Walter Springorum

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Walter Springorum (* 17th October 1892 in Dortmund , † 3. February 1973 ) was the Nazi Government President of the administrative district of Katowice and member of the Supervisory Board of Hoesch AG .

Life

Walter Springorum came from the Westphalian industrial family Springorum, which is closely associated with the Hoesch Group . He is the brother of Otto Springorum .

Springorum studied law at the Eberhard Karls University . On November 17, 1911, he was reciprocated in the Corps Rhenania Tübingen . When he was inactive , he moved to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität . From 1914 to 1918 he took part in the First World War, most recently as a lieutenant in the reserve. From 1921 he was a government assessor with the government in Düsseldorf . Since 1925 government councilor in Köslin , he was appointed district administrator in the Pomeranian district of Bütow in July 1931 - initially on a temporary basis, and finally in November of the same year. In November 1936 he did a reservist exercise with the army . Meanwhile accepted into the National Socialist German Workers' Party , he was appointed ministerial conductor to the Reich Ministry of the Interior in August 1939 .

On October 26, 1939 - only a few weeks after the invasion of Poland - he was appointed provisional president of the district of Katowice in eastern Upper Silesia in May 1940 . As a result of several deployments in the Wehrmacht, he was temporarily represented by Vice President Erich Keßler from October 21, 1943 and replaced by District President Otto Müller-Haccius from the authority of the Reich Governor in Graz from October 1944 . The Upper Silesian industrial area , in which Hoesch AG had great interest, was located in the administrative district of Katowice . The Auschwitz concentration camp was located in the Bielitz district .

From the beginning, the function of the district administrator in the occupied territories included, in addition to general administrative tasks and the supervision of the police stations, a close involvement in the National Socialist policy with regard to Jews and Poles, i.e. the establishment and supervision of ghettos and concentration camps and the availability of Employment of Jewish forced laborers for the Schmelt office , which was based in Sosnowiec ( district of Będzin ), part of the Katowice administrative district . In 1939 around 70,000 to 80,000 Jews lived in the administrative district of Katowice, whose journeys ended in the labor and extermination camps in the following years after resettlement and ghettoization.

In 1941 there were brief differences between Springorum and other institutions with regard to the German settlement policy in the administrative district of Katowice: For the Auschwitz settlement area, he insisted on the designation of so-called small German farms instead of the planned hereditary farms , each of which was at least 7.5 hectares - which in future will be prohibited from selling - Land conditional, as this would restrict long-term planning freedom for the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Several inspection visits led Springorum to the Auschwitz concentration camp, including on March 1, 1941, May 14 and July 17, 1942 together with Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler . He also had other questions about the Auschwitz concentration camp: The district president of Kattowitz, Walter Springorum, had already classified the possibility of an armed prisoner uprising with the support of Armia Krajowa as a serious danger in 1943. As part of the preparations for the “evacuation” of Auschwitz concentration camp, he suggested on December 11, 1944 that strategically important roads should also be used for the Wehrmacht , which shows the high priority he accorded this action. When the Gauleiter of Upper Silesia, Fritz Bracht , fell ill on January 20, 1945, Springorum replaced him from January 26 in his function as Reich Defense Commissioner .

Interned by the Czechs in 1945, he fell ill with poliomyelitis in the prison camp . He was released in July 1946. As District President a. D. later he moved to Bad Salzuflen . He was married to Stefanie Lutterbeck from Düsseldorf since 1924 .

Listed as a member of the supervisory board of Hoesch AG in March 1945, he was recorded as a missing person in American military files in March 1946. From the mid-1950s until his death he can be found again in the ranks of the supervisory board members of Hoesch AG.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Springorum II. In: Die Tübinger Rhenanen , 5th edition (2002), p. 148
  2. ^ Territorial changes in Germany and neighboring areas from 1874 to 1945: District of Bütow / Pomerania
  3. ↑ Territorial changes in Germany and neighboring areas from 1874 to 1945: Administrative region of Katowice
  4. ↑ Digitalis Uni Cologne (PDF; 3.4 MB)
  5. ^ Ingo Loose: Loans for Nazi Crimes: The German Credit Institutions in Poland and the Robbery of the Polish and Jewish Population 1939–1945. Munich: Oldenbourg 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-58331-1 , p. 77.
  6. ^ Niels Gutschow: Architects plan in the "Germanized East" 1939–1945. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser 2001, ISBN 3-7643-6390-8 , p. 91
  7. ^ Mary Fulbrook: A small town near Auschwitz. Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. Oxford University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-960330-5 , p. 165
  8. ↑ See Mary Fulbrook: A small town near Auschwitz. P. 227
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 5: Hinzert, Auschwitz, Neuengamme. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-52965-8 , p. 154.
  10. ↑ The Persecution and Murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 , Volume 16, p. 663
  11. ↑ OMGUS External Assets Investigations Hoesch AG: Appendices to preliminal report
  12. ↑ The Phantom Karl Hoesch / Springorum era. In: WAZ of November 9, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Springorum, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German district president and industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Dortmund
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1973