Walter Hoff (pastor)

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Walter Hoff (born March 18, 1890 in Eulenberg, Posen Province ; † October 7, 1977 in Hamburg ) was a pastor in Berlin and a member of the German Christians , the SA and the NSDAP .

Life

Origin, studies, family and career entry

Hoff was born the son of a forester in Poznan. After graduating from high school in Görlitz, studied theology and history in Halle , Königsberg and Berlin . During the First World War he served as a volunteer in France and Russia, among others . In 1916 he was appointed lieutenant in the reserve. In 1917 he married Frida, also born with the last name Hoff. He had six children with her in the following years. From 1922 to 1930 Hoff was pastor for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein in the second parish of the Schleswig-Holstein community of Rellingen near Hamburg.

First steps as a National Socialist

On April 1, 1930 he took up his pastor's office in the Charlottenburg Luisengemeinde in the old Prussian regional church . The widow of the pastor, who held the pastor's position before him, he expelled from the parsonage, pointing out that in case of doubt he would not shrink from the "odium of violence". As early as 1929, Hoff expressed his closeness to National Socialism in his trial sermons in Charlottenburg. After taking office, he celebrated several church services for the SA and gained recognition from Joseph Goebbels , the Berlin Gauleiter. In 1932 Hoff joined the NSDAP. The pastor took part in street fights between National Socialists and Communists. At times the “standard chaplain” could only move in public when accompanied by a bodyguard . In November 1933, Hoff was accepted into the SA.

Nazi career up to the beginning of the Second World War

After the handover of power to the National Socialists, Hoff became involved as a German Christian . He founded the Studentenkampfbund German Christians , which could not assert itself at the universities, because the National Socialist German Student Union forbade its members a double membership. In Ludwig Müller's "Reich Church Government" , he took care of the subjects of popular missions and theological training. With the help of Hermann Göring's adjutant , he got into a high church office. August Jäger appointed him consistorial councilor of the Mark Brandenburg . Hoff then threatened unpopular colleagues and subordinates with persecution.

After Ludwig Müller's church regiment had effectively failed in October 1934, Hoff had to vacate his post in the consistory . From October 1, 1936, he came to the traditional but politically insignificant position "Probst von Kölln " at St. Petri . Hoff resumed his history studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin in the winter semester and received his doctorate with a thesis on the “Glassworks in Neumark”. The work was rated “sufficient” by its examiners, and in terms of content it clearly revealed anti-Slavic resentments on the part of the author.

World War and Holocaust

In 1940 Hoff began his military service as an orderly officer in the Wehrmacht . With the rank of captain , he took over the management of a field command of the security division 221 in 1941/42 , which had been involved in the "fight against partisans " in the rear army area since autumn 1941 . As part of home leave , Hoff boasted that he killed partisans and spies . For his activities he received the War Merit Cross on September 21, 1941 . He also lived out his pronounced anti-Semitism in the East: In a letter to Senior Consistorial Councilor Horst Fichtner dated September 29, 1943, he boasted that “I helped liquidate a considerable number of Jews in Soviet Russia, namely many hundreds.”

post war period

Disciplinary proceedings

After the end of the war, Hoff was taken prisoner by the British . The Evangelical Consistory of Berlin-Brandenburg zu Berlin tried to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him because of Hoff's proximity to National Socialism and his exposed position among the German Christians, with the aim of removing him from his office . Hoff himself initially shied away from returning to his pastoral position, which was in the Soviet sector of Berlin . Instead, he applied to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hamburg state , albeit unsuccessfully. The Berlin church representatives hoped to be able to avoid a reinstatement of Hoff without disciplinary proceedings and removal from office, and asked the Hamburg colleagues to persuade Hoff to give up his pastoral office. Hoff insisted on reinstatement or on his pension entitlements.

In this situation, Horst Fichtner disclosed within the church what Hoff had told him in writing on September 29, 1943 about his involvement in the murder of the Jews. Those in charge of church disciplinary proceedings began questioning Hoff's former employees, who underlined his German-Christian positions. The disciplinary proceedings against Hoff finally began on February 19, 1948. He was accused of having attacked and persecuted church and non-church officials in terms of church politics and politics. In addition, he had "proceeded against other people in a non-excusable manner".

