maritime Union of Pacific seafarers 'and dockworkers' union resulted in his dismissal there at the end of 1938.

From 1940 Killinger made visits to various Eastern European capitals, where he campaigned for the employment of German advisors and for anti-Semitic politics in the German sense. In Slovakia he achieved the replacement of Ferdinand Ďurčanský as Minister of the Interior by Alexander Mach . From July 29, 1940 to January 19, 1941, Killinger worked as the German envoy in Slovakia and paved the way for Dieter Wisliceny's work as a “ Jewish advisor ”, who was supposed to deal with the persecution of the Jews there. In January 1941, Killinger was sent to Romania as an envoy. After Bucharest followed Gustav Richter as "Jewish advisers". Killinger reported on the Romanian persecution of Jews in Berlin , prevented the emigration of Romanian Jews on behalf of the Foreign Office , participated in the introduction of the Yellow Star in Romania and in 1942 obtained a promise from ruler Ion Antonescu that Romanian Jews would enter the German-occupied areas of Europe Would be left to Germans. The relationship between SA leader Killinger and the SS was marked by conflicts of authority, which ultimately delayed the deportation of the Jews from Romania. Killinger's mission officially ended on August 25, 1944 with the break-off of diplomatic relations by Romania , which Killinger had not foreseen.

When the Red Army entered Bucharest, Killinger took his own life to forestall arrest. Hitler granted the widow an endowment of 250,000 Reichsmarks . Carl August Clodius had in fact taken over Killinger's position in Bucharest since May 1944.

Private

Manfred Freiherr von Killinger was married to Gertrud (née Martin) on January 24, 1917. The marriage resulted in two daughters (Brigitte Freiin von Killinger, married Volke, and Renate Freiin von Killinger, married von Holtzendorff). After the end of the Second World War on May 10, 1945, his wife and daughters committed suicide. The tombstone has been preserved in the Schellerhau cemetery in the Eastern Ore Mountains (as of July 2019).

Literary work

Killinger also processed his experiences as a war participant and free corps fighter in writing. The historians Stephan Malinowski and Sven Reichardt attest his texts "an atmospherically dense combination of warriorism and misogyny, in which the attributes of bourgeoisie, material wealth, Judaism and femininity merged into a single conglomerate of repugnance". Killinger's habitus resembles the patterns of perception and behavior that Klaus Theweleit described in his reconstruction of fascist “male fantasies”.

The greatest dissemination of Killinger's works was Ernstes und Heiteres from the Putschleben , which was published in ten editions from 1931 by Franz-Eher-Verlag , the central publishing house of the NSDAP , until the Second World War. In the Soviet occupation zone , all of Killinger's writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in 1946 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Merry news from the seaman's life. Beutelspacher (Hinzmann), Dresden 1923
  • Serious and cheerful from the coup life. With drawings by A. Paul Weber , Vormarsch, Berlin 1928
  • The SA in words and pictures. Row: Men and Powers. R. Kittler, Leipzig 1933 [withdrawn from the publisher in 1934]
    • Modified, supplemented edition. ibid. 1934
  • "Preface" to Rudolf Schricker: Rotmord über München , Zeitgeschichte-Verlag, Berlin undated (1934)
  • Battle for Upper Silesia 1921. Hitherto unpublished notes from the leader of Killinger's department. KF Köhler, Leipzig 1934
  • The Klabautermann. An autobiography , Franz-Eher-Verlag, Munich 1936
  • They were guys! Wilhelm Limpert, Berlin 1937. (Library of the Soldiers' Union, Volume 1).

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz; Brigitte Mihok (ed.): Holocaust on the periphery. Jewish policy and murder of Jews in Romania and Transnistria 1940–1944. Metropol, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-34-3 .
  • Christopher R. Browning : Killinger, Manfred von . In: Israel Gutman (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Holocaust , Vol. 2, Macmillan, New York 1990, pp. 803 f.
  • Stephan Dehn: Hellmuth von Mücke (1881-1957) and Manfred von Killinger (1886-1944) - two noble top politicians of the Saxon NSDAP. In: Sächsische Heimatblätter 61 (2015) 1, pp. 6-14
  • Maria Keipert (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 2: Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger: G – K. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2005, ISBN 3-506-71841-X , p. 532
  • Igor-Philip Matić: Killinger, Manfred Frh. From in: Hermann Weiß (ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . Revised New edition Fischer TB, Frankfurt 2002, pp. 263f. ISBN 3-596-13086-7 .
  • Andreas Wagner: Mutschmann against von Killinger. Lines of conflict between Gauleiter and SA leader during the rise of the NSDAP and the "seizure of power" in the Free State of Saxony. Sax, Beucha 2001, ISBN 3-934544-09-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 , Volume 2, 2005, p. 532.
  2. ↑ Cord Gehardt: The case of Erzberger-murderer Heinrich Tillessen. A contribution to the history of justice after 1945. Mohr, Tübingen 1995, pp. 25–27, 38, 45–46. 54.
  3. ↑ https://landtagsprotocol.sachsendigital.de/haben/details/?action=detail&pers_id=257
  4. ↑ Beatrix Herlemann , Helga Schatz: Biographical Lexicon of Lower Saxony Parliamentarians 1919–1945 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Volume 222). Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 2004, ISBN 3-7752-6022-6 , pp. 188-189.
  5. ^ Andreas Wagner: Mutschmann against von Killinger. Lines of conflict between Gauleiter and SA leader during the rise of the NSDAP and the "seizure of power" in the Free State of Saxony. Sax, Beucha 2001, ISBN 3-934544-09-6 , pp. 133-136.
  6. ↑ Dieter Nelles: “'That we hold our heads high, even if it should be cut off' - Wuppertal seafarers in the resistance”. In: “… We don't get broken.” Faces of the Wuppertal resistance. Edited by the Wuppertal Resistance Research Group. Essen 1995, p. 168.
  7. ^ Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 and Hans-Jürgen Döscher : The Foreign Office in the Third Rich. Diplomacy in the shadow of the final solution. Siedler, Berlin 1987, ISBN 978-3-88680-256-2 , p. 246.
  8. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites. Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  9. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility. Freiherrliche Häuser B , Volume II, CA Starke Verlag, Glücksburg 1957, p. 220.
  10. ↑ Stephan Malinowski u. Sven Reichhardt: Are the ranks firmly closed? Nobles in the leader corps of the SA until 1934. In: Eckart Conze, Monika Wienfort (eds.): Adel und Moderne. Germany in a European comparison in the 19th and 20th centuries . Böhlau, Cologne 2004, p. 144.
  11. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1946-nslit-k.html
personal data
SURNAME Killinger, Manfred von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Killinger, Manfred Freiherr von; Killinger, Karl Theodor Hermann Manfred von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naval officer, politician (NSDAP), MdR, Saxon Prime Minister and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Good Lindigt at Nossen
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 1944
Place of death Bucharest