Rudolf grief

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Rudolf Kummer (born April 28, 1896 in Nuremberg , † April 6, 1987 ibid) was a German librarian and cultural politician during the Nazi era .

Life

The son of the businessman and bookseller Max Kummer and his wife, b. Gößelein, attended the New High School in Nuremberg until June 1915. As a soldier in World War I , he was released on April 1, 1920 as first lieutenant in the infantry. He was awarded the EKI and II and the Bavarian Order of Military Merit IV class . He was wounded several times and was therefore later unable to take part in the SA sports badge events. After the end of the war he joined the Epp Freikorps in 1919 and participated in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . During his studies he became a member of the German-Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund , the military association Reichsflagge and was temporarily leader of the student battalion in Erlangen .

Kummer studied oriental studies, economics and law at the University of Erlangen and, after completing his doctorate, was on the subject of circumvention transactions in buying and selling according to Al-Hassaf's kitab al-kijal ral-mabaug and a specialist library examination with grade II at the Bavarian State Library since the spring of 1923 who hired him because of his language skills, especially Turkish and Arabic. During his studies he became a member of the Association of German Students in Munich . In 1924 he and Elisabeth Hegen married.

He joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1922 and was a participant in the Hitler Putsch in 1923 and therefore later a blood medalist (No. 113). After the NSDAP was banned, he became a member of the Frontbann in 1924 and after its dissolution of the Tannenbergbund , which brought him to court proceedings in 1934, and only rejoined the NSDAP on November 1, 1931 ( membership number 707.993), but now also the SS (SS- No. 272 ​​466), which promoted him to Obersturmbannführer on November 9, 1940 , as well as the SD , for which he worked as an undercover agent.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in the German Reich in January 1933, he was responsible for the dismissal of politically unpopular and Jewish employees, including Max Stefl and the Jewish senior librarian Benno Ziegler, as the district head of the Civil Service Association at the State Library . When Librarians of the Association of German Librarians in Darmstadt sorrow was in the conformist elected club committee.

In May 1933 he was seconded to Berlin to work with Achim Gercke in the newly created "Office of the Expert for Race Research at the Reich Ministry of the Interior". Before Gercke's Jewish files with around 70,000 entries were handed over to the NSDAP in 1932 , Kummer had examined them. In September 1934, the Bavarian Minister of Education, Hans Schemm, placed him at the side of the director of the State Library, Georg Reismüller, as an “ideological advisor”. However, it was not his co-intriguer Georg Leidinger who was appointed director of the State Library , but rather the “old fighter” Rudolf Buttmann , by order of Hitler .

On the instructions of the Reichsleiter of the NSDAP Philipp Bouhler , Kummer was appointed as a consultant in the party official examination commission for the protection of the National Socialist literature . In September 1935, on the recommendation of Hugo Andres Krüß as Ministerialrat in the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and National Education , Kummer was appointed head of the "General Department for Libraries" (Referent for Library and Archives in the REM) and was thus formally the highest ministerial official for the scientific libraries in the German Reich . In this function, he took part in the meetings of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) between 1935 and 1939 as a leading member of the German delegation, also for its political surveillance. In 1936, Kummer also became a member of the "Executive Committee of the German Library ". In 1938 he headed the delegation to the Oxford meeting of the International Federation for Information and Documentation . In 1941 he was appointed to the advisory board of the newly founded German Society for Documentation .

On the 34th Librarianship Day of the Association of German Librarians in 1938 , Kummer recalled that even before the takeover of power (National Socialist) librarians had checked the résumés of German doctoral students and bogged down the Jewish ones , so that by 1933 halfway useful preliminary work for the eradication of Jewish writers, editors and Professors were present .

Nothing is known about Kummer's internment and denazification after the end of the Second World War , nor about his further activities. In post-war Germany, the name Rudolf Kummer served as a scapegoat for the supposedly non-political German librarians. Kummer's lawsuits for reinstatement in the public service and for adequate pension claims were finally rejected by the Federal Administrative Court in 1962. He had even found an advocate in Georg Leyh , who criticized the “nonsense of denazification methods” and, on the other hand, needed a witness testimony from Kummer in his own salary process.

Kummer's book “Rasputin. A tool of the Jews ”, which had its tenth edition in 1942, was placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet Zone in 1946 .

See also

Fonts

  • From the history of the Bavarian oriental trade , Munich: Südost-Verlag, 1927.
  • The race in literature: a guide through racial literature , edited by Achim Gercke, edit. by Rudolf Kummer, Berlin: Metzner 1933.
  • We fight for Germany , Rudolf Kummer; Albert Schmidt, Langensalza, Berlin, Leipzig: Beltz, 1934.
  • Rasputin. A tool of the Jews , Nuremberg: Der Sturmer, 1939

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • Alexandra Habermann, Peter Kittel: Lexicon of German academic librarians: the academic librarians of the Federal Republic of Germany (1981–2002) and the German Democratic Republic (1948–1990) , Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2004 ISBN 3-465-03343-4 .
  • Engelbert Plassmann , Ludger Syré (ed.): Association of German Librarians 1900–2000. Festschrift. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-447-04247-8 .
  • Fridolin Dressler: The Bavarian State Library in the Third Reich. In: Rupert Hacker (Ed.): Contributions to the history of the Bavarian State Library , Munich: Saur, 2000 ISBN 3-598-24060-0 .
  • Hans-Gerd Happel: The scientific library system in National Socialism. With special consideration of the university libraries , Munich: Saur, 1989 ISBN 3-598-22170-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louis Lange (Ed.): Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations. Address book 1931. Berlin 1931, p. 126.
  2. ↑ Kummer an RMI, 1937 at uni-tuebingen (PDF; 21 kB)
  3. ^ Appeal printed by Joseph Wulf : Literature and Poetry in the Third Reich , Frankfurt: Ullstein 1989, pp. 260f
  4. ↑ Fridolin Dressler: The Bavarian State Library in the Third Reich. In: Rupert Hacker (Ed.): Contributions to the history of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek , Munich: Saur, 2000, p. 292
  5. ↑ ZfB 55 (1938), p. 407; quoted by: Michael Labach, The VDB during National Socialism. In: Engelbert Plassmann, Ludger Syré (ed.): Association of German Librarians 1900–2000. Festschrift. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2000.
  6. ↑ Federal Administrative Court decision of February 25, 1962 II C 178.59
  7. ^ Manfred Komorowski: National Socialist Legacy in Libraries. In: Peter Vodosek , Manfred Komorowski (eds.), Libraries during National Socialism Part 2, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-447-03308-8 , p. 289, n89; P. 291, n99.
  8. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of the literature to be sorted out Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1946. Transcript letter K # 6718
personal data
SURNAME Grief, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German librarian and SS-Obersturmbannführer
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1987
Place of death Nuremberg