Scholtenhuis

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The Scholtenhuis in 1895.

The Scholtenhuis was a representative building in Groningen , the Netherlands , which was built between 1878 and 1881. The builder was the industrialist Willem Albert Scholten . From 1940 to 1945, during the Second World War and the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht , it served as a local branch of the Security Police (Sipo) and Security Service (SD). In 1945 it burned down after an explosion.

history

The building before 1940

Builder Willem Albert Scholten

The builder of the Scholtenhuis was the wealthy industrialist Willem Albert Scholten (1819-1892). The representative building in eclectic style was modeled on a patrician house . It was built on the east side of the Grote Markt (No. 27), the central square in Groningen, between 1878 and 1881 opposite the town hall and next to the Martinikerk , for which three residential buildings were demolished. Was an architect January Maris (1825-1899), the number of houses in the Netherlands designed, as today Rijksmonument under monument protection are provided.

Scholten was the director of more than 20 companies that produced, among other things, potato flour, sugar and peat grease. He also owned farms and bog areas . He is considered the world's first agricultural industrialist and the first Dutchman to set up a multinational company .

Scholten moved with his wife Klaassien (1821-1893), née Sluis, on the first floor of the house, his son Jan Evert (1849-1918) lived with his family on the second floor. There were also offices in the building. After the death of Scholten and his son, family members continued to live in the Scholtenhuis .

The Scholtenhuis during the occupation

One month after the occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Scholtenhuis was confiscated by the German occupiers and Jan Evert Scholten's widow, Geessien Mulder (1852–1944), and her son's family had to move out. The occupiers set up the Sipo and SD field service for the northern provinces ( Groningen , Friesland and Drenthe ) in the building. The neighboring historic Renaissance building Huis Panser was used by the Germans as an administration. In 1942 the occupiers put banners on the building: one had a large “V” on one, and the other read “Victorie want Duitschland (sic) wint voor Europa op alle Fronten”, a propaganda slogan used by Germans in the Netherlands at the time and reaction to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill 's sign of victory .

Robert Lehnhoff was one of the SD members who tortured prisoners in the Scholtenhuis

In the next five years the Scholtenhuis was "één van de meeste gevreesde gebouwen" ("one of the most feared buildings"), also known as the "courtyard to hell". The largest department in the building was the Gestapo , headed by Ernst Knorr and Robert Lehnhoff .

Both men were considered cruel sadists who tortured people in the Scholtenhuis . Knorr also shot dead deserters and resistance fighters himself, including Esmée van Eeghen . Lehnhoff, the "executioner of Groningen", tortured inmates in a rear interrogation room next to his office so that people in the street could not hear the screams. The representative of the Reich Commissioner Netherlands in the Northern Netherlands, Hermann Conring , complained to the commander of the Scholtenhuis , Bernard Georg Haase , that he could not work because of the yelling of the victims that came from Lehnhoff's office. Lehnhoff's assistant was Josef Kindel , who was born in Cologne and was involved in torture and murders and who set his dog on prisoners.

Lehnhoff sometimes hit the inmates so hard with a rubber club that their jaws broke or they passed out. It was also simulated drowning practiced as a form of torture. Women were not only tortured, but some were raped. The prisoners - women and men - were held in the attic of the building between interrogations. The historian Monique Brinks of the Stichting Oorlogs- en Verzetscentrum Groningen suspects that Groningen was the outpost to which unpleasant employees were deported, such as Ernst Knorr, who was considered too violent even by his Gestapo colleagues: to their annoyance, he tended to Prisoners who were hoped for information would be tortured to death.

Overall, the Germans from the Scholtenhuis are said to have been responsible for the deaths of at least 473 people for political reasons. The deportations of Jews from the north of the Netherlands were also organized from here: over 3,000 Jewish people were deported from Groningen alone, of whom around 150 survived the Holocaust .

After the war

The burned-out building in April 1945, the Huis Panser to the left

On April 15, 1945, Canadian troops attacked Groningen , and there was an open battle between Germans and Canadians on the Grote Markt . In the evening of the day, the ammunition stored in the Scholtenhuis by the German occupiers blew up with two huge explosions. The building burned out completely.

Around 130 SiPo and SD employees from the Scholtenhuis fled to Schiermonnikoog , where they were arrested on May 31, 1945 and subsequently brought to justice. Bernard Haase (1910–1968), the commander of the Scholtenhuis , initially received the death penalty, but Queen Juliana (1909–2004) pardoned him because he had often resisted atrocities. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Lehnhoff's petition for pardon, also sentenced to death, was rejected and he was executed on July 27, 1950. Ernst Knorr and Josef Kindel died in prison before their trials. The Dutchman Klaas Carel Faber , whose death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment, fled to Germany in 1952 from the "domed prison" in Breda . Because of his German citizenship acquired through his SS membership, he was not extradited to the Netherlands; he died in Ingolstadt in 2012 .

