Theodor Oberländer

Theodor Oberländer (1952)

Theodor Erich Ernst Emil Otto Oberländer (born May 1, 1905 in Meiningen , † May 4, 1998 in Bonn ) was a German agricultural scientist . He was a National Socialist and conducted research on the East . As a politician ( GB / BHE , CDU ) he was Federal Minister for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims from 1953 to 1960 . He resigned on May 4, 1960. This was preceded by a heated argument since 1959 about his role in the Nazi era , which was supported by the GDR administration both legally and secretly. 1953–1961 and 1963–1965 he was a member of the German Bundestag .

Life and work before 1945

Oberlander was 1905 in Meiningen born (Thuringia), the son of a senior government official, he was Protestant faith and was in 1920 a member of the nationalist youth organization eagles and falcons . In 1923 he obtained the Abitur at the humanistic Bernhardinum in Meiningen. From 1923 to 1927 he studied agricultural science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , the University of Hamburg and the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin, with a degree in agriculture . In 1923 he became a member of the student union Greif in the German Guild in Munich and in 1925 he moved to Skuld in Königsberg. In 1928 he spent six months in the Soviet Union as an employee of DRUSAG (German-Russian Saatbau AG) . On March 2, 1929, he was promoted to Dr. agr. PhD (Diss .: The basics of agriculture in Lithuania , summa cum laude).

Oberländer then went on to volunteer at the Institute for East German Economics, which Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe had founded at the Albertus University in Königsberg . There he received his doctorate in political science and economics on February 8, 1930.

From 1930 to 1931 he spent a year and a half on agriculture in the Soviet Union, the Republic of China , Canada and the United States , where he worked at Ford .

At the beginning of October 1931 he returned to the Institute for East German Economics in Königsberg as an assistant. After he had run unsuccessfully for the Reichsleiter of the German Guild in 1932, he split off (until April 1933) his own Hohnsteiner Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Hochschuldgilden (HAG), which he acted as “agent”. In 1958 he rejoined the re-established German guild.

In Königsberg he quickly made an academic career until he fell out with Gauleiter Erich Koch in 1937. On March 1, 1933, he became director of the Institute for Eastern European Economics. His habilitation followed on December 17, 1933, and on April 1, 1937 he was appointed professor of Eastern European economics in the Faculty of Law and Political Science in Königsberg. From 1933 to 1934 he also gave agricultural lectures at the Technical University of Danzig .

In September 1937, Oberländer had to leave the Königsberg University at the instigation of the East Prussian Gauleitung, against which he took legal action without success. In a letter dated December 22, 1937, the Reich Ministry of Education reported to Rudolf Heß that Oberlander's professorship in Königsberg had "largely" only had a political rather than academic character and that he had been transferred to the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald , where he was in Future will have nothing to do with Ostforschung .

By ministerial decree of November 12, 1937, Oberländer moved to the University of Greifswald until 1940, where he became co-director of the political science seminar.

On October 1, 1940, Oberländer moved to the German-speaking Karl Ferdinand University in Prague as full professor . On January 15, 1941, he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science. On May 29, 1941, he also took over the legal faculty of the Charles University in Prague, closed by the Germans, as commissioner . He had to see to it that the Czech employees “did not misuse the resumption of work to carry out a hidden apprenticeship.” This commissioner's work ended on June 8, 1943.

In autumn 1943 Oberländer became director of the institute for economics and chairman of the examination office for economists, merchants and business teachers at Karl Ferdinand University. At the end of the war in 1945, Oberlander's academic activities also ended.

Research activity

Against the background of his agricultural science activities, Oberländer devoted himself primarily to research on the East , which had set itself the goal of scientifically substantiating the German claim to rule over Eastern Europe. For this purpose, the Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (VFG; see Volks- und Kulturbodenforschung ) was founded in the German Research Foundation in 1931 . Oberländer became managing director on December 19, 1933, but was replaced by Emil Meynen on March 27, 1934 . However, Oberländer remained a board member of the Northeast German Research Foundation (NODFG) in Berlin, which was also founded on December 19, 1933.

In his publications Oberländer claimed that "for the whole of Europe [...] the swelling of the all-Slavic population could become a serious danger". Another danger is Judaism , which is spreading communism in Eastern Europe. Above all, his research assistant Peter Heinz Seraphim published several anti-Semitic writings on this, some of which were published with Oberländer's assistance.

