Otto Heinrich Drechsler

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Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, Mayor
The officers of IR 162 in February 1917
Residence in Lübeck with driveway
Drechsler (far left) sits next to Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse during an event in Dobeln (Latvia) , in 1942. Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg and Walter von Medem sit to the right .

Otto-Heinrich Drechsler (born April 1, 1895 in Lübz ; † May 5, 1945 in Mölln ) was a German dentist with a doctorate, mayor of Lübeck and, during the Second World War, between 1941 and 1944 at the same time General Commissioner of Latvia in the Reich Commissioner for East Land in Riga .

biography

Drechsler was the son of the later Landdrosten . First, he wanted to become a professional officer and joined in 1914 as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment Lübeck (Hanseatic 3.) No. 162 a.

In August 1916, at the Battle of the Somme, he was appointed chief of a company newly created from the remnants of the Eutin battalion (III. Battalion) for the first time . On June 16, 1917, when both leaders of the storm battalion (7th and 8th Company) failed during the attack, he took over the command of one of the companies. After he had already distinguished himself several times as temporary company commander , he was appointed in Flanders in September 1918 as the successor to the commander of the 3rd company who had been transferred to the airmen . In the last battle of the regiment, the defensive battle of Le Câteau , on October 16, 1918, the lieutenant was so badly wounded in the leg that it had to be amputated .

The Reichswehr retired him in 1920.

In the Weimar Republic , Drechsler began studying dentistry and was awarded a doctorate in Rostock in 1922. med. dent. PhD . During that time he joined the Nordic Society , and in 1925 also the NSDAP . There he rose to senior squadron leader of the SA engine squadron. From 1925 he was head of the NSDAP local group in Kröpelin . In August 1930 he joined the SA and was SA-Staffelführer of the SA-Motorstaffel and 1934 SA-Standartenführer , 1936 SA-Oberführer and 1942 SA-Brigadführer.

From August 1, 1932 to May 31, 1933, he was deputy Nazi Gauleiter for the Mecklenburg and Lübeck Gau , which on May 26, 1933 was subordinated to Friedrich Hildebrandt as Reich Governor together with the two Mecklenburg Free States . He moved into Lübeck on June 8, 1933 with great pomp and appointed his comrade in arms as President of the Senate and Governing Mayor , Friedrich Völtzer as Senator for Finance and Economics , Emil Bannemann as Senator for Labor and Welfare , Walther Schröder as Senator for the Interior, Ulrich Burgstaller as Senator for School and Theater and Hans Böhmcker as Senator for Justice .

From 1935 to 1937 he was the NSDAP's district officer for Lübeck. From 1933 to 1945 he was mayor of Lübeck , even after Lübeck lost its statehood in 1937 with the Greater Hamburg Act . Since 1933 he was also a member of the supervisory board of the blast furnace plant Lübeck AG and the Prussian State Council . From April 1, 1937, he became the first mayor of the Prussian district of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck , and from July 17, 1941 to 1944, he was also general commissioner in the Reichskommissariat Ostland in Riga, responsible for the concentration camps in Latvia.

Drechsler moved into quarters in Riga at the beginning of August 1941; at a time when the area had not yet been transferred from the military administration to the civil administration. A leading employee of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) responsible for civil administration , Otto Bräutigam , noted in his diary that this had resulted in conflicts with the military authorities. These disputes with the Wehrmacht , as they were particularly evident with Drechsler's immediate administrative superior, Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse , have never been completely resolved. From September 1941 to December 1944 he was formally General Commissioner of the General District of Latvia on the basis of an order of the RMfdbO.

After he was arrested by the British Army during the occupation of Lübeck, he committed suicide in Mölln on May 5, 1945 .

literature

  • Antjekathrin Graßmann (Ed.): Lübeckische Geschichte , 1989, p. 864 (note on p. 712). ISBN 3-7950-3203-2
  • Lübeck Volksbote from May 31, 1933
  • Joachim Lilla : The Reichsrat: Representation of the German states in the legislation and administration of the Reich 1919-1934 a biographical handbook with the involvement of the Bundesrat Nov. 1918 - Febr. 1919 and the State Committee Feb. - Aug. 1919. Düsseldorf: Droste 2006 ISBN 3 -7700-5279-X , pp. 126-127
  • Karl-Ernst Sinner: Tradition and Progress. Senate and Mayor of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck 1918-2007 , Volume 46 of Series B of the publications on the history of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck published by the Archives of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck , Lübeck 2008, p. 63 ff
  • Jörg Fligge : Lübeck schools in the "Third Reich": a study on the education system during the Nazi era in the context of developments in the Reich , Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2014, p. 847 (obituary)
  • Karl Heinz Gräfe: From the thunder cross to the swastika. The Baltic States between dictatorship and occupation . Edition Organon, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-931034-11-5 , short biography p. 432

Web links

Commons : Otto-Heinrich Drechsler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Announcement of Drechsler's function as Commissioner General  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Otto Dziobek: History of the Lübeck Infantry Regiment (3rd Hanseatic) No. 162 ; Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1st edition 1922.
  2. ^ A b c Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is heading for a catastrophe ..." The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and the German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 87, ISBN 3-89650-213-1 . (Source: Erich Stockhorst: Five thousand heads . Velbert 1967, p. 112.)
  3. ↑ Registration of Otto-Heinrich Drechsler in the Rostock matriculation portal
  4. ↑ a b Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is heading for a disaster ..." The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and the German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 132 f.
  5. ↑ Michael Buddrus: Mecklenburg in the Second World War , p. 1009. Edition Temmen , Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8378-4000-1 .
personal data
SURNAME Wood turner, Otto-Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mayor of Lübeck and Commissioner General of Latvia
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Luebz
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1945
Place of death Mölln