Paul Körner (politician)

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Paul Koerner

Paul Körner , also often called Pilli Körner , (born October 2, 1893 in Pirna ; † November 29, 1957 in Tegernsee ) was a German politician (NSDAP) , member of the Reichstag and SS-Obergruppenführer . Körner was best known as the “right hand man” of Hermann Göring , for whom, as State Secretary, he was in charge of the Prussian State Ministry and the four-year plan authority.

Life

Körner was the son of a later general practitioner. He attended elementary school and the secondary school in Zittau , which he completed with the Abitur. He then completed a commercial apprenticeship to join his mother's company. From 1914 he took part in the First World War, in which he initially fought at the front with the Royal Saxon Field Artillery Regiment No. 28, before joining the General Staff from 1917. He was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class .

After his return from the war, Körner was a member of the Lützow Freikorps and studied law. He then worked briefly in a managerial position in the industry. In 1926 he met Hermann Göring for the first time, whom he had not met during the war. In 1932, influenced by Göring and after hearing speeches from Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels , he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 714.328). In February 1931 he also became a member of the SS (membership number 23.076), in which he was promoted to Obergruppenführer on January 30, 1942. In the next twenty years or so, Körner was one of Göring's closest collaborators, whom his mother had affectionately called Pili (from Paul). The important position within the hierarchy of the NSDAP that Körner developed in the following years can also be seen in the fact that, alongside Adolf Hitler, Göring and Wilhelm Frick , Körner was one of four NSDAP representatives who attended the meeting on March 22nd January 1933 in the villa of the champagne merchant Joachim von Ribbentrop . The NSDAP leadership and the representatives of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg agreed on the formation of a right-wing coalition government with Hitler as Chancellor, which was finally officially formed on January 30th.

After the formation of the Hitler government on January 30, 1933, Körner von Göring, who held the office of the Prussian Interior Minister in the government, was appointed as a personal advisor to the Prussian Interior Ministry. After Göring became Prime Minister of Prussia, Körner was appointed State Secretary of the Prussian State Ministry in April 1933 . In this capacity he was responsible for the routine management of ministerial affairs, which Göring was unable to carry out in detail due to the large number of his offices. As State Secretary, Körner also represented Prussia's interests in the Reichsrat until its dissolution in early 1934.

From March to November 1933 and from March 1936 to May 1945, Körner sat as a member of the NSDAP in the Reichstag , in which he represented constituency 2 (Berlin West).

In October 1936, Körner's competencies were expanded to include the office of State Secretary in the four-year plan authority , which was also subordinate to Göring . In this role he played a key role in making the German economy “ready for war”. Körner was involved in planning the hunger policy at Operation Barbarossa in 1941. On May 2, 1941, seven weeks before the German invasion of the USSR, he was a participant in a meeting between state secretaries and high Wehrmacht officers “about Barbarossa”, whose protocol states that “the war can only be continued if the entire Wehrmacht is fed from Russia in the 3rd year of the war. Without a doubt tens of millions of people will starve to death if we get what we need out of the country. ”After the start of the Russian campaign in 1941, Körner was entrusted as permanent representative of Göring with the management of the Eastern Economic Management Team.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Körner also held a number of leading positions in the German economy: he was chairman of the supervisory board of Reichswerke AG for ore mining and ironworks Hermann Göring , member of the supervisory board of Lufthansa AG , member of the "Reichsautobahn" company and a permanent member of the Reich Chamber of Labor . He was also a member of the Presidential Council of the German Research Foundation , the German Academy of Air Research and the Administrative Council of the Deutsche Reichspost .

After the war, Körner was arrested by the Allies . On March 12, 1946, Körner testified as a witness in the Nuremberg trial of the major war criminals. In April 1949 he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison in the Wilhelmstrasse Trial . He received the highest sentence of the seven state secretaries among the 21 defendants. Körner was found guilty on four counts: the crime against peace, looting, slave labor and his membership in criminal organizations. The sentence was reduced to ten years in prison by the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy on January 31, 1951 , before Körner left the Landsberg War Crimes Prison on December 16, 1951 as a result of an amnesty decision by the American Commander-in-Chief in Europe, General Thomas T. Handy was released. Thereafter, in 1953, Körner was interrogated as a witness in a Munich jury trial in connection with Ernst Röhm's murder, but no longer appeared in public as a pensioner.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paul Körner  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b cf. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 326 f.
  2. ^ A b Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon of the Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main, 1998, p. 272 ​​f.
  3. ^ Günter Neliba: State Secretary Paul Körner - Goering's assistant in the armaments and war economy . In: Ders .: State Secretaries of the Nazi Regime. Selected essays . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, p. 39-72, here p. 40 f.
  4. ^ Bernhard Uhrig: About the author . In: Monkey or God? Tectum - a publisher in the Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2019, ISBN 978-3-8288-7217-2 , p. 237-240 , doi : 10.5771 / 9783828872172-237 .
  5. ↑ Alex J. Kay : Starving as a Mass Murder Strategy. The meeting of the German state secretaries on May 2, 1941. In: Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte . Edited by Hans-Heinrich Nolte . Vol. 11, issue 1/2010, pp. 81-105, here pp. 81 f. (Quote) u. P. 95 (participants).
  6. ^ Günter Neliba: State Secretary Paul Körner - Goering's assistant in the armaments and war economy . In: Ders .: State Secretaries of the Nazi Regime. Selected essays . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, p. 57 ff.
  7. ^ Paul Körner (politician) in the online version of the edition files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
  8. ↑ Timeline . Robert H. Jackson Center, accessed November 18, 2018.
  9. ^ Günter Neliba: State Secretary Paul Körner - Goering's assistant in the armaments and war economy . In: Ders .: State Secretaries of the Nazi Regime. Selected essays . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, p. 68.
personal data
SURNAME Grains, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grains, pilli
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR and SS-Obergruppenführer
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Pirna
DATE OF DEATH November 29, 1957
Place of death Tegernsee