After the attack on Poland , he campaigned for uncompromising ethnic cleansing of western Poland, which was annexed by Germany. He thought she was "an absolute necessity if the keeping clean of the race is to be ensured." On June 27, 1940 began in occupied Poland , the first working meeting of the Institute of German Ostarbeit Krakow, by Governor General Frank was opened personally and in NODFG- Board member Oberländer spoke as one of eleven invited Nazi university lecturers .

In October 1944 he became a member of the working group for the research of the Bolshevik threat to the world in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg of the NSDAP , which, however, held only one conference until the end of the war (Prague, October 31 to November 2, 1944).

National Socialist activity

After the First World War , Oberländer was a member of the Gilde Greif , a student union that emerged from the youth movement. As part of a military sports exercise in Forstenried , he and other members of the guild took part in the Hitler putsch in Munich on November 9, 1923 , according to their own admission "rather by chance". He was imprisoned for four days for participating in the Hitler putsch.

Oberländer then temporarily became a member of the right-wing extremist paramilitary association Bund Oberland and the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund .

On May 1, 1933 , Oberländer joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2,331,552). Also in 1933 he became a member of the SA with the rank of Obersturmführer . From July 1, 1933 to June 1, 1937 he was in a leading position (Gauamtsleiter of the Gau-Grenzlandamt) and a member of the Nazi Gauleitung of East Prussia.

On May 26, 1933 Oberlander head of the National Group East Prussia was the newly founded National Socialist Federal German East on personal suggestion of Rudolf Hess , he was on October 8 In 1934 the leader of this organization. At a BDO conference in Bochum under Oberländer's chairmanship, at which Hitler was also present, some speakers were so wildly anti-Polish that they reported to the Polish Foreign Ministry. BDO boss Oberländer played a leading role in the Germanization measures of the East Prussian Gauleitung in Masuria .

In January 1934, Oberländer became a "Lecturer for Eastern Issues" at the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP and gave lectures to Nazi officials.

In 1934, Oberländer became head of the East Prussian regional association of the National Socialist People's Association for Germans Abroad (VDA).

On July 13, 1934, the two local Nazi parties in the Lithuanian Memel region were banned for high treason. Their leaders was in Kaunas the Neumann-Sass process made (14 December 1934 to 26 March 1935), which caused an international sensation. In the indictment, Oberländer was identified as the NSDAP's “advisor for questions about the East”, who influenced numerous personnel and factual decisions from East Prussia and Berlin and had helped to prepare a putsch in Memelland based on the Austrian model . For Oberlander's participation in the Fememord to the Memel Nazi official Georg Jesuttis as 1935 claimed by emigrants, there is no evidence. After the verdicts were pronounced, Oberländer made a threatening speech against Lithuania at a VDA event.

On March 31, 1936, Oberländer applied to the Reich leadership of the NSDAP for the award of the blood order because of his participation in the Hitler putsch . The application was rejected because Oberländer had stopped being involved in the NSDAP after 1923.

In November 1936 Oberländer taught as a guest lecturer at the NS-Ordensburg Vogelsang .

On February 1, 1937, the VDA and BDO were subordinated to the newly founded Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle of the SS , which was to bundle all political work among the Volksdeutsche . Since Oberländer appeared to the SS to be too headstrong and not loyal to the line, an intrigue between the SS and East Prussia's Gauleiter Koch ended his career in the spring of 1937 . Koch claimed that Oberländer had made strictly confidential party letters disappear and relieved him of all functions in the East Prussian Gauleitung on June 1, 1937. Interrogations and house searches provided no evidence for this claim, but Oberländer had to leave the Gau on Koch's instructions.

On July 31, 1937, the head of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, Werner Lorenz , also released from all functions in the VDA and BDO after appropriate information from Gauleiter Koch Oberländer.

Oberlander's party and association career was over, he was under surveillance by the SD until the end of the war and was officially considered politically "somewhat dubious".

Career in the army and secret service

In 1923 and 1924 Oberländer did five months as a time volunteer with an infantry regiment of the Reichswehr and regularly took part in reserve exercises . In 1933 he was sergeant in the reserve and in 1937 as a lieutenant in the reserve.

About his stays in the Soviet Union (1930, 1932 and 1934) he wrote reports to "political and military authorities". His meeting with Karl Radek in 1934 is said to have been one of the charges in the 1937 show trial of Radek.

From 1933 to 1937, Oberländer was the head of the Gaugrenzlandamt responsible for the surveillance of the national minorities in East Prussia and organized a network of informants through the BDO and VDA in neighboring countries (Federation of Poznan Loyalists, Federation of East and West Prussians Loyal to Homeland and others), which was only in Poland is said to have consisted of 300 people. During this time, Oberländer was already working with the Abwehr and its Department II (sabotage and special tasks). Oberländer: “There was closer cooperation between Abwehr II and the ethnic German associations. There was no conference in which officers from Abwehr II did not take part. "

After the end of his party and association career, Oberländer was recruited by the Abwehr in 1937. Until 1943 he worked for Department II (sabotage and special tasks).

