Philipp Auerbach

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Philipp Auerbach on February 27, 1948 during his testimony in the Wilhelmstrasse trial .

Philipp Auerbach (born December 8, 1906 in Hamburg , † August 16, 1952 in Munich ) was a survivor of the Holocaust and from 1946 to 1951 State Commissioner for the racially, religiously and politically persecuted in Munich. He was primarily responsible for making amends for former victims of the Nazi regime. He was also a member of the first board of directors of the Central Council of Jews in Germany . In 1952 he committed suicide after a conviction for embezzlement and fraud suicide ; In 1954 he was rehabilitated by an investigative committee of the Bavarian state parliament.

Life until 1933

Philipp Auerbach was born in 1906 as one of ten children to Jewish parents. His father, Aaron Auerbach, ran an import and export business for chemicals, ores and rare metals. Philipp's mother Helene b. Posen came from Frankfurt. The Auerbach family was one of the most respected Jewish families in Hamburg. Philipp attended the Talmud Torah school in Hamburg , completed a commercial apprenticeship in his father's company and attended the specialist college for chemists to become an industrial chemist. In 1927 his father granted him full power of attorney for the company. In 1929 he sent him to Spain. Auerbach successfully managed a mine from his father's company there for two years. During the Great Depression, Aaron Auerbach went bankrupt in 1931. Philipp Auerbach also lost his fortune. Auerbach was very interested in politics and was strongly committed to democracy and against the emerging National Socialism. He was a member of the Jewish community, the DDP and as the leader of the Reichsbanner-Kameradschaft 8, a sub-organization of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , which was largely made up of Jews . Auerbach could speak in a captivating way and gave speeches for democracy and against National Socialism even in distant corners of the republic. As such an exposed democrat and Jew, Auerbach was exposed to National Socialist repression immediately after the seizure of power .

Life from 1933

So he came into custody from February 1 to 11, 1933. In 1934 Auerbach fled to Belgium with his wife and daughter . Auerbach's siblings also fled Germany. For the first few years, Auerbach had to renew the residence permit for the young family every 6 months. Auerbach continued his education at the Meurisse Institute in Brussels and graduated as a chemist. Then he settled in Berchem and built a chemical factory and an import and export company, which at times together had up to 2,000 employees. With the delivery of gasoline, chemicals and the smuggling of interbrigadists , Auerbach supported the anti-fascists in the Spanish Civil War , to which many young German Jews belonged. On July 5, 1938, the Nazis murdered Auerbach's father in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp . In September 1938 Auerbach lost his German citizenship through expatriation . Since the Auerbachs were not Belgians, the family was stateless. On May 10, 1940, the day of the German attack on Belgium , Auerbach was arrested by Belgian authorities and deported to a camp in France as an enemy foreigner . He was interned in various camps such as Saint-Cyprien , Camp de Gurs and later Le Vernet . His wife and daughter were separated from Auerbach and escaped to the USA in 1941. In the St. Cyprien camp, Auerbach's organizational talent was again evident. He produced a medicine against the dysentery that was rampant there and got himself the contract to make soap from kitchen waste. In 1942 Auerbach was extradited to the Gestapo by the authorities in Vichy France . He was taken to the Alexanderplatz police prison and, according to his own statements, sentenced to death. According to him, the sentence was lifted in 1943. According to various historians, this information about a death sentence is doubtful. At times the Gestapo employed Auerbach as an interpreter. She tried in vain to win him over as an informant. In 1942/1943 his sister Mathilde was murdered in Auschwitz during Auerbach's detention . In January 1944 Auerbach was deported to Auschwitz. There he had to do forced labor and was seriously injured while working in a quarry. After that he was forced to work as a chemist. He fought the vermin in SS barracks in a department for pests. In January 1945 Auerbach was deported to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp and then to Buchenwald . On April 11, 1945, the camp was liberated by the Americans and Auerbach was used by them as a kind of civil administrator in the liberated camp. After the Americans left, Auerbach fled to Düsseldorf.

