Richard Wendler

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from left to right: Ernst Kundt , Ludwig Fischer , Hans Frank , Otto Wächter , Ernst Zörner , Richard Wendler

Richard Wendler (born January 22, 1898 in Oberndorf , † August 24, 1972 in Prien am Chiemsee ) was a German lawyer , SS leader and National Socialist politician . From 1933 to 1941 he was Lord Mayor of the City of Hof (Saale) and from 1942 Lieutenant General of the Police and SS Group Leader .

Life

Wendler was the son of a border guard who was deployed on the border with Austria. He attended elementary school in Bad Reichenhall and the humanistic Ludwigsgymnasium in Munich . Wendler was a soldier from October 1916 to 1918 during the First World War , most recently with the rank of NCO. From spring 1919 he belonged to several voluntary corps and took part in the fight against the Munich Soviet Republic in 1919 and in the suppression of the Ruhr uprising in 1920 . From 1919 to 1922 he studied law and political science at the University of Munich , where he also obtained a Dr. jur. received his doctorate . From 1924 he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart and finished his studies with the second state examination in 1925. He then worked as a lawyer in Deggendorf .

Wendler, who founded the NSDAP local group in Deggendorf in 1927 , joined the NSDAP ( membership number 93.116) and the SA at the beginning of July 1928 . At the beginning of April 1933 he switched from the SA to the SS as Sturmbannführer (SS No. 36.050). He was appointed to the Bavarian Political Police (BPP) by the Reichsführer SS . In April 1934 he was appointed SS-Obersturmbannführer, in April 1935 as SS-Standartenführer and in 1941 as SS-Gruppenführer. In early August 1941 he was promoted to major general of the police and SS brigade leader. On July 21, 1943 he was appointed SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police.

From October 1933 he was Lord Mayor of Hof. Wendler resigned from the office of Lord Mayor in 1941. In the latter function he was u. a. involved in the demolition of the synagogue in Hof during the November pogroms in 1938 .

His sister Mathilde (called Hilde ) married Gebhard Himmler in 1926 , the older brother of the Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler , whom she had known from the Academic Choral Society since 1919 .

After the beginning of the Second World War , Wendler became city commissioner in the Polish city of Kielce and from the beginning of November 1939 city governor in Czestochowa . In 1940 he took over the same position in Radom and in this position he arranged a. a. the construction of a ghetto in Czestochowa . From January 31, 1942 to May 26, 1943 he was governor of the Krakow district . After that he was governor of the Lublin district until July 22, 1944 , after which he fled from the advancing Red Army . During this time he sent his brother-in-law Heinrich internal information about the governor general Hans Frank and other administrative officials.

In May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the United States and was given the false name Kummermehr . For this reason, Wendler was not transferred to Poland, but released from Allied internment in September 1945 . Then he hired himself as a construction worker. He was arrested on August 3, 1948, and sentenced to four years in a labor camp as the "main culprit" in the tribunal proceedings on December 22, 1948. In April 1949 the sentence was reduced to three years in prison. During the trial, Wendler denied having known anything about the aim of the deportations of the Jews. On September 12, 1952, he was graded into the group of "burdened". By a pardon from the Bavarian Prime Minister Wilhelm Hoegner , he was classified as a “fellow traveler” on October 28, 1955 and was thus able to get his license to practice as a lawyer in Munich again from 1955. Since July 1, 1953, he had worked for a lawyer for the legal protection office of the Evangelical Relief Organization, where he stood up for German war criminals captured in Poland. In the investigation of the public prosecutor's office in Hof he was put out of prosecution in 1951, the proceedings of the StA Munich were discontinued in 1966, another investigation on October 5, 1970.

Nazi awards

literature

  • Jörg Wurdack: Dr. Richard Wendler; Lord Mayor Hofs and accomplice in the “final solution” in occupied Poland. In: Miscellanea curiensia. VII, Hof 2008, ISBN 978-3-928626-57-6 , pp. 99-133. (56th report of the North Upper Franconian Association for Natural, Historical and Regional Studies)
  • Katrin Himmler , The Himmler Brothers. A German family story. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16686-1 .
  • Bogdan Musial : German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-04208-7 . (2nd edition, Harrassowitz, 2004, ISBN 3-447-05063-2 )
  • Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945 . Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01700-X (publications of the Institute for Contemporary History , Sources and Representations on Contemporary History, Volume 20).
  • Markus Roth: Gentlemen. The German District Chiefs in Occupied Poland - Career Paths, Rule Practice and Post-History. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0477-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katrin Himmler: The Himmler Brothers. A German family story. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, p. 217.
  2. ↑ a b c d Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and the persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement . Wiesbaden 1999, p. 398.
  3. ↑ a b Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (Ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945. Stuttgart 1975, p. 955.
  4. ↑ Katrin Himmler: The Himmler Brothers. A German family story. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, p. 218
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 668.
  6. ↑ Short biography with Markus Roth: Herrenmenschen. Göttingen 2009, p. 510.
personal data
SURNAME Wendler, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German National Socialist politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberndorf
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1972
Place of death Prien am Chiemsee