Paul Ritterbusch

Paul Ritterbusch, Rector of the CAU Kiel, in the late 1930s

Paul Wilhelm Heinrich Ritterbusch (born March 25, 1900 in Zschakau , † April 26, 1945 in Dübener Heide ) was a German lawyer and one of the most prominent Nazi science officials.

family

Paul Ritterbusch was a son of the master brickworker Hermann Ritterbusch from Zschakau (today Beilrode ) and a Protestant. His brother Fritz Ritterbusch was SS-Hauptsturmführer and member of the guards of several concentration camps , as well as the head of a camp complex in Trautenau - Parschnitz . Another brother, Willi Ritterbusch , was General Commissioner for Special Use in the Netherlands from 1943 to 1945.

His son was the documentary filmmaker Richard Ritterbusch (1930-2016).

Life and activity

Paul Ritterbusch took part in the First World War in 1918 as a musketeer in a machine gun unit . According to his own statements, he had been a staunch supporter of the National Socialist movement as a student since 1922. According to Otto Martin, Ritterbusch sympathized with the NSDAP from 1928 onwards. He studied law in Leipzig and Halle and was a member of the Alemannia Leipzig fraternity until 1932 . In 1925 he received his doctorate in Leipzig and completed his habilitation in 1929 .

In 1932 Ritterbusch joined the NSDAP . After the seizure of power, Ritterbusch was appointed full professor in Königsberg in 1933. From June 1933 he worked on the committee of the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig, which had been appointed by the Nazi Reichsschrifttumskammer . This committee drew up so-called black lists of literature to be destroyed. Paul Ritterbusch was responsible for the area of "Law, Politics, Political Science".

In 1935 Ritterbusch became a full professor for constitutional, administrative and international law at the University of Kiel as the successor of the democratically-minded international lawyer Walther Schücking, who had been deprived of his chair . This was preceded by the fact that the NSDAP and the national socialist-ruled ministries of education had tackled the expulsion of all university members who they qualified as Jewish or "politically unreliable" with the aid of the Law on Civil Servants. From 1933 onwards, posts were vacant to which reliable young National Socialists were appointed, who were to form the core of the Kiel “Shock Troop Faculty”. Ritterbusch benefited from Schücking's expulsion.

Publication on urban renewal, 1943

On January 14, 1936, Paul Ritterbusch gave a speech at a working meeting of the Reichsfachgruppe “Judges, Public Prosecutors and Rechtspfleger” under the direction of Reichsjuristenführer and Reich Minister Hans Frank, at which the question of the independence of the judge was discussed.

In June 1936 he gave a lecture on the occasion of the 550th anniversary of the University of Heidelberg, in which he justified the impeachment of university members for political and racial reasons under the National Socialist Act to restore the civil service . According to Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “rarely” has anyone “defended the so-called law for the restoration of the civil service (April 7, 1933) so vigorously and brutally, demanded its implementation so rigorously” as Paul Ritterbusch in this lecture.

In 1937 the young lawyer was appointed rector of this university, which in Nazi parlance was called Grenzlanduniversität in the northern region of Kiel (see also Kiel School ), and at the same time the Nazi lecturer association of the university. In addition, Ritterbusch held numerous other functions, for example, as the successor to Carl Schmitt's department head, he was the "university professor" in the Nazi legal guardian association , member of the committee for international law and the police committee of the Academy for German Law , which was subordinate to Hans Frank . In 1940, at the 275th anniversary celebration of Kiel University, Ritterbusch justified the terror and murders in the early years of National Socialism with the words " This absolute change in personnel precluded a steady, steady development in the first years after 1933 ".

From 1939 on, Ritterbusch led the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung (RAG) as the successor to the agricultural scientist Konrad Meyer .

Ritterbusch received his most important task in 1940 as chairman of the Reich Ministry of Science for the war effort of the humanities ( Aktion Ritterbusch ) - initially part-time. In 1941 this became a full-time job and Ritterbusch received the rank of ministerial director in the Reich Ministry of Education as deputy head of department . For this activity he was released from military service at the front.

