Trophy Commission

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During and after the Second World War, trophy commissions were groups of Soviet specialists from science, technology, business and culture with higher military ranks, but without military influence, which served to track down and capture scientific and cultural achievements and performers, but especially also to bring culture - and works of art to the Soviet Union.

The name later became a synonym for corresponding skilled workers from the other three victorious powers. It also includes specialists who act individually.

overview

The specialists acted as liaison officers between the military units and the professional organizations in the home country and are also known as cultural officers (see Yevgeny Fyodorowitsch Lutschuweit ).

Terms such as trophy organs, trophy brigades, trophy hunters and trophy accounts are also relevant. See also looted art (Second World War) .

The English and American authorities use the terms "intelligence staff" and "intelligence crew". This also includes the American Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) under Vannevar Bush . Even before the end of the war, the Administration for Technology and Use of the Air Forces in the USA set up a special center in Freeman Field in the state of Indiana for the purpose of preparing and coordinating the takeover of the German secret technical projects, in particular the secret missile programs. - No evidence is known about the French actions in this regard.

Scientists and patents

General

The task in this area was to search laboratories, factories and patent offices for technical and technological projects and to look for scientists who were the top performers in the Third Reich. The trophy commissions accompanied the advancing divisions.

Nuclear researchers (including Manfred von Ardenne and Werner Heisenberg ), aircraft and rocket manufacturers (including Wernher von Braun , Ernst Steinhoff and Helmut Gröttrup ) were of particular interest . There was further interest in the development of modern electronic devices, color film technology and the development of chemical weapons .

The Western Allies oriented themselves on the Osenberg list . The Allied High Command had warned the T-Forces to pay special attention to the colleges and universities closely linked to industry. This affected Leipzig, Halle and Jena, among others.

The special officers, but also the victims, ultimately served the Cold War : “Previously accepted norms of human behavior have been overridden. ... Everything was allowed if it served to put as many German scientists as possible into ... service as quickly as possible. " The scientists helped the new masters with the armament.

Examples (selection)

  • In the targeted search of the Soviet secret service NKVD stood for the participation in the German nuclear research next to Manfred von Ardenne and Gustav Hertz . On May 10, 1945, Manfred von Ardenne, on the advice of Colonel General VA Machneev, the representative for the science and technology sector and liaison officer to the Soviet Academy of Sciences, submitted an application for scientific cooperation, which was granted. Gustav Hertz was flown to Moscow-Tushino in a Soviet military aircraft with a group of employees on June 13, 1945.
  • Missile Development:
For this purpose, the control specialist Boris Tschertok and later the rocket designer Sergei Koroljow, who was already known before the Second World War, worked in the rank of colonel at the central plant in Bleicherode and on October 22, 1946 in the Ossawakim operation.
  • other scientific and technical objects
  • In accordance with reparations payments , technical equipment from industrial plants in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) was brought to the Soviet Union at great expense by road and rail. Examples are the companies Siemens , VEM Sachsenwerk Dresden, Gustav Barthel for soldering devices in Dresden and STANZILA for sheet metal processing in Dresden, which further decimated the economy of the Soviet zone , which was weakened by the war.
  • The American forced evacuation in Saxony and Thuringia affected companies that had applied modern processes and produced modern products: Siemens, Telefunken , Siebel Flugzeugwerke , Junkers Motorenbau and Junkers Flugzeugwerk , Agfa Wolfen , Rheinmetall-Borsig AG , Deutsche Solvay-Werke GmbH Bernburg ad Saale , IG Farben Bitterfeld and Leuna and other companies.
  • In Leipzig, the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), which was based on the Osenberg list , forced the evacuation of around 35 scientists between October 22 and 27, 1945. a. the physical (especially former employees of Heisenberg) and the chemical institute as well as medical institutes.
  • In Jena, US special units from the Carl Zeiss factories and the glass factory Schott & Genossen, which is closely associated with it, hired around 1,700 employees from June 18 to 25, 1945 under the motto “We take the brain” with the “Carl Zeiss -Werk-Mission " evacuated to Heidenheim. Zeiss was the world's leading manufacturer of optical and fine mechanical precision devices of great military importance. When Thuringia was incorporated into the Soviet occupation zone on July 1, 1945, the Soviet occupiers carried out a second deportation of people and material at the same time as the Ossawakim operation on October 22, 1946, in accordance with the decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1539-686 of July 9, 1946 to the Soviet Union.

