Maximilian von Mirbach-Harff

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Maximilian Friedrich Johannes Maria Oktavian Graf von Mirbach-Harff (until 1944 Freiherr von Mirbach, born July 14, 1880 in Ziadlowitz (Moravia) ; † March 27, 1971 in Lindenthal (Cologne) ) was a Prussian district administrator and headed as such from 1920 to 1938 the administration of the Saarburg district .

Life and career

Maximilian von Mirbach, who remained unmarried, was a member of the family of the same name von Mirbach and a son of Ernst Freiherr von der Vorst-Lombeck-Gudenau (from 1882 von Mirbach-Harff; 1845–1901) and his wife Wilhelmine, née Countess von Thun und Hohenstein ( 1851-1929).

After attending a high school , von Mirbach began studying law and political science at the University of Strasbourg . After passing the first state examination in law , he entered the Prussian judicial service and was appointed court trainee (October 31, 1908), where he received further training at the Grevenbroich District Court . After passing the second state examination and being appointed government assessor in July 1914, he moved to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. There he initially found employment as an unskilled worker at the Blumenthal district office before he was transferred to the district offices in Templin from June 1, 1915 , in Nauen from September 1915 and finally from September 1, 1918 to Ruppin .

Transferred to the government in Trier on August 6, 1919 , von Mirbach's employer there entrusted him with the management of the remainder of the St. Wendel-Baumholder district from April to May 1920 , before he took over the administration of the Saarburg district on a temporary basis in July 1920. The definitive appointment as district administrator in Saarburg followed on November 26, 1920. During his deportation, ordered by the Interallied Rhineland Commission and lasting from 1923 to 1926, von Mirbach found employment at the Hamm supply center in Westphalia. After von Mirbach had been put up for disposal on November 4, 1938 , he received a renewed assignment from May 1939, first to the Minden government and then to the Merseburg government .

When the district administrator of the Graslitz district , Henning von Winterfeld , was called up to the front in September 1944, von Mirbach took over his position on his behalf. Towards the end of the Second World War came in the wake "liquidation" of the concentration camp on April 14, 1945 in the station Graslitz a train with about 2,500 female inmates of the Buchenwald concentration camp belonging satellite camp Meuselwitz without a goal to stand. Von Mirbach asked the district president in Karlsbad by telex for clarification and to endeavor to accelerate the onward transport, since the station was not safe. As the train was still standing in Graslitz station four days later and there had already been numerous injuries and several deaths due to air raids, Mirbach telegraphed again on April 18, 1945 to Karlsbad with the request to arrange for or arrange for the train to continue its journey .

In 1945 Mirbach was interned himself, but was released again in 1946 and from then on lived at Harff Castle in order to manage the family estates from there. He died in a Cologne hospital in 1971. The German ambassador in Moscow, Wilhelm von Mirbach-Harff , who was murdered in 1918, was an older brother of Maximilian.

literature

  • Heinz Monz (Ed.): Mirbach, Maximilian Freiherr v. In: Trier Biographisches Lexikon, Trier Wissenschaftlicher Verlag 2000, ISBN 3-88476-400-4 , p. 299.
  • Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816–1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 632 .
  • Horst Romeyk: Cohausen, Salentin Heinrich Ignaz Florian v. in: Heinz Monz (complete editing.): Trier Biographical Lexicon. (= Publications of the Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Volume 87), Verlag der Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, Koblenz 2000. ISBN 3-931014-49-5 , p. 299.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, civil status archive Rhineland, civil status register, registry office Cologne West, deaths, 1971, document no. 949.
  2. ↑ a b c d Horst Romeyk : The leading state and municipal administrative officials of the Rhine Province 1816-1945 (=  publications of the Society for Rhenish History . Volume 69 ). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-7585-4 , p. 632 .
  3. ^ Herbert M. Schleicher: Ernst von Oidtman and his genealogical-heraldic collection in the University Library in Cologne. Volume 6. Folder 423-518. FISCHENICH-GRUBEN. (Publications of the West German Society for Family Studies , Cologne, New Series No. 70). Cologne 1994, pp. 91-115. (Folder 434 Forst IV.), Here p. 108.
  4. ↑ Andrea Rudorff (arrangement): The Auschwitz concentration camp 1942–1945 and the time of the death marches 1944/45 (= The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Volume 16), De Gruyter GmbH / Oldenburg, Berlin / Boston 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-036503-0 , p. 750 note 1
  5. ↑ Andrea Rudorff (edit.): The Auschwitz concentration camp 1942–1945 and the time of the death marches 1944/45 , p. 750.
  6. ↑ Andrea Rudorff (edit.): The Auschwitz concentration camp 1942–1945 and the time of the death marches 1944/45 , p. 750 note 4


personal data
SURNAME Mirbach-Harff, Maximilian von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mirbach-Harff, Maximilian Friedrich Johannes Maria Oktavian Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian district administrator
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Ziadlowitz (Moravia)
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1971
Place of death Lindenthal (Cologne)