Otto Meyer-Tonndorf

Eduard Karl Otto Meyer-Tonndorf (* 12. February 1902 in Mainz , † the thirtieth March 1971 in Wittlaer ) was a German jurist and district administrator of the district of Bitburg .

Life

Origin and education

Otto Meyer-Tonndorf was a son of the graduate engineer Carl Eduard Meyer-Tonndorf (died 1929) and his wife Else, née. Tonndorf. After attending a humanistic grammar school in Stuttgart ( matriculation examination 1920), he began studying law in 1921 at the universities of Tübingen , Freiburg and Göttingen .

He passed his first legal examination on April 20, 1929 at the Higher Regional Court of Celle and, after continuing his legal training in the preparatory service, as a court trainee in Kassel, the second legal examination on July 14, 1933. After his appointment as court assessor (August 1, 1933), initially from August 1 to September 30, 1933 as a judge at the 2nd civil division of the Kassel Regional Court and then from October 1 to December 1933 at the Kassel Public Prosecutor, he resigned on December 7, 1933 as an assistant in the service of the Reich Ministry of Economics (credit department), where he was appointed government assessor on May 1, 1936.

Meyer-Tonndorf became a member of the NSDAP in 1933 while at the regional court in Kassel . Roland Freisler , who was the direct supervisor at the time, was responsible for the early joining . According to Meyer-Tonndorf's own statement from later times, Freisler had put the trainee lawyers and assessors under him more or less under pressure to become part of the "movement". In the mid-1980s his widow reported about her husband's relationship with Freisler: "He hated him profoundly."

1936 to 1945

In the same position he moved to the District Office in Kassel on July 1, 1936 , whose permanent representative he was at the same time, and finally on May 1, 1937 as a department head to the government in Wiesbaden , where he was appointed to the government council on October 1, 1939 .

As the successor to Albert Gilles , District Administrator of the Bitburg district, who was put into temporary retirement on November 4, 1938 , Meyer – Tonndorf was finally appointed as his provisional successor on April 5, 1939. At Gille's departure, Councilor Wittich from Allenstein briefly took over the district office before Meyer-Tonndorf took up the service on April 17, 1939.

The Bitburg district and its predominantly rural population found themselves increasingly troubled due to its border location with Luxembourg and the construction of the western wall along its western border. The imminent war was casting its shadow. “Many up to now honest citizens” in the Eifel villages were now “misled” by the new rulers and their propaganda. Meyer-Tonndorf, himself a party member, joined a district as district administrator in which the disputes between the Bitburg NSDAP district leader Johann Jakobs and his predecessor Albert Gilles already contributed to his departure. Jakobs, obviously repeatedly interfered in the local administrative processes, probably also because he would have liked to become district administrator himself. As a result, there was another argument between the new district administrator and Jakobs. Already in January 1940 Gustav Simon , Gauleiter of the Gau Moselland , asked the Prussian Ministry of the Interior to remove Meyer-Tonndorf from his position in Bitburg and to swap it with the Saarburg district administrator, Norbert Hering , which was refused in Berlin. Simon therefore turned to Berlin again in May 1940, this time with the demand for the final transfer: "He must get out of the Gau (Moselland)". The differences between the party and the district administrator had become too great. While no details were entered into the files, it is said that Meyer-Tonndorf protested against the demanded to leave the church and that it still refused to act as a party judge in the district. He also refused to join the SS .

The campaign in the west that began in May 1940, evacuations of the population in the border area and the conversion of local agricultural production to war economy recurrently created problems that contributed to the delay in Meyer-Tonndorf's implementation. While his final appointment as district administrator did not materialize, the Gauleiter's wish came true after a two-year term of office.

Formally released from office as district administrator on June 17, 1941, Meyer-Tonndorf had already been transferred to the senior presidium in Katowice on May 1, 1941, where he worked in the economic, municipal and transport department. The Koblenz Gauleitung (Moselland) was still trying to prevent his upcoming promotion on August 26, 1942 to the Upper Government Council by telegraphing to Kattowitz that such a promotion was undeserved “because he [Meyer-Tonndorf] in Bitburg was even allocating petrol to the clergy let ”. The notice, however, added to the amusement in Katowice. Rather, Meyer-Tonndorf met Hans Faust there as the regional president of the senior council. Faust had previously been Meyer-Tonndorf's supervisor from November 1938 as Vice President of the Government in Wiesbaden and knew him from the six months he worked there together until he moved to Bitburg. In contrast to the Koblenz Nazi Gauleitung, Faust took the view "that the capable civil servant in the Rhineland was treated badly unjustifiably because the Ministry of the Interior let him down against the district leader [Johann Jakobs]". Meyer – Tonndorf remained a member of the government in the Silesian Katowice until the end of the war on May 8, 1945 , while the latter itself ultimately evaded into Czechoslovakia .

During his service in Silesia Meyer-Tonndorf made acquaintances with members of the resistance . Among scored his colleague Count Matuschka , who in the wake of the assassination on 20 July 1944 was sentenced on 14 September 1944 by Roland Freisler to death and hanged on the same day and the lawyer and former professor of public law at the University of Greifswald , Arnold Köttgen (1902-1967).