On October 2, 1937, the Reich Ministry of War ordered Oberländer to be used as an Eastern Europe expert in Berlin, where he stayed until January 31, 1938, during which time he was formally suspended from teaching because of two “reserve exercises”.

From the end of May to the middle of August 1939 there were renewed leave of absence for “reserve exercises”, this time for Abwehrstelle II in Silesia “to carry out special tasks combined with a trip abroad”. At that time, this secret service branch was training civilian units to occupy objects in the Upper Silesian industrial area during the attack on Poland . It also supplied the Polish uniforms and equipment that were used in the attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter . So far there is no concrete evidence of Oberlander's activity in this context.

At the beginning of 1941 Oberländer, now lieutenant in the reserve, worked at Abwehrstelle II in Cracow as an "expert on Ukrainian questions". In this capacity he was involved in negotiations with the Ukrainian nationalists under Stepan Bandera on behalf of the OKW .

KGB document on the activities of Oberlanders and the Ukrainian Nightingale Battalion (1959)

On May 8, 1941, Oberländer began his service with the Nightingale Battalion , a unit made up of Polish and French prisoners of war of Ukrainian nationality who were subject to the Abwehr. Oberländer acted as a trainer, interpreter and "expert for the treatment of foreign nationalities" and stood by the unit's commander, Lieutenant Albrecht Herzner, as a liaison officer.

On June 18, 1941, Nachtigall was marched in the direction of the Soviet border and on June 29 was ordered to participate in the occupation of Lemberg . The unit penetrated the city at night before the Wehrmacht and occupied, among other things, the radio station that announced the independence of western Ukraine on June 30, 1941 . Regular units of the Wehrmacht only put an end to this in the afternoon, and the responsible nationalist leader Stepan Bandera was arrested on July 5th.

Oberländer was in Lemberg until July 6, 1941, during which time members of his unit and local collaborators took part in systematic mass murders of the civilian population, the so-called massacre of Lemberg . A written order from Oberlander on this was not found in retrospect; he himself denied any involvement in the massacre. Among the Jewish civilians who were mistreated by members of Nachtigall was the young Simon Wiesenthal , who therefore strictly refused any personal contact with Oberländer after the war.

After it became known that Western Ukraine would not become independent, but part of the German General Government from August 1, 1941 , the unit became unreliable and desertions increased. On July 25, 1941, Admiral Canaris inspected the unit near Vinnitsa and ordered its disbandment on July 30. Oberländer accompanied the unit back to Krakow, where it was disarmed and interned on August 15.

Oberländer remained as a liaison officer of Abwehr II with AOK XVII of Army Group South in Poltava , during this time he is also said to have supervised the formation of the Tamara II sabotage unit .

On October 14, 1941, Oberländer received the order to set up and train another secret service unit, the Special Association of Bergmann , of which he was in command until 1943. The unit was recruited from Soviet and French prisoners of war of Caucasian origin and was supposed to secure the occupation of Georgia by conquering the Cross Pass , but this did not happen.

"Bergmann" was trained from November 1941 to July 1942 in Neuhammer and Mittenwald ( mountain and winter combat school ), reached Pyatigorsk on August 25, 1942 and was then deployed in the North Caucasus until January 11, 1943 . Oberländer was assigned a section of the front near Nalchik , from where he also fought resistance groups and carried out attacks and sabotage actions behind enemy lines. At the beginning of October 1942 Oberländer was commissioned by General von Kleist to control the prisoner-of-war camps in the North Caucasus, to which he dispatched observers. Soviet sources later accused Oberländer of having personally advocated worsening prison conditions for Soviet prisoners of war in order to force them to collaborate.

Oberländer denied the allegations, claiming that, on the contrary, he had campaigned for the improvement of prison conditions, from which nearly 50% of all Caucasian prisoners of war died.

In Oberländer's operational area, SS Task Force D under Walther Bierkamp carried out mass murders of the Jewish population. On August 19 and on September 20, 1942 850 have been Mountain Jews near Mozdok (collective farms Bogdanovka and Menžinskoe murdered), another 1000 fell to the Germans in October 1942 in Nalchik in the hands, for supporting the Jewish star and forced labor forced were. Oberländer, who was called in by the SS as an expert, testified that, from a racial point of view, the mountain Jews were not real Jews, but merely converted Caucasians, so that the SS refrained from their murder until the German withdrawal.

