Max Kiefer

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Max Kiefer during the Nuremberg Trials . Photo taken in January 1947.

Max Kiefer (born September 15, 1889 in Kempen , † February 21, 1974 in Dortmund ) was a German architect , site manager and SS leader . Kiefer was indicted in the Nuremberg trials and sentenced as a war criminal.

Life

Kiefer finished his high school career in 1909 in Kempen. He then studied architecture in Munich and Aachen and went on study trips to other European countries. After the outbreak of World War I , his studies were interrupted because he volunteered for the German Army . After his continuous service on the Western Front and several awards, he was discharged from the army at the beginning of December 1918 at the end of the war. He resumed his architecture studies at the Technical University of Aachen in the winter semester of 1919/20 and dropped out again. According to his own statements, he fled Aachen to the Netherlands in the early 1920s because he had come into conflict with the Belgian occupation forces in Aachen. After working as a crane operator in Kerkrade , he returned to Germany in the spring of 1922. From the beginning of April 1922, Kiefer worked as a senior architect at the city of Aachen at the new judicial building office before moving back to Kempen in 1924, where he also worked as an architect and construction consultant for the local building authority. In October 1927 he went into business for himself as an architect in Kempen and stayed that way until July 1933.

Political activity

Kiefer joined the Stahlhelm in 1923 and the SA in mid-August 1933 . As a member of the SA he became adjutant to Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger in Berlin in mid-August 1933 , who was then head of SA training. Kiefer switched from the SA to the SS in July 1935 and became a member of the NSDAP in May 1937 . In the SS in 1944, Kiefer achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer .

Full-time activity in SS offices

At the beginning of April 1936, Kiefer became a full-time employee on the staff of the SS main office . From the beginning of September 1936 to the end of September 1941, Kiefer was a consultant in the field of settlement and housing construction at the civil engineering office of the Reich Aviation Ministry . At the beginning of October 1941 he moved to the SS Main Office for Household and Buildings. After his conscription to the Wehrmacht in August 1941, Kiefer did not have to do military service during the Second World War due to the intervention of his superior Hans Kammler due to his assignment to the Waffen-SS .

From February 1942 to the beginning of May 1945, Kiefer was head of department C 2 (special construction tasks) in the newly created economic and administrative main office (WVHA). From March 1943, Kiefer also took on “special tasks in the inner eastern regions” for six months. From September 1943 he was deputy Kammler as head of office group C in the WVHA. From mid-September 1944, Kiefer completed an eight-week course at the SS WVHA driving school in Arolsen .

After the end of the war

After his arrest, Kiefer and 17 other accused were indicted before the United States Military Tribunal II in the Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS trial from January 13, 1947 . As head of Department C 2 in the WVHA, Kiefer was accused of having made a significant contribution to the organization and expansion of the concentration camp system through his function and thus made the concentration camp crimes possible. Kiefer was found guilty of war crimes , crimes against humanity and membership in criminal organizations. Kiefer was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 3, 1947 . After serving a partial sentence, he was released on February 3, 1951 from the Landsberg War Crimes Prison . Then Kiefer moved to his wife in Dortmund and worked again as an architect for the local state building authority and a construction office.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich: Who Was What Before and After 1945 .
  • Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Extermination. The economic empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt 1933–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2001, ISBN 3-506-78245-2 (also: Bochum, Univ., Diss., 1999).
  • Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. United States Government Printing Office , District of Columbia 1950. (Volume 5 of the " Green Series ")

Web link

  • Marco Kieser / Georg Lüdecke: Max Kiefer - an architect from Kempen in the SS . In: Denkmalpflege im Rheinland , 2008, issue 4, pp. 162–164 (pdf; 428 kB)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Marco Kieser / Georg Lüdecke: "Max Kiefer - an architect from Kempen in the SS", in: Denkmalpflege im Rheinland 2008, issue 4, pp. 162–164.
  2. ^ A b Records of the United States Nuremberg War Crimes Trials , Vol. V. District of Columbia 1950, pp. 1018ff
  3. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 306.
personal data
SURNAME Jaw, max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, site manager, SS leader and convict of the Nuremberg trials
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Kempen
DATE OF DEATH February 21, 1974
Place of death Dortmund