Art and cultural objects

General

The special officers operated on the basis of lists of requirements and wishes. At the end of 1944, for example, the Central Committee of the CPSU asked the largest Soviet libraries to give their opinion on questions relating to the export of library equipment, libraries and book collections. In November 1945 additional requirements were made by the Academy of Sciences, the Art Committee, the Supreme Archive Administration of the USSR and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, among others. This research also included the search for Soviet objects that were suspected of being spoiled by the Germans in Germany. * Art and bibliophile objects:

"Action looted art"

In the course of these actions, also referred to by art historians as the “booty art action” according to archival documents, hundreds of art and cultural holdings were tracked down and brought to the Soviet Union (whether privately or publicly). With the exception of the large-scale return of Dresden's art treasures, it was only after 1990 that the objects that had been kept as “secret depots”, the existence of which is still officially denied in some cases, became known. These include (as a selection):

Aachen

Berlin

Bremen

  • extensive holdings of the Kunsthalle Bremen (including the so-called Baldin collection)

Dresden

Eberswalde

Eisenach

Gotha

Wernigerode

Other examples from the art scene affect Georgium , scabbard of Gutenstein , Friedenstein Castle in Gotha , Pyramid of Rapa in Rapa / Poland , University Library in Erfurt , rock salt mine Bernburg , city library in Magdeburg

Return efforts

In 1997 the Russian Duma passed - contrary to the world convention signed in 1954 and signed by the Soviet Union - that “looted art from Germany” was Russian property. Boris Yeltsin , who opposed this, was constitutionally forced to sign this law and put it into effect.

Discussions

The most diverse groups operated independently of one another, but also cooperated. This sometimes resulted in a scientifically unacceptable tearing apart of collections. The shipments are sometimes put into perspective by the fact that passing military units as well as the local population have carried out or have plundered.

German special units had done something similar, especially in Eastern Europe at the beginning of World War II, with the two actions “ Einsatzstab Rosenberg ” and “ Ahnenerbe ”.

The transition between legal reparations payments and illegal scenarios was fluid, however.

