Paul Poensgen

Paul Poensgen (born April 2, 1884 in Düsseldorf ; † December 21, 1945 in the special camp Jamlitz ) was a German lawyer and banker .

Life

Paul Poensgen came from the well-known Düsseldorf industrialist family Poensgen , which has its origins as the Reidemeister family in the Schleiden / Eifel area. He was the son of the commercial council and member of the board of the Düsseldorf Röhren- und Eisenwalzwerke AG , Emil Poensgen (1848–1907), and Anna Olga Frieda Wahnschaffe (1853–1929) and grandson of the Düsseldorf industrialist Albert Poensgen . After graduating from high school in Hagen in Westphalia in 1904 , he did a year of voluntary service in the army of the German Empire . He then studied law at the universities in Paris, Leipzig, Heidelberg, Berlin and Bonn. In 1908 Poensgen passed his first state examination in law at the Leipzig Higher Regional Court and received his doctorate a year later with a dissertation on the subject: " The possibility of applying § 254 BGB in the event of incidental liability ". Subsequently, Poensgen resigned from the civil service and initially took on a job at Barmer Bankverein , before he was appointed to the board of directors of the Diskonto-Gesellschaft in Berlin from 1911 to 1914 .

During the following First World War , Poensgen served as a soldier in the 2nd Badischer Dragoon Regiment No. 21 , most recently with the rank of Rittmeister . He then worked as a consultant for the Reichsstelle for the import and export of food and from 1920 for Deutsche Erdöl AG at its headquarters in Berlin. In 1926 he founded the securities bank "Paul Poensgen" in Berlin and had the goal of building up a second mainstay as a domain tenant between 1930 and 1933. In 1934 Poensgen became a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK). This protected him from having to join the SA as a reserve officer , since the NSKK was recognized as a “division of the party”. The NSDAP he never joined. With the beginning of the Second World War he was called up to the intelligence office abroad / defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) and assigned to the head of the foreign letter inspection office (ABP-3), Ulrich von Sell . Both shared their convictions as avowed monarchists, especially since von Sell himself was still in close contact with the family of the abdicated Emperor Wilhelm II in Haus Doorn and administered the Hohenzollern assets in Germany. Poensgen advised after von Sell was dismissed in 1942 on suspicion of employing “ Jewish infiltrated ” employees and having deferred “unjustifiably” workers as indispensable from military service and then arrested two years later as a supporter of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt the von Sell family on legal and testamentary matters.

After the Battle of Berlin , Poensgen was arrested on May 3, 1945 by a command of the SMERSCH , the military intelligence service of the Soviet Union . When he then wanted to have a certificate exonerating his former superior and Ulrich von Sell, who was released from prison by the National Socialists at the end of the war, against the accusation of National Socialist activity, he was also arrested by SMERSCH. After intermediate stops in the prisons of Lichterfelde, Beelitz and Werder, Poensgen, now together with von Sell, was sent to special camp No. 6 in Frankfurt / Oder, which was moved to Jamlitz in September 1945 . Paul Poensgen died there on December 21, 1945, five weeks after the death of Ulrich von Sell.

Paul Poensgen was married to Antonie Dorothea Berninghaus (* 1898), with whom he had daughters Anita (* 1922) and Renate (* 1938).

Literature and Sources

• Edmund Strutz (Ed.): German Gender Book , Volume 123, Verlag CA Starke, Glücksburg, Ostsee 1958, p. 292.

Web links

• Vita on the pages of political education Brandenburg, p. 170 (PDF; 858 kB)