Rudolf Braschwitz

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Heinrich Rudolf Hermann Braschwitz (born January 18, 1900 in Steglitz ; † April 25, 1974 in Hagen , Westphalia) was a German detective and SS leader.

Live and act

Braschwitz grew up as the son of the city inspector ("Magstrats-Secretair") Heinrich Ferdinand Rudolf Braschwitz Senior and his wife Alma Emma Auguste, geb. Scheibenhuber, in Berlin-Steglitz. The parents had married on March 28, 1895. His brother was Günther Braschwitz (* 1896; † after 1973), who was also a detective and made it up to the head of the Karlsruhe criminal investigation department and the Salzburg criminal investigation department .

After attending school, he ended in June 1918 with the final examination, and participation in the First World War was one Braschwitz a volunteer corps to. He then studied dentistry at the University of Wroclaw . In the fall of 1920 he passed the preliminary dental examination and on January 21, 1923 the state dental examination. He then graduated with the promotion of Dr. med. dent. from. However, Braschwitz soon gave up the dental profession in order - as he later explained "out of inclination for this profession" - to join the police on May 15, 1923. After passing the criminal examination, he was appointed detective inspector on May 1, 1927 and appointed to the Berlin police headquarters, where he was assigned to the political department. During this time he was involved in the organization of bodyguard protection for the then Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann as well as investigating bomb attacks by right-wing groups, for example the investigation into the attack on the Reichstag in 1929.

Politically, Braschwitz was organized during the time of the Weimar Republic in the DDP , the SPD (from which he resigned in February 1932) and in the Association of Democratic Police Officers. According to his own statements, these memberships came about “on a higher order” and were based on his capacity as an official. Accordingly, Liang comes to the conclusion that these memberships were made for opportunism or for camouflage purposes. At the same time, he notes that Braschwitz had already been a contact and collaborator with the National Socialists in the Political Police before 1933 .

When the Secret State Police (Gestapo) was founded a few weeks after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933 at the instigation of the then Prussian Interior Minister Hermann Göring , Braschwitz was one of the first officials to be accepted into it: from February or March 1933 to April 1934 he was head of the inspection “Combating the illegal KPD and SPD movements” in the Gestapo. During this time, on the occasion of the Reichstag fire of February 1933 , Braschwitz was appointed head of the special commission entrusted with the criminal investigation of the fire by Göring, for whom he "repeatedly carried out special assignments [...]". In addition to Reinhold Heller , the four-member special commission also included the detective Helmut Heisig , who was the first to interrogate the alleged arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe , who was found in the Reichstag building, a few hours after the fire.

Politically, when Braschwitz joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2.633.264) on May 1, 1933, he officially moved to the National Socialists' camp. Later he also became a member of the SS (SS-No. 458.447), in which he achieved the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer and, according to a self-written curriculum vitae from 1942, he had been a supporting member since January 1, 1933, i.e. before the accession to power National Socialists, wants to have been.

In May 1934, shortly after Reinhard Heydrich took over the Secret State Police Office , Braschwitz was transferred to the criminal investigation department and was appointed head of the police control center in Berlin. In 1938 he was taken over to the Reich Security Main Office , where he had held the rank of criminal councilor since 1942. In 1938 he was promoted to the criminal councilor and in 1942 to the criminal director. In September 1938 and from August 1939 to November 1941 he was the Secret Field Police . According to his own information, Braschwitz was a member of the criminal police in Stettin from September 1942 to April 1944 and then spent a few months in Prague. However, post-war investigations showed that at the instigation of Arthur Nebe he had been assigned to the commander of the Security Police and the SD in Kiev since 1943 . In this position he worked as a close associate of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski with the "fight against partisans" in the Ukraine. In particular, he was responsible for tasks such as establishing the hiding places of partisans, questioning prisoners and the general intelligence gathering of information about the activities of the partisans and the organizational structure of the partisan groups. In the 1960s, West German authorities came to the assumption that Braschwitz had also been involved in the mass shootings of Jews in his area of ​​activity, but were unable to obtain any court-relevant evidence. He experienced the end of the war in Salzburg.

At the end of the war, Braschwitz was taken prisoner by the Americans. In February 1947 he was extradited to Czechoslovakia. After a year in captivity in the Czech Republic, he returned to West Germany in 1948. In 1950 he was denazified and classified in Category V. In October 1954 he got a job with the criminal police in Dortmund. In this position he finally rose to the rank of Deputy Head of the Dortmund Criminal Police with the rank of Criminal Counselor.

Fonts

  • Formation of facial cancers on lupus scars , 1923. (Dissertation)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Birth register of the registry office in Steglitz, no. 34/1900 and death register of the registry office in Hagen, number 870/1974
  2. ^ Marriage register, Standesamt Berlin 4b, No. 192/1895.
  3. ^ Hett: Reichstag, p. 260.
  4. ^ Hett. Reichstag, pp. 260f.
  5. ^ Hett: Reichstag, p. 260.
personal data
SURNAME Braschwitz, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Braschwitz, Heinrich Rudolf Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German detective and SS leader
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Steglitz
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1974
Place of death Hagen , Westphalia