Max Sollmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Sollmann during the Nuremberg Trials

Max Sollmann (born June 6, 1904 in Bayreuth , † after 1970) was a German businessman, SS leader and head of Lebensborn e. V. at the time of National Socialism .

Life

After finishing school in Munich, Sollmann completed an apprenticeship at the Graphic Art Institute in Bischoff and then worked in arts and crafts companies. After the First World War , Sollmann belonged to the Freikorps Epp and the Bund Oberland between 1920 and 1921 .

The NSDAP ( member number 14528) joined Sollmann 1,921th In November 1923 Sollmann took part as one of the youngest participants in the Hitler putsch and was later awarded the Blood Order for it.

Sollmann stayed in Colombia from 1929 to 1934 . There he was the owner of several department stores. Then he returned to the German Empire .

After the NSDAP had been banned in the meantime, he rejoined the party in 1937 (membership number 35.362). Sollmann became a member of the SS in 1937 with the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (membership number 282.277) and rose to SS-Standartenführer in this Nazi organization in 1940. Sollmann was also the holder of the golden party badge of the NSDAP and received the service award of the NSDAP in silver and bronze.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Sollmann was the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Volkstum as a consultant and special representative for economic issues. By the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , Sollmann was commissioned in the spring of 1940 with the highly indebted Lebensborn e. V. to carry out an audit. On April 11, 1940, by order of Himmler, Sollmann succeeded Guntram Pflaum at Lebensborn e. V. From May 1940 until the end of the war in the spring of 1945, Sollmann was managing director of Lebensborn e. V. Medical director of the Lebensborn was Gregor Ebner . From April 1942, Sollmann was head of Department L on Himmler's personal staff.

In a letter dated June 21, 1943, Himmler instructed Sollmann to visit Hans Frank in Prague to discuss the fate of the children of Czech resistance fighters who had been executed. The children with bad racial talents should be placed in certain camps for children, those with good racial talents should be put on probation - Himmler expressed the fear that the children could become the most dangerous avengers of their parents without adequate care and education - in the Lebensborn and after a possible character test as adopted or foster children are distributed to German families. The meeting between Frank and Sollmann took place on July 2nd. In a letter to Himmler on July 7th, Sollmann informed him that he would arrange for the children to be placed with German families through the Lebensborn, provided that they were racially acceptable and not yet of school age.

After 1945

After the end of the war, Sollmann was interned and charged with 13 other accused in the context of the Nuremberg Trials in the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS on July 1, 1947. Sollmann's defense was taken over by Paul Ratz with the assistance of Heinrich Rentsch. On March 10, 1948, Sollmann was sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment for membership in the SS for belonging to a criminal organization. The sentence was deemed to have been served. He was found not guilty of the charges of kidnapping foreign children, the kidnapping of the children of Eastern workers, and looting of public and private property; the court justified its judgment on these points u. a. with the fact that the prosecution did not succeed in proving that the Lebensborn, characterized by the court as a welfare organization, and his employees were involved in the systematic child abductions of the National Socialists. In addition, Lebensborn was not involved in the Aryanization of the owners it used; Sollmann even provided one million Reichsmarks from cash in the Lebensborn as compensation for the fact that the actual payment had not been made; was not to be blamed on him, but on higher imperial authorities.

As part of denazification , Sollmann was sentenced in 1950 by the Munich main court to work for 30 days and confiscate part of his property. Sollmann went, as did other former employees of the Lebensborn e. V., appealed against the judgment, which however was not upheld. The verdict was nevertheless mild: the sentence for special labor was considered to have been served and the fine was reduced to 50 DM .

During his professional life, Sollmann worked as a foreign correspondent for the art publisher Hirmer, headed the correspondence and advertising department of the "Dichtl-Spitze" and was employed as managing director of the Munich Antik-Kunst. He was also a member of the board of a property company , was in charge of an auditing company and handled the Rauscha glassworks.

Sollmann lived in Steinhöring in the 1970s .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Volker Koop: Giving the Führer a child - the SS organization "Lebensborn" e. V. , Cologne 2007, p. 243
  2. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 586.
  3. ↑ Standartenführer Max Sollmann on www.dws-xip.pl
  4. ↑ Volker Koop: Giving the Führer a child - the SS organization "Lebensborn" e. V. , Cologne 2007, p. 63.
  5. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04a/NMT04-T1028.htm ( Memento from August 31, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04a/NMT04-T1029.htm ( Memento from September 6, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04a/NMT04-T1030.htm ( Memento from September 15, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04a/NMT04-T0607.htm ( Memento from May 27, 2003 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/05/NMT05-T0162.htm ( Memento from August 31, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/05/NMT05-T0163.htm ( Memento of September 8, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/05/NMT05-T0152.htm ( Memento from August 31, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Volker Koop: Giving the Führer a child - the SS organization "Lebensborn" e. V. , Cologne 2007, p. 227 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Sollmann, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman, SS leader and head of the Lebensborn e. V.
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Bayreuth
DATE OF DEATH 20th century or 21st century