Life from August 1945

After an unsuccessful attempt to work as a chemist at the Henkel works, Auerbach tried to get a job in the Düsseldorf government district under the government president Eduard Sträter . Good contacts with the secret service of the British military government helped him . On September 1, 1945, he received a position as senior government councilor in the department “Welfare for politically, religiously and racially persecuted people.” The district president gave him the task of uncovering the past of former National Socialists and establishing a “political report”. Auerbach joined the SPD . An important goal for him was the securing of things for former National Socialists. Auerbach's work became known when, barely three weeks after his appointment, the still incumbent Lord Mayor of Düsseldorf, Wilhelm Füllenbach , had to resign because of his alleged involvement with the Nazis. In the press, Auerbach and his employees were soon seen as the “political commissioners” of the Düsseldorf administrative district. Auerbach's activity led to resistance in parts of the population. He got into real trouble when, without the knowledge of Strater, he began to investigate the past of Strater's superior, Chief President Robert Lehr . Strater accused Auerbach of having betrayed him. Even the British, who had appointed Lehr and trusted him, did not want such a “political report” and forbade Auerbach to carry out such investigations. Sträter withdrew Auerbach from his department and assigned him the refugee department, which was being set up. Auerbach nonetheless continued his research into former Nazis. He also had in mind that compensation payments to victims of National Socialism should be made from former Nazi assets. He was of the opinion that the Germans had no collective guilt. Therefore, the compensation is not to be paid by the German state, but by the perpetrators and from their inheritance or the returned property. On December 22, 1945, the British suspended Auerbach from his office in consultation with the district president and dismissed him on January 15, 1946. The military government gave various reasons for his dismissal. She once accused Auerbach of having a false doctorate; on the other hand, he had made false statements about his past and brought the military government into disrepute by his way of uncovering the National Socialist past; he had also exceeded his competencies, he was also undisciplined and insincere. The military government forbade him from any policy of criticism of the military government. According to von Auerbach's biographer Hannes Ludyga, the most important reason was Auerbach's attempt to research Lehr's past. Auerbach had obtained documents on his own initiative from the city archive. After his release, Auerbach tried harder to found and organize Israelite religious communities in the British zone. In December 1945 he founded the first regional association of Jewish communities. In March he was elected first chairman of the combined North Rhine and Westphalian regional association.

On October 10, 1946, with the approval of the American occupation authorities in Munich, again with untruthful information about personal matters, Auerbach became Bavarian State Commissioner for the racially, religiously and politically persecuted in the government of the emigrant Wilhelm Hoegner . The historian Elke Fröhlich, who criticizes Auerbach's untrue statements about his academic degree - Auerbach did not get his doctorate until 1949 - still praises him very much. She states that Auerbach was the right man in the right place and that he had unusual abilities to solve his task. Auerbach was generally responsible for making amends for those who had been persecuted by the Nazi regime. His range of tasks was extensive. He provided legal advice, removals, reintegration into the economy, compensation payments and refunds. He also helped with denazification by contributing to the arrests of former National Socialists . He helped over 80,000 Displaced Persons (DPs) emigrate and also helped to introduce laws such as the Federal Compensation Act .

Auerbach was extremely ambitious and wanted to rehabilitate all those persecuted. He also called for reparations (at the time controversial) for women who had been locked up in concentration camps because of sexual relationships with prisoners of war (he coined the term “erotically persecuted” for them), as well as for the Sinti and Roma, who were disreputable in society . His successor Karl Heßdörfer described him as a “choleric temperament, as a 'man with qualities': greedy for power, narcissistic, autocratic, but also helpful, good-natured and selfless. He was very popular with his employees (including non-Jewish people). He despised regulations of all kinds, his administrative style had a tendency towards chaos. ”His friend from the days of the Reichsbanner, Erich Lüth, called it an almost aggressive willingness to help that did not adhere to house rules .