In 1941, Ritterbusch gave up the rectorate and his chair in Kiel and took over a chair at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin - already active in Berlin since 1941 . In 1942 he took over the post of director of the "International Academy for Political and Administrative Sciences" (President: Wilhelm Stuckart ). Ritterbusch was co-editor of the journal for international law and editor of the journal Raumforschung und Raumordnung . Monthly publication of the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Raumforschung with the chief editor Frank Glatzel , published by Verlag Vowinckel , Heidelberg, since 1937.

During the war, criticism of the Ritterbusch campaign grew in the NSDAP . Since 1943, the cooperation with the Research Association of German Ahnenerbe of the SS has been intensified. In July 1944, Ritterbusch was ousted at the instigation of the SS. He left the ministry in September 1944. Due to the war, his institute for constitutional and administrative law was relocated from Berlin to Wittenberg . In Pretzsch / Elbe , where Ritterbusch had lived with his family since 1941, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as Volkssturmführer at the end of 1944 .

Ritterbusch committed suicide at the end of the war as the Allies approached. He died on April 26, 1945.

literature

Christoph Cornelißen , Carsten Mish (ed.): Science at the limit. The University of Kiel under National Socialism (= communications from the Society for Kiel City History Volume 86). Klartext Verlag, Essen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8375-0240-4 .
Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 140.
Frank-Rutger Hausmann : German humanities in the Second World War. The "Ritterbusch Action" (1940–1945) . 3rd, extended edition, Synchron, Heidelberg 2007, pp. 30–48, ISBN 978-3-935025-98-0 .
Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
Martin Otto: Ritterbusch, Paul Wilhelm Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 668-670 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Literature by and about Paul Ritterbusch in the catalog of the German National Library
Newspaper article about Paul Ritterbusch in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

↑ The place of birth Zschakau, also recorded in the NDB, is archivally documented in the church book of Beilrode and the register of Ritterbusch in the Leipzig University Archives. The place of birth Werdau (Torgau) , which can occasionally be found (Cornelißen) , can only be documented as the place of residence of the parents.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Martin Otto: Ritterbusch, Paul Wilhelm Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 668-670 ( digitized version ).
↑ Nieuwe Venlosche Courant v. December 13, 1943, digitized .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 500.
^ ^A ^b ^c ^d Frank-Rutger Hausmann: German Spiritual Science in the Second World War. The "Ritterbusch Action" (1940–1945) . 3rd, extended edition, Synchron, Heidelberg 2007, pp. 30–48.
↑ Quoted from Bernd Rüthers : Entartetes Recht. Legal teachings and crown lawyers in the Third Reich. CH Beck, Munich 1988, p. 42.

personal data
SURNAME	Ritterbusch, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ritterbusch, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German lawyer and National Socialist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 25, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH	Zschakau
DATE OF DEATH	April 26, 1945
Place of death	Düben Heath

[1] The place of birth Zschakau, also recorded in the NDB, is archivally documented in the church book of Beilrode and the register of Ritterbusch in the Leipzig University Archives. The place of birth Werdau (Torgau) , which can occasionally be found (Cornelißen) , can only be documented as the place of residence of the parents.

[NDB-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Martin Otto: Ritterbusch, Paul Wilhelm Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 668-670 ( digitized version ).

[3] Nieuwe Venlosche Courant v. December 13, 1943, digitized .

[Ernst_Klee(2003),_S._500-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 500.

[Hausmann(2007),_S._30-48-5] A ^b ^c ^d Frank-Rutger Hausmann: German Spiritual Science in the Second World War. The "Ritterbusch Action" (1940–1945) . 3rd, extended edition, Synchron, Heidelberg 2007, pp. 30–48.

[6] Quoted from Bernd Rüthers : Entartetes Recht. Legal teachings and crown lawyers in the Third Reich. CH Beck, Munich 1988, p. 42.