Since Oberländer's unit was no longer "deployed defensively", the Abwehr handed it over to the Army High Command (OKH) in mid-December 1942 . After the Wehrmacht withdrew from the Caucasus, it was relocated to the Crimea , where it was used to combat resistance groups northeast of Sevastopol .

Oberlander's memoranda

As an Abwehr officer, Oberländer wrote five memoranda to his superiors (October 1941 to November 1942) and as an officer of the Wehrmacht three more (March to June 1943). The memoranda were distributed in large numbers in the East Ministry and the Wehrmacht, two of which were presented to Hitler personally. In 1987 six of the memoranda were published by the contemporary history research center in Ingolstadt under the title “The East and the German Wehrmacht”. In them he expressly acknowledged Hitler's war aims: the separation of the conquered territories from the Soviet Union (p. 93) with the elimination of Judaism (p. 94) and the creation of a greater Europe led by Germany (p. 109). The Germans are the "people called to lead" (p. 109). In addition, the Caucasus must be conquered by Germany in order to make this greater area "in the fight against Bolshevism and Americanism" resistant to blockades (p. 43, 48). German “settlement goals” are best “to be set in such a way that with an optimum of new people's soil as few peoples as possible are affected by them and thus come into conflict with us” (pp. 114–115).

Oberländer, however, as a National Socialist (p. 107) appealed to “the statesmanlike genius of the Führer ” (p. 107-108) to initiate a change of policy. He sharply criticized the brutal German occupation policy, especially his old rival Erich Koch (pp. 68–84, 112, 115, 123), who contravened point 24 of the NSDAP party program (p. 116). Oberländer rejected any form of racism against the Eastern European population, which in no way consists of sub-humans (p. 121), “the proportion of the Nordic race” is even “considerably higher than is commonly assumed” (p. 114). The German occupation policy contradicts the interests of the Reich (p. 113), since it is forcing even the population willing to collaborate into a “German-hostile united front” (p. 114). One must stop treating the occupied territories as a colony (p. 113) and publicly propagating “boundless settlement goals” (p. 123, a swipe at the notorious General Plan East of his specialist colleague Konrad Meyer ). B. are potentially willing to collaborate (“Poles against us, Ukrainians for us”, pp. 114–115). In the occupied territories, a certain amount of self-government must be made possible, with the “military and economic administration in German hands” (p. 47). If such a “psychological victory of the stage” succeeds “we cannot be beaten, however long the war may last” (p. 101). Allowing armies of collaborators to be set up on a large scale will save “precious German blood” (pp. 98, 100, 112, 125). Without a radical change of policy, the war could no longer be won militarily (p. 121), and Germany would have to “bleed to death in the struggle with Slavism for Little Europe against Eastern Europe” (p. 127).

Oberlander's memoranda, especially the last of June 22, 1943, were received positively in the East Ministry and the army and distributed, but were viewed by the SS, OKW and Erich Koch as presumptuous and corrosive.

On August 4, 1943, Oberländer was ordered to the Fuehrer's headquarters , where he was removed from command of his unit. The Bergmann unit was dissolved and divided into three separate battalions. Back in the Crimea, Oberländer said goodbye to his unit on August 22, 1943 and returned to Prague.

From Prague he was sent to the Battalion Command School in Antwerp for a course and then discharged from the Wehrmacht on November 11, 1943 without giving any official reason.

Life and career after 1945

Appeal for Theodor Oberlander's indictment by representatives from culture and science in the GDR

From 1945 to 1946 Oberländer was an American prisoner of war . He then worked as a farm worker in the Uelzen district and later as managing director of the TERRA seed breeding company in Bavaria.

Oberländer was part of the so-called “professors group” of the Gehlen organization . The then head of the Gehlen organization, Hermann Baun , met with Oberländer for the first time in the early summer of 1946. From then on he wrote expert reports for the intelligence service and helped him with the recruitment of Eastern researchers. So he recruited the first head of the economic evaluation, Helmut Klocke. Oberländer was also commissioned to write a propaganda amphitheater about the Soviet intelligence service and its practices in order to stir up anti-Soviet sentiment. Within the Gehlen organization, Oberländer was a relevant expert in psychological warfare . In the course of the denazification process supported by the Gehlen organization , he was classified as "exonerated". A few weeks later, at the beginning of 1948, he left the intelligence service because the small-scale work there no longer matched his ambitions.

In 1948 he became a member of the FDP . In 1950 he was one of the founders of the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) and immediately became regional chairman of the BHE in Bavaria . From 1951 to 1955 Oberländer was a member of the GB / BHE federal executive board and was its federal chairman from 1954 to 1955 .