In his dual role as a representative of the state and Jewish representative of the persecuted, he publicly criticized mild denazification judgments and anti-Semitic statements. He often exceeded his competence and area of ​​responsibility, polarized and made numerous opponents. Even during his time in concentration camps, unproven accusations of cooperation with Kapos were made against him. The association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime , of which Auerbach, who was a founding member, had long adhered to, intrigued against him after he resigned on May 12, 1949, because he believed it had been infiltrated by communists at that time. Auerbach had even been temporarily excluded from the SPD because of his support for the VVN. In June 1949, the VVN launched its first allegations of alleged irregularities in the State Compensation Office. Jewish associations took a stand against Auerbach, as he tried to prevent general reparations. Auerbach also became an enemy in large parts of the population and in the media . His main opponents were Attorney General Josef Müller and the American military authority. In a long campaign, Müller tried to force Auerbach out of his office. To this end, he had a public prosecutor collect all allegations against Auerbach from 1949 onwards. Müller also teamed up with the VVN, which led a targeted campaign against Auerbach from the summer of 1950. The state executive blackened Auerbach in secret messages to the government by denouncing "desperate conditions" and "mismanagement" in the compensation office. In the VVN newspaper Die Tat , Auerbach was accused of having performed “feeder services” in postponing reparation payments. Auerbach initially found support from the American military authorities, but after most of the DPs had emigrated, he was no longer needed. Josef Müller and the US military authorities were primarily responsible for the charges and the trial against Auerbach. In January 1951, a representative of the American Jewish Committee told the Bavarian State Commissioner, George N. Shuster, that Auerbach was a painful problem for Jewish organizations . George N. Shuster provided the actual impetus for the investigation into unknown persons.

The subject of the dissent was Auerbach's ideas of a Jewish future in Germany, which were incompatible with the mandate of the successor organization to preserve restituted property shares in their entirety for the Jewish people as a whole and not for the German-Jewish communities. Auerbach also contradicted the efforts of the JCR to get Jewish cultural property out of the country. Hannah Arendt's criticism of Auerbach is well known.

Litigation and Consequences

Auerbach was charged with three times embezzlement, two blackmail, five times infidelity, four times fraud, two times knowingly false assurances in lieu of oath, one unauthorized holding of an academic degree and one offense against the currency law. The central point of the indictment was the "Wildflecken" case, in which he allegedly tried to obtain 250,000 DM from the Stuttgart compensation authorities for 111 Jewish DPs who decided to emigrate - but which did not exist.

The judge and the public prosecutor had a National Socialist past. The judge Josef Mulzer was a former senior war judge and also former lawyer colleague of Josef Müller. One assessor was a former member of the SA . The public prosecutor and the psychiatric expert were former NSDAP members.

Auerbach was refused a testimony before the investigative committee and thus an opportunity was taken to present the political background to the case in public. The main witness against Auerbach was charged with perjury in a criminal case and later sentenced to one year in prison. The process was characterized by strong anti-Semitic contours. The lawyer from Auerbach received abuse letters with words like "you dirty, uncouth Jewish pig". In response to a complaint from the lawyer, the judge replied that he too had received letters with insults. When the lawyer referred to the concentration camp imprisonment of Auerbach, the judge replied that he himself had also been a Soviet prisoner of war. Immediately after the end of the Nuremberg trials , this important post-war trial in Germany was reported in the New York Times , among others .