literature

  • Ingo Kolosa: Tell me where the books are ... A contribution to “Looted cultural goods” and “Trophy commissions” . In: Journal of Librarianship and Bibliography 42 . 1995, p. 339-364 .
  • Klaus-Dietmar Henke : The American occupation of Germany . Bohlau Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-54141-2 , p. 742-776 .
  • The Trophy Commissions of the Red Army: a collection of documents on the kidnapping of books from German libraries . In: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann , Ingo Kolosa (Hrsg.): Journal for Libraries and Bibliography; 64 . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1996.
  • Matthias Uhl : Stalin's V-2: the technology transfer of German radio controlled weapons technology to the USSR and the development of the Soviet missile industry from 1945 to 1959 . In: Defense technology and scientific weapons science . tape 14 . Bernard & Graefe, 2001, ISBN 978-3-7637-6214-9 (dissertation at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2000).
  • Nadin Schmidt: The deportation of the scientific intelligentsia to the universities of the Soviet occupation zone after 1945 and their re-integration at the universities of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic . Ed .: Faculty for History, Art and Orient Studies at the University of Leipzig. Leipzig July 9, 2015 (200 pages, dissertation to obtain the academic degree Doctor Philosophiae).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see also looted art (Second World War)
  2. ↑ a b The Trophy Commissions of the Red Army: a collection of documents on the kidnapping of books from German libraries . In: Klaus-Dieter Lehmann , Ingo Kolosa (Hrsg.): Journal for Libraries and Bibliography; 64 . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 175, 178 (Document No. 28 of the 2nd half of 1946: "Report on the activities of the representative of the Committee for Affairs of the Cultural and Education Authorities at the Council of People's Commissars in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany", pages 173-181).
  3. ↑ Kurt Reinschke: End of the war and revitalization of university operations in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) . In: The ideologization of the Saxon universities from 1945 to 1990 . Saxon State Center for Political Education (Ed.), Dresden 2015, p. 13 .
  4. ↑ Gerhard Barkleit : Manfred von Ardenne. Self-realization in the century of dictatorships . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-428-12790-0 , pp. 88 - 89 (therein reference to BStU Ast. Dresden. AOP 2554/76, Vol. 40, Bl. 104).
  5. ↑ a b History of the Dresden State Art Collections. Archived from the original on June 21, 2017 ; accessed on April 20, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Erich Sobeslavsky, Nikolaus Joachim Lehmann : On the history of computing technology and data processing in the GDR 1946–1968 . In: Reports and Studies Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism; 8 . Hannah Arendt Inst. for research on totalitarianism, Dresden 1996, p. 132 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h Henke, Klaus-Dietmar : The American occupation of Germany . Bohlau Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-486-54141-2 , p. 745-762 .
  8. ↑ Jürgen Michels, Sergej Kuwschinow, Wladimir Srelow, Juri Voronkow: German aircraft specialists in Soviet Russia. Life and Work 1945–1954 . Poligrafičeskaja company INTELS-AG, Moscow 1996, p. 6 (Volume 1: in the places Podberesje, Samjelowo, Tuschino, Chimski in the Moscow region).
  9. ↑ Bernd Greiner: An unknown chapter in post-war history: They served every gentleman. How German loot scientists in East and West prepared for the Cold War after 1945. Die Zeit Nr. 45 SZ-Online, 1991, accessed on September 5, 2017 .
  10. ↑ Linda Hunt: Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945 to 1990 . St. Martin's Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-312-05510-2 , pp. 340 ff .
  11. ↑ including Hans-Joachim Born , Heinz Barwich , Werner Hartmann , Justus Mühlenpfordt and Karl-Franz Zühlke.
  12. ↑ Kurt Magnus : Rocket Slaves. German researchers behind red barbed wire . Elbe-Dnjepr-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-933395-67-4 .
  13. ↑ see Aktion Ossawakim: Affected professionals
  14. ↑ Ute Böhme: The expropriation of large companies and the development of a socialist planned economy in the Soviet occupation zone from 1945 to 1949: Using the example of the Siemens company . March 24, 2006, p. 66–74, 272 (inaugural dissertation in the Philosophical Faculty of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg).
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Mühlfriedel, Edith Hellmuth (ed.): Carl Zeiss: The history of a company; Volume 3: Carl Zeiss in Jena - 1945-1990 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-412-11196-1 , p. 8-23 .
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Mühlfriedel, Edith Hellmuth (ed.): Carl Zeiss: The history of a company; Volume 3: Carl Zeiss in Jena - 1945-1990 . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-412-11196-1 , p. 25-53 .
  17. ^ The trophy commissions of the Red Army: a collection of documents on the kidnapping of books from German libraries . In: Lehmann, Klaus-Dieter; Kolosa, Ingo (Ed.): Journal for Libraries and Bibliography; 64 . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 14–15, 175 (including Document No. 1 “List of some German libraries whose holdings are expediently to be transferred to the control of the USSR, regardless of Germany's book reparation payments to the Soviet Union” (pages 33-37)).
  18. ↑ The trophy commissions of the Red Army: a collection of documents on the kidnapping of books from German libraries: Document No. 20: List of libraries in Germany that have been checked by the culture committee . In: Lehmann, Klaus-Dieter; Kolosa, Ingo (Ed.): Journal for Libraries and Bibliography; 64 . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 127–143 (from January 1 to May 1, 1946).
  19. ^ Christiane Kaps: Return of Art 1955 and 1958 - Memories of Contemporary Witnesses . In: Dresdner Geschichtsverein e. V. (Hrsg.): Return of Art - Dresden 1956/1958 (= Dresdner Hefte - Contributions to Cultural History, No. 87, 3/2006). Dresden 2006, ISBN 3-910055-83-4 . Pp. 19–29, here p. 25.
  20. ↑ Wilfried Fiedler: Cultural goods as spoils of war? CF Müller Verlag, Heidelberg 1995, p. 6 .