Otto Kunze

The title of this article is ambiguous. For German politicians and members of the Prussian state parliament, see Otto Kunze (politician) .

Otto Kunze in the uniform of an SA standard leader.

Otto Alfred Ludwig Theodor Kunze (born August 12, 1895 in Gießen ; † after 1934) was a German SA leader and functionary .

Life and activity

Kunze was a son of Dr. Karl Kunze. From 1914 to 1918 Kunze took part in the First World War. In 1919 he retired from the army with the rank of first lieutenant.

In the 1920s, Kunze worked temporarily as managing director of DEROP (German-Russian sales company for Russian oil products). He lost this position around 1929, allegedly due to his activity in right-wing circles. Instead, he became the managing director of an economic association of car owners, which procured its members cheaper purchases of all car accessories and supplies.

At the end of the 1920s, Kunze joined the Nazi movement. Around 1930 he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 420.087) and their motorized association, the NSKK : As a member of Motorstandarte 8 in Kassel , Kunze achieved the rank of NSKK squad leader in June 1931 and that of NSKK senior squad leader on January 19, 1932.

Because of Kunze's special knowledge as an economic functionary, the party's Sturmabteilung (SA) had been very interested in using him for their purposes since 1931. In the spring of 1933 at the latest, he moved from Kassel to Berlin , where he was transferred to the SA with the rank of SA standard leader and assigned to the leadership of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg.

In April 1933, the Berlin-Brandenburg SA group set up a so-called “Arbeitsbeschaffungszentrale” (ABZ), which Kunze was commissioned to manage. This headquarters, which was located in the Berlin town hall , had the task of finding job positions for unemployed SA and SS members . The creation of jobs for "old fighters" , i. H. Persons who have been active in the Nazi movement for many years, as well as married SA members. The SA people placed by Kunze's office were mainly housed in municipal and state-owned companies or in private companies under state supervision (especially in civil engineering). In addition, a greater number of people were brought into employment in industry. Kunze organized the campaign of the Berlin SA leadership, officially referred to as a "special action", to recruit as many unemployed as possible from the ranks of the SA in the form that he instructed the Berlin SA standards to register the unemployed in the units under them and then forward the relevant data to him for the central coordination of the job placement. Since the end of June 1933, open jobs were then regularly reported in standard and storm ban orders. These were mostly in the manual sector (e.g. carpenters, locksmiths, lathe operators), but also concerned positions for activities such as bank clerks, clerks or chemists. Kunze's office was praised in public as an exemplary achievement and proof of the social orientation of the Nazi state, which was then developing. An article about the position in the Völkischer Beobachter of June 29, 1933, celebrated it in the headline as “socialism of action”. As early as October 1933, the ABZ was wound up in its existing form or organized in a new form: the central office in the town hall was closed at the instigation of the Supreme SA leadership in Munich . Instead, SA shop stewards were sent to all nine Berlin employment offices. The card index created by Kunzes ABZ was split up and set up as a special card index at the employment offices in order to be able to protect the respective unemployed SA men locally from there.

Since May 13, 1933, Kunze also held the position of SA commissioner as a liaison leader of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg to the Berlin mayor Heinrich Sahm . By the Führer order No. 14 of June 1, 1933, Kunze was formally transferred to the Berlin Brandenburg group with effect from May 11, 1933, where he was relieved of his position as Oberstaffelführer of the Hessen-Nassau subgroup.

On October 18, 1933 Kunze - who at that time held the position of SA-Standartenführer z. b. V. held the staff of the Berlin Brandenburg group - at his own request from the SA, releasing his previous position and rank.

In the course of the Nazi regime's wave of political cleansing in the summer of 1934, Kunze was erroneously reported as executed in the foreign press. He survived the action, but in the aftermath of the action was taken as a follower of the disgraced and shot Berlin SA chief Karl Ernst on July 23, 1934 by the district leader of District I of the Berlin NSDAP on the grounds that he had behavior that was harmful to the party and the Corruption found guilty of being excluded from the NSDAP. The Berlin district court finally withdrew this measure after Kunze had challenged it and reduced the sentence to a simple reprimand while remaining in the party.

During the Second World War Kunze led units of the so-called "Wehrmannschaften", which were part of the administration of the German-occupied areas of Eastern Europe, in the area of ​​Schools- Riga - Kovno , under the aegis of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski in the "fight against gangs" - repression of the occupying forces and administration, in the course of which numerous partisans and other people were shot in Eastern Europe, including the company "Cottbus" (May 20 to June 23, 1943).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth register for Gießen for the year 1895: birth entry No. 1895/526.
2. ^ Martin Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist "seizure of power" in Berlin and Brandenburg , Berlin 2005, p. 276 u. 279.
3. ^ Martin Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist "seizure of power" in Berlin and Brandenburg , Berlin 2005, p. 262.
4. ↑ Führer order No. 14 of June 1, 1933, p. 6.
5. ↑ Leader's Order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 19, p. 11.
6. ↑ Discussion of these events in the session of August 14, 1946 of the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals: See morning session of August 14, 1946 .