From 1950 to 1953 Oberländer belonged to the Bavarian State Parliament via the BHE list . From January 3, 1951 to February 24, 1953, Oberländer was State Secretary for Refugee Issues in the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior .

Federal politics

Oberländer became a member of the German Bundestag in 1953 , to which he was a member until 1961. In the Bundestag election in 1953 he entered parliament via the BHE's Bavarian state list , and in the Bundestag election in 1957 as a directly elected CDU member of the Hildesheim constituency .

On October 20, 1953, he was appointed to the federal government led by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as Federal Minister for Affairs of the Expellees . On February 1, 1954, the ministry he headed was renamed the Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims. As a minister, he decisively promoted the integration of the expellees and refugees into the Federal Republic, but at the same time advocated the restoration of the German Reich within the borders of 1937 .

On July 12, 1955, he left the GB / BHE parliamentary group together with Waldemar Kraft and others (Kraft / Oberländer group) . On July 15, 1955, he joined this group as a guest of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. In 1956 the members of the Kraft / Oberländer group joined the CDU and on March 20, 1956 also became members of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group.

With the Christian Democrats, Oberländer held the position of chairman of the Oder-Neisse regional association from 1958 to 1964 .

resignation

The verdict against Oberländer was pronounced before the Supreme Court of the GDR on April 29, 1960

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED wanted to use Oberländer as an example to “prove the essential equality of the Bonn system with Hitler's fascism”. On April 29, 1960 Oberlander in was East Germany in a show trial in absence because of the shooting of thousands of Jews and Poles in Lviv to lifelong prison convicted. The journalist and author Bernt Engelmann , later opponent of Oberländer's trial, as well as others, received legal and intelligence support from the GDR administration in the campaign against Oberländer. Files of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi documents meanwhile show that witness statements were falsified and the rights of the defense were curtailed and documents were falsified. The Bonn public prosecutor's office therefore came to the conclusion in April 1961 that there was no basis for the allegations. His defense attorney Friedrich Wolff unsuccessfully pointed out that Oberländer was merely an "extremely agile follower in need of recognition" and "did not need to recognize what was illegal in his actions."

After the conviction, Chancellor Adenauer initially rejected an offer from Oberlander to resign. After the SPD had applied for a committee of inquiry into Oberländer's past, he finally resigned on May 4, 1960 after he had received pension entitlement, rejecting the allegations. Previously, he had initiated numerous lawsuits against his opponents, to which he continued to dedicate himself as a pensioner. In an article in Spiegel, Adenauer was acknowledged: "The most benevolent political obituary was spoken by the cold, old man Adenauer: Oberländer was 'one of the more decent, not of the decent'."

Next life

In the 1961 federal election , Oberländer failed to return to the Bundestag as a candidate on the CDU's state list in Lower Saxony, but succeeded the deceased member Elisabeth Vietje on May 9, 1963 and was a member of parliament until the end of the 1965 electoral term.

In the 1970s, Oberländer was involved in the Society for Free Journalism and in the Association for Germanism Abroad . In 1981 he appeared as a co-signer of the Heidelberg Manifesto , which spoke out against further immigration to Germany.

After reunification, on November 24, 1993, the Berlin Regional Court overturned the GDR verdict of 1960 against Oberländer under the StrRehaG (552 Rh 3 Js 66/90) because "the main hearing was illegally held in the absence of the person concerned". After his death in May 1998, the Cologne public prosecutor's office stopped investigations against Oberländer for alleged involvement in war crimes in Lviv and the Caucasus .

Theodor Oberländer is the father of the historian Erwin Oberländer . His grandson is the Japanologist Christian Oberländer .

References to novels

• Jonathan Littell : The well-meaning . Translated by Hainer Kober . Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8270-0738-4 (Os deeds in the Caucasus and Ukraine are presented in detail)

Cabinets

• Cabinet Adenauer II
• Cabinet Adenauer III

Publications (selection)