The verdict was issued on November 15, 1949. Hoff's self-accusation of having participated in the murder of Jews hardly played a role. Rather, the judgment focused on internal church misconduct by Hoff. The Disciplinary Chamber accepted Hoff's claim that he only invented his involvement in the murder of Jews in order to be able to counter mistrust of the NSDAP. He wanted to show political surveillance agencies of the Nazi state that they would continue to be loyal . The statements in the letter to Fichtner were "a political lie" in the eyes of the disciplinary chamber. According to this, Hoff was not a war criminal who should have been extradited to the judiciary , but a pastor who behaved wrongly in terms of convictions and verbally. These facts are so serious, however, that Hoff was attested "permanent unworthiness of office" with the consequence of the dismissal from the service and the denial of all rights of the clergy .

As a grace and revocable, the church initially granted Hoff a quarter of his statutory pension for three years . These payments were repeatedly extended. Hoff nevertheless appealed, which was rejected by the Western Senate of the Disciplinary Court of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) on June 9, 1952. In the course of this appeal for a revision , Hoff claimed that he had already come into conflict with the National Socialist Jewish policy in 1942 . The revision authority countered that, on the tenth anniversary of the seizure of power , he had publicly appealed to the Berlin population to thank God for the removal of Judaism from Germany. Hoff's self-accusation in the letter to Fechtner was judged by the appellate body to be a grave moral misconduct, as it meant that he was on the side of murderers. The possible complicity in the murder of the Jews, however, did not prompt the revision authority to involve the prosecution authorities .

On February 28, 1953, Hoff made another attempt to reverse his sentence. In relation to the Berlin Consistory, he put his good repute with former Wehrmacht comrades on display, and he was also obsessed with " satanic powers". He asked for forgiveness for a "repentant sinner" and emphasized his penance with "misfortune and heartache". The authority contacted took up Hoff's initiative and applied for approval from the competent EKD council. The council refused, he saw no radical change of heart. Hoff continued to seek reinstatement in his old rights. On February 28, 1958, he was finally successful: After a change in the disciplinary code, the EKD Council was no longer responsible, but the Berlin Consistory. It restored him to the rights of the clergy. From then on, he received 75 percent of his regular salary. The Hannoversche Landeskirche commissioned him at the end of 1957 with pastoral care tasks in the Ginsterhof hospital in Tötensen . He held this position until the end of May 1962. From April 1960 he received a pension by decision of the Berlin Consistory.

Investigations into suspected involvement in the Holocaust

The central office of the state justice administrations for the investigation of National Socialist crimes in Ludwigsburg became aware of Hoff at the end of the 1960s. She investigated whether he was involved in the mass shootings of Einsatzkommando 8 near Klimowitschi ( Belarus ) as a member of the field command 549 in 1941/42 . A mission report from the Reich Security Main Office documented the cooperation between Einsatzkommandos 8 and Security Division 221, among other things in questions of “fighting partisans”. The Ludwigsburg Central Office also had testimony from the Soviet Union that incriminated Hoff. However, the investigators were skeptical about the chances of success of a trial against Hoff: In 1961 and 1963, Otto Bradfisch was convicted as leader of Einsatzkommando 8 for the murder of 15,000 Jews, but the details of the events in the Klimovichi area could not be clarified. The self-accusation Hoffs in his letter to Fichtner was not known in Ludwigsburg. In 1975 the Ludwigsburg handed over the Hoff case to the Munich public prosecutor , who closed the investigation in 1979 after Hoff had died in 1977.

Literature and Sources

  • Dagmar Pöpping : Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG , 61st vol. (2013), no. 3, pp. 197-210.
  • The Protocols of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Vol. 7: 1953, edited by Dagmar Pöpping and Peter Beier, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2009, pp. 500–518, 762.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping, Solveig Grothe: The Fall of Man of the Nazi Pastor. Retrieved on February 26, 2013 (German).
  2. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 198.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 199.
  4. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 199.
  5. ↑ On the attention of Goebbels also Manfred Gailus: On dark ground , in: Die Zeit , February 14, 2013.
  6. ^ A b Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 200.
  7. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 201 f.
  8. ↑ On Fichtner see Hannelore Braun and Gertraud Grünzinger: Personenlexikon zum Deutschen Protestantismus 1919–1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-55761-7 , p. 75 ( digitized version ).
  9. ↑ Complete text of the letter in: The Protocols of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Vol. 7: 1953, edited by Dagmar Pöpping and Peter Beier, Göttingen 2009, p. 514 f.
  10. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 205 f.
  11. ^ A b Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Evangelical Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 206, there also the quote from the indictment against Hoff.
  12. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 207 f.
  13. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, pp. 208–210.
  14. ↑ Dagmar Pöpping: Between war crimes and parish office. Walter Hoff and the Protestant Church , in: ZfG 3/2013, p. 203 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hoff, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Eulenberg, Poznan
DATE OF DEATH 7th October 1977
Place of death Hamburg