Otto Nikolaus

Otto Nikolaus (born November 19, 1898 in Weingarten (Baden) , † August 16, 1950 in Karlsruhe ) was a German lawyer and political scientist and administrative officer. As President of the State Finance Office in North Baden from 1947 to 1950, Nikolaus campaigned for a decisive denazification of incriminated officials. He was also one of the advocates of keeping Baden as an independent federal state.

Life

Childhood and youth

Nikolaus grew up in simple circumstances as the eldest child of the farmer and cooper Anton Nikolaus and his wife Karoline. The family was influenced by Catholicism; Otto Nikolaus' godfather, Josef Albert Nikolaus, was "pastor and local researcher and took great care of the talented boy". From 1912 to 1916 Nikolaus attended grammar school in Rastatt, and in November 1916 he was drafted into service on the Western Front. In 1918, Nikolaus passed his Abitur while on vacation in the field.

Study and marriage

From 1919 to 1921 Nikolaus studied law and political science in Freiburg and Berlin. In Freiburg he belongs to the Catholic union Unitas , through which he met his future wife, Johanna Wissler from Heidelberg. In 1922 he received his doctorate from the political scientist Karl Diehl in Freiburg with a study on population-political views during the World War and entered the Baden Ministry of Justice. In 1927 he moved to the Reich Finance Administration . In 1931 he became a clerk at Baden's largest tax office, the Mannheim tax office, which was a kind of cadre forge in the financial district of Baden. A year later he was involved in the drafting of the commentary on the Baden property and trade tax law, which the historian Christoph Raichle evaluates as "an indication of an above-average talent".

Persecution in the "Third Reich"

With the beginning of the Nazi regime , according to Raichle, "a period of severe suffering" began for Nikolaus and his family. Nikolaus made no secret of his rejection of the regime and, among other things, campaigned for the Mayor Hermann Heimerich of the SPD from Mannheim, who was deposed in the spring of 1933 . As a “passionate democrat”, Nikolaus has repeatedly acknowledged the center and his Catholic faith. On October 1, 1933, Nikolaus was transferred to the Elbing tax office in distant, originally Protestant East Prussia, also because of protests from his Mannheim colleagues; in addition, a ban on his promotion was imposed on him (until 1945). The measures were justified "with negative statements about the new state" and with Nikolaus' membership in the center and in the Badenwacht. Nikolaus escaped release only because he was already a father of three at the time.

The separation from the family apparently affected Nikolaus health badly. He was therefore temporarily transferred back to Mannheim on February 1, 1934, where his colleagues protested again. The Gestapo also demanded that he be reassigned, as Nikolaus was “for the nat.soz. Movement is extremely dangerous ”.

In fact, on March 1, 1934, he was forced to move to the Hessian tax office in Friedberg, where Nikolaus was subjected to renewed persecution measures by his anti-Semitic head of office, Higher Government Councilor Hermann Sehrt. Above all, he complains that Nikolaus is “a strong supporter of the Catholic Church” and added that Nikolaus makes “a strong Jewish impression”. In the course of the investigation that has now been carried out, Sehrt even suggested that a "parentage report" be obtained from the so-called Reich Office for Family Research .

Due to the broken relationship with his head of office, Nikolaus was again transferred, this time to the tax office in Nuremberg-West. His non-conforming behavior was covered by his head of office, even though he was "a Nazi". In the meantime, Nikolaus was used as a war administrator in Greece. The assassination on 20 July 1944 to Nicholas with the words "Finally has a courage had" commented. Due to his non-conformist behavior, the wife Johanna Nikolaus in particular lived “always in fear of the arrest of the head of the family”.

post war period

As a non-party member, Nikolaus was temporarily appointed head of the last three tax offices in Nuremberg in 1945. In January 1947 he was classified as “not affected” by the Denazification Act by the Nuremberg Chamber of Arbitration.

In 1946 he was promoted to the Upper Government Council, which had been postponed since 1939 at the latest. On September 21, 1946, the President of the Baden District, Heinrich Köhler , offered him a managerial position in the financial administration of Baden. Nikolaus was finally able to work again “in his beloved home in Baden”. On February 18, 1947, Nikolaus initially took over the provisional management of the North Baden state tax office in Karlsruhe.

Chief Finance President in Karlsruhe

After a solemn inauguration by Köhler, Nikolaus officially took over the management of the state tax office in Karlsruhe on May 1, 1947; he thus assumed the position of chief finance president.