• The agrarian overpopulation of Poland. People and Reich, Berlin 1935.
• The agrarian overpopulation of East Central Europe. In: Hermann Aubin u. a. (Ed.): Deutsche Ostforschung. Results and tasks since the First World War, Vol. 2 (Germany and the East. Sources and research on the history of their relationships, Vol. 21), Leipzig 1943, pp. 416–427.
• Bavaria and its refugee problem. Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, State Secretary for Affairs of Displaced Persons, Munich 1953.
• Overcoming German hardship. (= Lebendige Wirtschaft Vol. 5.) Leske, Darmstadt 1954.
• The world refugee problem . Lecture given in front of the Rhein-Ruhr-Club on May 8, 1959. Special edition. des Arbeits- u. Minister of Social Affairs of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Federal Ministry for displaced persons, refugees and war victims . Bonn 1959
• The East and the German Wehrmacht. Six memoranda from 1941–43 against the Nazi colonial thesis. (= Zeitgeschichtliche Bibliothek , Volume 2.) Ed. Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle Ingolstadt , Mut-Verlag , Asendorf 1987, ISBN 3-89182-026-7 .

literature

• Committee for German Unity (Ed., GDR agitation organ led by Albert Norden ): The truth about Oberländer . Berlin (GDR) 1960.
• Committee for German Unity (Hrsg.): The Oberländer process . Berlin (GDR) 1960.
• Victor Silling : The background to the Oberländer case . Grenzland-Verlag Rock & Co., Groß Denkte / Wolfenbüttel 1960.
• Kurt Ziesel : The Red Character Assassination - A Documentation on the Cold War . Fritz Schlichtenmayer Verlag, Tübingen 1961. (written in collaboration with Oberländer).
• Hermann Raschhofer : The Oberländer case . Fritz Schlichtenmayer Verlag, Tübingen 1962. ( financed by the Federal Press Office ).
• Siegfried Schütt: Theodor Oberländer - A documentary investigation . Langen Müller, Munich 1995.
• Franz Menges, Philipp-Christian Wachs :  Oberländer, Theodor. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 392-394 ( digitized version ).
• Philipp-Christian Wachs: The Oberländer case (1905–1998). A lesson in German history . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36445-X .
• Philipp-Christian Wachs: The staging of a show trial - the trial against Theodor Oberländer before the Supreme Court of the GDR . In: Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR , Volume 14, Berlin 2001.
• Albert Jeloschek, Friedrich Richter, Ehrenfried Schütte, Johannes Semler jun. : Volunteers in the Caucasus . Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz 2003 (with the help of Oberländer, the comradeship's memory book “Bergmann” ).
• Tuviah Friedman : The Nazi Minister Theo Oberländer was the first to start the mass shootings of Jews in Lemberg in early July 1941 . Institute of Documentation in Israel for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes, Haifa 2004.
• Hannes Heer : Bloody Overture. Lemberg, June 30, 1941: The murder of Jews begins with the invasion of the Wehrmacht . In: Die Zeit , No. 2001/26.
• Article about Theodor Oberländer . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1960 ( online ).
• Klaus Wiegrefe : The strange professor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 2000, pp. 62-66 ( online ).