The witness statements in the trial largely exonerated Auerbach; some witnesses to the crime revoked their statements. Nevertheless, Auerbach was found guilty of extortion attempts, bribery (in three cases), breach of trust (in four cases), attempted false affirmation in lieu of oath (in two cases), evasion of office and unauthorized use of an academic degree and a prison sentence of two and a half years and sentenced to a fine of 2,700 DM. Auerbach confessed to the illegal use of an academic degree. He rejected all other allegations and showed parallels to the Dreyfus affair . The night after the verdict was announced, Philipp Auerbach committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. In a suicide note, he wrote: “I have never personally enriched myself and cannot bear this dishonorable judgment. I fought to the last, it was in vain. "

His funeral triggered a major public appearance by the Jewish population of Munich. Thousands of participants marched on the coffin covered with the flag of the State of Israel. In speeches and on banners, charges were brought against the judges and against the constant opponent, Justice Minister Josef Müller ("Ochsensepp"). Police used baton and water cannon during riots.

The investigative committee set up by the Bavarian state parliament rehabilitated Auerbach in 1954. Josef Müller then had to resign from his position as Minister of Justice.

The Philipp Auerbach case clearly reflects the anti-Semitic resentment of the post-war period. The post-war anti-Semitism on the part of mass media , politicians and much of the population was projected to Auerbach. "Every crime committed by the Jew was like a justification for the crimes of the Nazis." Auerbach was honored only by the French government, which awarded him the highest order of the Resistance .

Fonts

  • The man who saw misery.
  • Forms of resistance in the 3rd Reich. University thesis, Erlangen 1948. Dissertation at the philosophical faculty v. August 22, 1949. ( http://d-nb.info/480193185 )

literature

radio

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Elke Fröhlich: Philipp Auerbach. 1988, pp. 315-320.
  2. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-8305-1096-9 , pp. 16-23.
  3. ↑ a b Erich Lüth: My friend Philipp Auerbach , 1958
  4. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-8305-1096-9 , p. 28.
  5. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 29.
  6. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 36.
  7. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 37.
  8. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 133.
  9. ↑ Constantin Goschler: Reparation: West Germany and the Persecuted by National Socialism (1945-1954) . Oldenbourg, Munich 1992, ISBN 978-3-486-55901-9 , pp. 157 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed April 24, 2016]).
  10. ↑ Gerhard Fürmetz: New insights into the practice of the early restitution in Bavaria: The Auerbach correspondence in the Bavarian State Archives and the files of the criminal case against the country's leadership compensation office from 1952 ; quoted from Karl Heßdörfer: The compensation practice in the field of tension between law, justice and Nazi victims ; in: Herbst / Goschler (Ed.): Wiedergutmachung , pp. 231–248, here: p. 233; Retrieved May 28, 2008
  11. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 106.
  12. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach (1906–1952): State Commissioner for Racially, Religiously and Politically Persecuted People . 2005, p. 108.
  13. ↑ a b Michael Brenner (Ed.): History of the Jews in Germany from 1945 to the present. Politics, culture and society . Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63737-7 , pp. 36 .
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar : The Auerbach Affair. In: Julius H. Schoeps : Life in the land of perpetrators. Jews in post-war Germany (1945–1952). Jüdische Verlagsanstalt Berlin, pp. 208-218, here: p. 212.
  15. ↑ Hannes Ludyga: Philipp Auerbach S. 129 BW-Verlag 2006 Berlin
  16. ↑ Michael Brenner (ed.): History of the Jews in Germany from 1945 to the present . Munich 2012, p. 37 .
  17. ↑ Hannes Ludyga, Philipp Auerbach , Berlin Science Publishers, 2005, pp 130-131, with sources.
  18. ^ Franz Menges: Müller, Joseph. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie 1997, p. 432.
  19. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: The Auerbach Affair , 2001, p. 217
  20. ↑ Werner Bergmann: Philipp Auerbach - reparation could not be achieved “by normal means”. In Claudia Fröhlich, Michael Kohlstruck (Hrsg.): Engagierte Democrats. Politics of the past with critical intent. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-89691-464-2 , p. 57.
personal data
SURNAME Auerbach, Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DDP, SPD), state commissioner and victim of anti-Semitism
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH August 16, 1952
Place of death Munich