The new buildings

In 1954, the house of the Groningen student corps Mutua Fides was built on the former site of the Scholtenhuis , which had previously been located on the north side of the Grote Markt . Except for a plaque, nothing reminded of the building that had stood at this point. From 2008 construction work was carried out on the property, during which the foundations of the former building were exposed. As a result, the history of the Scholtenhuis was edited by the Groningen historian Monique Brinks in a multi-volume publication. Furniture from the Scholten family from the Scholtenhuis is exhibited in a separate hall of the Veenkoloniaal Museum in Veendam .

In 2014 the Corps house was demolished as part of a major redesign of downtown Groningen and a new house was built for the connection. Since the alignment was drawn forward in order to make the market square again smaller (it was enlarged after the war), the new Forum Groningen , a cultural center with numerous facilities, rises behind the former site of the Scholtenhuis ; it opened in November 2019. A newly laid road that forms an entrance to the forum bears the name of the resistance fighter Carl Naber, who fell out of a window in the attic and died after being interrogated in the Scholtenhuis for fear of betraying other resistance members.

The interactive website scholtenhuis.nl was created to show the history of the Scholtenhuis . It is planned to attach the plaque again.

literature

  • Monique Brinks: Het Scholtenhuis 1940–1945. Daden . tape 1 . Bedum - Profiel, Groningen 2009, ISBN 978-90-5294-449-4 .
  • Monique Brinks: Het Scholtenhuis 1940–1945. Daders . Ed .: Herman Amelink. tape 2 . Bedum - Profiel, Groningen 2013, ISBN 978-90-5294-544-6 .
  • Monique Brinks: Het Scholtenhuis 1940–1945. Vlucht. Ed .: Herman Amelink. tape 3.1 . Bedum - Profiel, Groningen 2015, ISBN 978-90-5294-577-4 .
  • Monique Brinks: Het Scholtenhuis 1940–1945. Authorization Ed .: Herman Amelink. tape 3.2 . Bedum - Profiel, Groningen 2015, ISBN 978-90-5294-578-1 .

Web links

Commons : Scholtenhuis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Femke Knoop: Dood en verderf in het Scholtenhuis. In: Geschiedenis Beleven. July 20, 2014, accessed October 7, 2016 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ a b c Willem Albert Scholen. In: collectiegroningen.nl. Retrieved March 28, 2020 (Dutch).
  3. ^ Dorien Knaap: "Voor geld is altijd wel een plaats te vinden". De Firma WA Scholten (1841–1892) p. 79 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Beno Hofman: Het Scholtenhuis. In: Groninger Archieven. April 15, 2005, accessed October 7, 2016 (Dutch).
  5. ↑ Fig. No. 127649. In: beeldbankwo2.nl. Retrieved March 22, 2020 (Dutch).
  6. ^ Oranje in de oorlog. In: deverhalenvangroningen.nl. Retrieved March 21, 2020 (Dutch).
  7. ↑ a b Karen Lely: Scholtenhuis: het voorportaal van de hel aan de Grote Markt. In: dejongeliberaal.driemasteronline.nl. May 3, 2017, accessed March 21, 2020 (Dutch).
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Kellner: Persecution and Entanglement. ISBN 3743968061 p. 1946 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. ↑ a b c Vandaag 75 jaar geleden: Casper Naber jumps uit zolderraam Scholtenhuis. In: rtvnoord.nl. November 11, 2019, accessed March 22, 2020 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ Monique Brinks: Het Scholtenhuis 1940 - 1945 . Daders. Volume 2. Uitgeverij Profiel Bedum. 2013. ISNB 978 90 5294 544 6, p. 108.
  11. ↑ Stefan van der Poel: Joodse stadjers: de joodse gemeenschap in de stad Groningen, 1796-1945 p. 183 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  12. ^ Itai Mol: Het joodse verleden van de stad Groningen. In: volkskrant.nl. May 4, 2004, accessed March 22, 2020 (Dutch).
  13. ↑ groningen gets a facelift on groningen.nl. Accessed March 21, 2020 (PDF file)
  14. ↑ Groningen eert verzetsheld Naber met straatnaam voor nieuwe doorgang tussen Grote Markt en Nieuwe market. In: dvhn.nl. July 3, 2019, accessed March 21, 2020 (Dutch).