Web links

Commons : Theodor Oberländer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Theodor Oberländer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Theodor Oberländer in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Klaus Wiegrefe : The strange professor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 2000, pp. 62-66 ( online ).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Theodor Oberländer - Munzinger biography. Retrieved February 29, 2020 . 
3. ^ ^{A b} Hinrich Jantzen: names and works - biographies and contributions to the sociology of the youth movement . dipa-Verlag 1977, p. 195.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Oberländer - building block or dynamite . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1954 ( online ).
5. ^ Agricultural dissertation: The agricultural foundations of the country of Lithuania .
6. ↑ Political and economic dissertation: The rural exodus in Germany and its fight through agrarian political measures .
7. ↑ Oberländer's curriculum vitae, dated October 11, 1933, printed in facsimile in: Committee for German Unity (Ed.): "The Truth about Oberländer" Berlin-Ost 1960, p. 11.
8. ^ HAG news sheet , No. 1, winter semester 1932/33.
9. ^ In the stream of time - commemorative publication for the 75th anniversary of the German guild . In: Blätter der Deutschen Gildenschaft , special issue March 1998, p. 90.
10. ^ Hermann Raschhofer : The Oberländer case . Verlag Fritz Schlichtenmayer, 1962, p. 137.
11. ↑ Werner Zschintzsch (State Secretary in the Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Public Education ) to the “Deputy of the Führer, Brown House ”, “Subject: Use of Professor Dr. Oberländer, most recently in Königsberg "(letter of December 22, 1937, business number III P-Kr.Eu/O.177.)
12. ↑ Letter from Karl Hermann Frank ( The Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia , deputizing) of May 29, 1941 (No. 21-01-144 / 41), received at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the German Charles University in Prague on June 13, 1941 (transaction number 514).
13. ^ Letter from Karl Hermann Frank (The Higher SS and Police Leader at the Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia) to Prof. Dr. Theodor Oberländer dated June 8, 1943 (B. No. BdS - II A 2 - 408/43).
14. ^ "Record of the meeting of December 19, 1933" or "March 27, 1934" (Political Archive of the Foreign Office Bonn, Department IV (Culture): Research Communities , Volume 2).
15. ^ Theodor Oberländer: The population pressure in the German-Polish border area . In: Volksbund für das Deutschtum abroad (Ed.): Deutsche Arbeit , Issue 10, October 1936.
16. ^ Theodor Oberländer: Bolshevism as world political power and danger . In: Karl Haushofer , Gustav Fochler-Hauke (Hrsg.): World in ferment . Breitkopf & Härtel, 1937, pp. 206, 209, 213. Oberländer's lecture in June 1937; Literally quoted in: Michael Burleigh : Germany turns eastwards. A study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. Cambridge 1988, p. 146.
17. ^ Theodor Oberländer: From the front of the Volkstumskampfes . In: Konrad Meyer (Ed.): Neues Bauerntum April / May 1940, pp. 127–129.
18. ^ Institute for German Ostarbeit in Krakau (ed.): Yearbook 1941 . Burg Publishing House, Krakow 1941.
19. ↑ Invitation from Heinrich Härtle ( the head of the working group for the research of the Bolshevik world threat in the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg of the NSDAP) to Professor Dr. Oberländer. Berlin, October 13, 1944.
20. ↑ Götz Aly, Susanne Heim: Vordenker der Vernichtung. Auschwitz and the German plans for a new European order. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-455-08366-8 , p. 94.
21. ^ German Bundestag, 17. Election period, 204th session on November 8, 2012, PDF document 17/8134 Dealing with the Nazi past
22. ↑ In: "Ostland" (Ed. Bund Deutscher Osten , No. 42/1934).
23. ↑ Zygmunt Zawadowski (Polish Consul in Essen): Antypolska mowa Nadprezydenta Wagnera w Bochum 14 4 1935 (Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych , Warszawa, APA 2-61-14).
24. ^ Andreas Kossert: Grenzlandpolitik and Ostforschung on the periphery of the empire: The East Prussian Masuria 1919-1945 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , vol. 51, issue 2, April 2002, pp. 117–146, ifz-muenchen.de (PDF).
25. ↑ Walther Schmitt: Outline of the training work . dated January 4, 1934, BA NS 8/116.
26. ↑ Martin Broszat : The Memel German Organizations and National Socialism 1933-1939 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , issue 3 (1957), pp. 273–278.
27. ↑ Louis de Jong : The German Fifth Column in World War II . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1959, p. 21.
28. ↑ The Brown Net - How Hitler's Agents Work Abroad and Prepare for War . Editions du Carrefour 1935, pp. 267, 268, 270, 271.
29. ^ Karl Viererbl : The Ostland conference of the VDA - welcome evening in the Königsberg town hall . In: Völkischer Beobachter , June 11, 1935, p. 2.
30. ↑ Dr. Oberländer, Königsberg, to the Reich leadership of the NSDAP, Munich; Application No. 105 of March 31, 1936.
31. ↑ Purpose : master man. NS-Ordensburgen between fascination and crime. Catalog for the permanent exhibition Nazi documentation Vogelsang. Verlag Sandstein Kommunikation, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95498-220-2 .
32. ^ Hans-Adolf Jacobsen : National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1938 . Alfred Metzner Verlag 1968, pp. 234-235.
