Reinhard Gunzel

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Reinhard Günzel (born June 5, 1944 in The Hague , Netherlands ) is retired Brigadier General . D. the Bundeswehr . Until November 4, 2003 he was the commander of the KSK special unit . Federal Defense Minister Peter Struck ( SPD ) then retired Günzel without giving thanks, as Günzel praised a speech by Bundestag member Martin Hohmann that was criticized as anti-Semitic ( Hohmann affair ).

Life

Military career

After graduating from a humanistic grammar school in Gütersloh , Günzel joined the German armed forces in 1963 with the paratrooper battalion 261 in Lebach / Saar. After his time as a platoon driver , he was initially used as a telecommunications and technical officer. From 1973 to 1982 he was company commander at the Wildeshausen , Calw and Bruchsal locations , while studying history and philosophy at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen .

From 1982 he was deputy battalion commander of the paratrooper battalion 273 in Iserlohn , until in 1984 he transferred to the army officers' school in Hanover for two years as a teaching officer for tactics and lecture hall . From 1986 to 1989 he was commander of the paratrooper battalion 262 in Merzig , from 1989 to 1992 department head G AMF (L) on the staff of the 1st Airborne Division in Bruchsal.

In 1992 Günzel took over as commander of the 54th Jägerregiment in Trier .

In 1993 he switched to Airborne Brigade 26 in Saarlouis as deputy brigade commander and commander of brigade units . From 1995 he was in the rank of colonel brigade commander of the Panzergrenadierbrigade 37 in Frankenberg . The Panzergrenadierbrigade 37 also included the Mountain Infantry Battalion 571 in Schneeberg . After right-wing extremist tendencies in this association became known, the then Federal Defense Minister Volker Rühe (CDU) warned Günzel in 1997 and transferred him.

In 1998 he took part in a course at the NATO Defense College in Rome and moved to Hanover as deputy division commander and commander of the military area and division troops of the Military Area Command II / 1st Panzer Division .

On November 24, 2000 Günzel was appointed commander of the special forces command in Calw (KSK).

Early retirement

Federal Defense Minister Peter Struck (SPD) put the brigadier general into early retirement in 2003. In 2003, Günzel had praised a speech ( Hohmann affair ) given by the Bundestag member Martin Hohmann (CDU) on the occasion of the German Unity Day in a letter drawn up on Bundeswehr stationery . This speech was criticized as anti-Semitic by the Central Council of Jews in Germany and large parts of the political public and the media . Günzel thanked Hohmann for his "courage to truth"; Hohmann spoke "clearly from the soul of the majority of our people".

In a conversation with Junge Freiheit , Günzel said that his discharge from the Bundeswehr had been " systematically staged as an exorcism ". The Hohmann affair was an "unprecedented witch hunt".

Lecture tours and journalism

After his discharge from the Bundeswehr, Günzel began a lecture tour. Due to violent protests, some of the lectures could only be held under police protection, as was the case on December 9, 2004 in front of the Cheruscia fraternity in Dresden . The topic was: "The ethos of the officer corps using the example of the Hohmann / Günzel affair".

After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , Günzel speculated in an interview with Spiegel Online that there would be a bloodbath when the terrorist Osama bin Laden was arrested . He took part in an annual meeting of the order community of knight cross bearers (OdR) and gave a lecture at the right-wing extremist and NPD -near Freundeskreis Ein Herz für Deutschland e. V.

On May 22, 2004 he gave a lecture on “the ethos of the officer” for the Institute for State Politics (IfS), at its 7th “Berlin College” in cooperation with the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit in the Berlin Logenhaus in front of 600 listeners; in it he formulated arguments against an alleged " political correctness ". Günzel was referring to the "many taboos that forbid us to address historical truths" and the "compulsion to pay our respects to the ' singularity of the Holocaust '", as well as the "obligation to apply the statements made by the victorious powers in the Nuremberg Trials to everyone Recognize times ". Behind it are "prohibitions to think" which are the "intellectual death sentence for any free society".

The 'Institute for State Policy' and Junge Freiheit have distributed a recording of the Günzel lecture. In addition to Günzel, the video also features Karlheinz Weißmann (from IfS), Dieter Stein (editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit ) and Fritz Schenk , ex-editor of the ZDF magazine .

In 2004, a conversation between Günzel and the managing director of IfS Götz Kubitschek was published as a book.

In the book, Secret Warriors , which he in 2005 together with the GSG-9 founder Ulrich Wegener and the former Wehrmacht officer Wilhelm Walther in which the publishing complex of the extreme right-wing publisher Dietmar Munier belonging le Pour Merite Verlag published Günzel presented the Special Forces Command (KSK) and his soldiers in the tradition of the Wehrmacht special division " Brandenburg ". Günzel is said to have demanded "discipline as with the Spartans, the Romans or the Waffen-SS " from his troops during a combat exercise as early as 1995 .

Publications

  • Götz Kubitschek, Reinhard Günzel: And suddenly everything is political. In conversation with Brigadier General Reinhard Günzel . 2nd, revised edition. Edition Antaios , Schnellroda 2004, ISBN 3-935063-60-1 .
  • Reinhard Günzel, Ulrich K. Wegener , Wilhelm Walther: Geheime Krieger. Three German command units in the picture . Pour le Mérite , Selent 2005, ISBN 3-932381-29-7 .
  • Reinhard Günzel: Foreword . In: H. Hoffmann: The Shotgun. Weapon, tool, sports equipment . DWJ, Blaufelden 2005, ISBN 3-936632-51-0 .
  • Documentation: The Hohmann-Günzel case . VHS video or DVD. Berlin 2004.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Reinhard Günzel - critical general , Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 4, 2003, p. 4 ( online May 17, 2010)
  2. Matthias Meisner , Heike Kleffner : "Right networks in the state apparatus." In: dies. (Ed.): Extreme Security. Right-wing extremists in the police, the protection of the constitution, the armed forces and the judiciary. Freiburg, Herder 2019, p. 21
  3. Meisner / Kleffner, p. 21
  4. Susanne Koelbl: Bundeswehr Command Special Forces: "There would be a bloodbath" . Spiegel Online , September 21, 2001, accessed February 4, 2018.
  5. Anton Maegerle : From Obersalzberg to NSU : The extreme right and the political culture of the Federal Republic 1988-2013. Edition Critic, Berlin 2013, p. 292 f.
  6. A general changes the front from Barbara Bollwahn , TAZ May 24, 2004
  7. Jörg Kronauer: Right, two, three, four jungle.world, December 15, 2004
  8. And suddenly everything is political. [Götz Kubitschek] In conversation with Brigadier General Reinhard Günzel . Edition Antaios, Schnellroda 2004.
  9. ^ Bundeswehr elite troops: Ex-KSK boss praises Nazi special unit as a role model. In: Spiegel Online . February 24, 2007, accessed February 27, 2015 .
  10. Barbara Bollwahn: A general changes the front. In: The daily newspaper. May 24, 2004, p. 4, accessed February 4, 2018.
  11. Criminals as role models? Review in Der Spiegel 9/2007