At lunchtime Meyer-Tonndorf went to Katowice for a “long time” with the government councilor Arved Hohlfeld (died July 17, 2003 in Berchtesgaden ) and later Vice-President of the Church External Office of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), who has been a member of the Confessing Church since 1937 Hohlfeld was not a victim of persecution after the assassination attempt in 1944. After the end of the war in 1945, Hohlfeld campaigned for Meyer-Tonndorf to be re-employed, which initially remained unsuccessful. Hohlfeld affirmed in 1947:

“He [Meyer-Tonndorf] often showed his political views. He was not only known for his critical and often careless remarks, but also his outward appearance on duty, without a party badge and with a carefree good morning, had a very irritating effect on certain people. As a result, his relationship with the party did not improve in Katowice either. She regarded him with considerable suspicion. For this reason he was on extremely tense feet with the only official of the authority, who sat in it as a party exponent, and he had a violent clash with him over such things that the district president himself had to intervene arbitrarily. "

- Arved Hohlfeld

1945 to 1971

With the end of the Second World War in mind, Meyer-Tonndorf had his wife, who was already seriously ill, and their four small children together in Gieselwerder in Northern Hesse. The NSDAP local group leader then described Meyer-Tonndorf as “deserters and defeatists” and referred the matter to the “Gaugericht”. Thanks to the intercession of the regional council, his actions went off lightly for him.

At the end of the war Meyer-Tonndorf was the representative of the civil administration on the territory of Czechoslovakia , in the leadership of Army Group Center under Ferdinand Schörner . Without a uniform, he managed to break away in May 1945 and reach his family on foot. Due to lack of employment, positions that corresponded to his previous occupation were not available or available at the moment, he hired himself as a forest worker.

From 1948 to 1950 he worked in a law firm and from July 1948 to October 31, 1950 as a department head at the Kassel Chamber of Commerce and Industry . Repeated attempts to return to the civil service were unsuccessful. Unpleasant party member during the Nazi era, he was now undesirable because he was previously a party member. Former colleagues who could be attributed to the German resistance called on him several times. On the other hand, he is said to have met the former Bitburg NSDAP district leader Jakobs in Cologne , who in turn asked him to do something for him - but according to tradition, Meyer-Tonndorf simply left him standing. On November 1, 1950, Otto Meyer-Tonndorf joined the administrative court in Düsseldorf as an assistant judge . Appointed on that from August 1, 1951 Landesverwaltungsgerichtsrat, he joined in February 1964 in the retirement .

family

Eduard Karl Otto Meyer – Tonndorf married Agnes Hildegard Lautze (born July 21, 1908 in Kassel; died July 8, 1947 in Gieselwerder) on March 31, 1934 in Kassel, daughter of Hugo Lautze and Sophie Lautze nee. Breitbarth from Kassel and Hertha Maurer from Vienna in 1948 in Gieselwerder . The latter had taught as a teacher at the elementary school in Bitburg from 1938 to 1940. The first marriage had four children, the second a fifth (three sons and two daughters), including Peter Meyer-Tonndorf, who was the board member of KSV Hessen Kassel in the 1980s . Otto Meyer-Tonndorf died in 1971 after a severe sick bed.

Web links

• Entry on Otto Meyer-Tonndorf in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database

literature

• Thomas Klein : Senior officials in the general administration in the Prussian province of Hessen-Nassau and in Waldeck 1867-1945 (= sources and research on Hessian history. Vol. 70). Historical Commission for Hesse, Darmstadt 1988, ISBN 978-3-88443-159-7 , p. 352.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Horst Romeyk: Meyer-Tonndorf, Otto . In: Heinz Monz (Ed.): Trier biographical lexicon , Trier Wissenschaftlicher Verlag 2000, ISBN 3-88476-400-4 , p. 297.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} 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. 629 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Peter Neu: District administrators of the Bitburg and Prüm districts. Otto Meyer – Tonndorf - District Administrator in Bitburg 1939–1941 in: District administration Bitburg-Prüm (Ed.): Heimatkalender 1986 Bitburg 1985, p. 47–50, here p. 48.
4. ↑ According to Neu 1986, p. 48 Appointment to the government council on December 15, 1937
5. ^ 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. 469 f .
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Peter Neu: District administrators of the Bitburg and Prüm districts. Otto Meyer – Tonndorf - District Administrator in Bitburg 1939–1941 in: District administration Bitburg-Prüm (Ed.): Heimatkalender 1986 Bitburg 1985, p. 47–50, here p. 49.
7. ↑ According to Peter Neu, p. 49, Köttgen was also involved in the preparations for the assassination.
8. ↑ Legal Vice President i. R. of the EKD Foreign Office died. Arved Hohlfeld shaped the period during which the international work was being set up on ekd.de, from July 29, 2003, accessed on February 22, 2020.
9. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Peter Neu: District administrators of the Bitburg and Prüm districts. Otto Meyer – Tonndorf - District Administrator in Bitburg 1939–1941 in: District administration Bitburg-Prüm (Ed.): Heimatkalender 1986 Bitburg 1985, p. 47–50, here p. 50.
10. ↑ Neu 1986, p. 50 writes: in the function of the judicial officer.
11. ↑ registry office Gieselmann history, dying Eben Register 1947 (HStAMR Best. 980 no. 2717) Urk. 18 of 9 July 1947 digital
12. ^ Peter Neu: District administrators of the Bitburg and Prüm districts. Otto Meyer – Tonndorf - District Administrator in Bitburg 1939–1941 in: District administration Bitburg-Prüm (Ed.): Heimatkalender 1986 Bitburg 1985, p. 47–50, here p. 47.