33. ^ Ralf Meindl: East Prussia Gauleiter . Fiber Verlag 2007, pp. 230-232.
34. ↑ Jeloschek, Richter, Schütte, Semler: Volunteers from the Caucasus . Leopold Stocker Verlag 2003, pp. 150–151.
35. ^ ^{A b} Victor Silling (pseudonym): The background to the Oberländer case . Grenzland Verlag 1960, pp. 60-61.
36. ^ Hans-Adolf Jacobsen : National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1938 . Alfred Metzner Verlag 1968, p. 249.
37. ↑ Gerhard Kasper (Ministerialrat in the Reich Ministry of Education ): "Suitability report " (handwritten from December 4, 1937, Ju WIp 222J WII WIIIa, Oberländer personal file), literally quoted in: Victor Silling (pseudonym): The background of the Oberländer case . Grenzland Verlag 1960, pp. 23-24.
38. ↑ death in committee . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1960, p. 18 ( online ).
39. ^ Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, pp. 216-223.
40. ^ Zachodnia Agencja Prasowa . No. 44, November 1959.
41. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., p. 151.
42. ↑ Correspondence between Oberländer, Reich Ministry of War and Reich Ministry of Education (October to December 1937) printed in facsimile in: Committee for German Unity (ed.): The truth about Oberländer . Berlin-Ost 1960, pp. 53-60.
43. ↑ Correspondence between Oberländer, Reich War Ministry and Reich Education Ministry (May to July 1939) printed in facsimile in: Committee for German Unity (ed.): The Truth about Oberländer . Berlin-Ost 1960, pp. 63-65.
44. ↑ Louis de Jong : The German Fifth Column in World War II . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1959, p. 152.
45. ^ Testimony by Erwin von Lahousen at the Nuremberg Trials on November 30, 1945, in: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal , Volume II, pp. 495–497.
46. ↑ Roman Ilnyzkyj: Germany and Ukraine from 1934 to 1945 . Eastern European Institute Munich 1959, pp. 139–140.
47. ^ Oberländer: Nightingale in Lemberg . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1960 ( online ).
48. ^ According to Theodor Oberländer's press conference in Bonn; September 30, 1959.
49. ↑ Raschhofer, p. 29.
50. ↑ Ilnyzkyj, p. 142.
51. ^ ^{A b} Paul Leverkuehn : The secret intelligence service of the German armed forces in the war . Athenaeum Verlag 1964, pp. 136-137.
52. ↑ Tom Segev : Simon Wiesenthal . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2010, p. 369.
53. ↑ Raschhofer, p. 20.
54. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., p. 152.
55. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., P. 44. Otto Heilbrunn: The Soviet secret service . Bernard & Graefe 1956, p. 154.
56. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., pp. 39-40.
57. ↑ Raschhofer, p. 146. Jeloschek u. a., p. 159.
58. ↑ K. Taradankin: "Pravda ob Oberlendere", in: Izvestija April 6, 1960, p. 4. M. Nemirova, E. Kalandadze: Vo Imja Žizni . Tblisi 1963, p. 23.
59. ↑ Raschhofer, pp. 90-95.
60. ↑ The public prosecutor's decision to discontinue the “Bergmann” case dated March 30, 1961 (file number 8 Js 359/60, Bonn Regional Court ).
61. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., p. 289.
62. ↑ Kiril Feferman: Nazi Germany and the Mountain Jews: Was There a Policy? In: Richard D. Breitman (Ed.): Holocaust and Genocide Studies , 21, 2007, Oxford University Press, pp. 96-114.
63. ↑ Jeloschek u. a., pp. 322-324.
64. ↑ Raschhofer, p. 269.
65. ↑ Theodor Oberländer: Report on the deployment of the special association Bergmann from December 1, 1942 to February 15, 1943 to General von Kleist (High Command of Army Group A ) from February 16, 1943.
66. ^ Theodor Oberländer: Measures for the military training of foreign people. Based on the experience of the Bergmann unit from 1.1 . – 1.7.1942 ; dated July 8, 1942, BA-MA 34 427/1; remained unpublished.
67. ^ Theodor Oberländer: From the experiences of the miners' unit in the Caucasus - dangers for the future of the state's own associations ; dated April 17, 1943; remained unpublished.
68. ^ Theodor Oberländer: The East and the German Wehrmacht - six memoranda from the years 1941–43 against the Nazi colonial thesis . Mut-Verlag 1987.
69. ↑ Jeloschek et al., P. 164.
70. ↑ Thomas Wolf: The emergence of the BND. Construction, financing, control . Ed .: Jost Dülffer et al. (=  Publications of the Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945–1968 . Volume 9 ). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-96289-022-3 , pp. 65 ff .
71. ^ Philipp-Christian Wachs: Theodor Oberländer . In: Ingo Haar, Michael Fahlbusch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Völkischen Wissenschaften . KG Saur, Munich 2008. p. 451.
72. ^ Philipp-Christian Wachs: Theodor Oberländer , p. 451
73. ↑ Oberländer Trial: Errendes Conscience . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1960, p. 23-24 ( online ).
74. ↑ Klaus Wiegrefe: The strange professor. DER SPIEGEL No. 27, 2000, accessed on February 29, 2020 . 
75. ↑ Tim Peters: The anti-fascism of the PDS from an anti-extremist point of view, p. 64
76. ↑ Götz Aly : On the death of Theodor Oberländer: From Putschist to Minister . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 7, 1998
77. ^ Philipp-Christian Wachs: The case of Oberländer (1905-1998). A lesson in German history . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36445-X , p. 13.
78. ^ Philipp-Christian Wachs: Theodor Oberländer , p. 452.
79. ↑ Oberländers Mohren Wash financed with tax money . In: Münchner Abendzeitung , July 14, 1965.