At the same time, Nikolaus was involved as an employee in the Baden ministry for political liberation (i.e. for denazification). As an "unusual document from an unusual man", Raichle describes the circular that Nikolaus sent on June 3, 1947 to all heads of his office. Nikolaus did not want to be satisfied with the decline in denazification and saw it as a danger to democracy. He therefore called on all employees of his authority to report activists and ideological drivers of the Nazi regime and to present reliable evidence against them. As “pillars of the Nazi regime”, they were to be punished by the ruling chambers . However, the support from the ranks of his employees was extremely low. “In response to his unusual endeavors”, Nikolaus was met with partly refusal and “partly pure hatred”. Nikolaus, who was perceived as a “nest-polluter”, had also received threatening letters.

Confrontation with the CFO a. D. Hans Dehning

Nikolaus's efforts to achieve a fairer and more sustainable denazification also included his appearance in the arbitration chamber proceedings against the former finance president and head of the personnel department of the regional finance office in Karlsruhe from 1937 to 1945, Hans Dehning . Although the public plaintiff had requested Dehning's classification as the “main offender” on June 3, 1947, he was initially only classified as a “minor offender”. The regional tax office in Karlsruhe, headed by Nikolaus, raised a decisive objection. According to Nikolaus, Dehning was "one of the most ruthless advocates of Nazi ideology" in Baden, and he was "one of the most ruthless advocates of Nazi ideology" and "put back those officials who were not ready to participate politically".

Perhaps because of this, the Ministry for Political Liberation overturned the verdict and referred the proceedings to the first instance again. For this second procedure, Nikolaus and his colleague, Oberregierungsrat Martin Fehrenbach, now sent "multiple" incriminating material to the ruling chamber. In fact, Dehning was now classified as an “incriminated person”, sentenced to three years in a labor camp and a fine of 8,000 RM. Since Nikolaus also appeared personally as an incriminating witness in the third hearing in March 1950, he finally incurred the irreconcilable hatred of Dehning, which "struck increasingly shrill and hateful tones". According to Raichle's assessment, Nikolaus' appearance as a witness against the "former activist from the financial administration" was "a rarity". In fact, Nikolaus' predecessor, the self-incriminated Chief Finance President Walther Weidemann, defended himself in a letter in front of Dehning and stylized him “practically a resistance fighter”. Nevertheless, Dehning was again classified as "burdened"; a noteworthy verdict in view of the then widespread tendency to classify even heavily burdened people as “followers”.

Commitment to the preservation of Baden as a federal state

A matter close to the heart of Otto Nikolaus was the preservation of Baden's state independence. Driven by the passionate commitment to Altbaden, Nikolaus apparently made himself unpopular with leading positions. Again and again Nikolaus appeared at "large gatherings, for example in the Mannheim winter garden" against the south-western state . With the death of Heinrich Köhler on February 6, 1949, "a large part of the political backing for the militant top civil servant" continued.

Sickness and death

The double struggle for a losing position was not without consequences for Nikolaus' health, which had already been affected by the persecution measures in the "Third Reich". In May 1949, Nikolaus suffered from a "considerable state of exhaustion with circulatory disorders". Since he did not spare himself and the attacks on him did not decrease, his health deteriorated noticeably in the summer of 1950. Asthma now appeared as a new complaint. At the beginning of June 1950, Nikolaus went to a sanatorium in the Palatinate. At the end of the month he hoped to be back on duty soon. It is apparently unclear whether this happened. Since August 16, 1950, Nicholas was considered "disappeared without a trace" after a walk. In the press it was speculated that he had "put an end to his life himself" because of his overwork. On August 25, 1950, the body was found in a forest near Karlsruhe.

Appreciation

The historian Christoph Raichle, who researched the history of the state financial authorities during National Socialism in a three-year project funded by the state finance ministry of Baden-Württemberg, sees in Nikolaus one of "the rare fighters against the general suppression and forgetting of the post-war years" and a "contentious democrat in difficult times ", To whom one should" keep an honorable memory ".

literature

• Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg under National Socialism, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2019. ISBN 978-3-17-035280-3

Individual evidence

1. ^ Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 298 .
2. ↑ Otto Nikolaus: The population-theoretical and population-political views during the war from the point of view of theoretical economics, inaugural dissertation for obtaining a doctorate in political science, presented to the law and political science faculty of the Albert Ludwig University . Freiburg im Breisgau 1922.
3. ^ ^{A b} Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 299 f .
4. ^ ^{A b} Christoph Raichle: The financial authorities in Baden and Württemberg . S. 300 ff .
5. ^ ^{A b} Christoph Raichle: The financial authorities in Baden and Württemberg . S. 302 f .
6. ^ Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 303 ff .
7. ^ Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 276 f .
8. ^ Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 278 f .
9. ↑ Lutz Niethammer: The Follower Factory. Denazification using Bavaria as an example . Bonn 1982.
10. ^ ^{A b} Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 305 f .
11. ↑ The financial administration under National Socialism: study presented. Retrieved December 10, 2019 . 
12. ^ Christoph Raichle: The financial administration in Baden and Württemberg . S. 306 f .