Walther Stepp

Walther Stepp (born February 10, 1898 in Konken , † February 1, 1972 in Fürstenfeldbruck ) was a German lawyer, police officer and SS leader.

Live and act

After primary school and the Progymnasium , Stepp finally attended the humanistic grammar school in Kaiserslautern . After the beginning of the First World War , he broke off school attendance prematurely in August 1916 and volunteered for military service with the 11th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment in Würzburg . In mid-July 1917 he passed his secondary school diploma and then did military service on the Western Front . After the war, he resigned in January 1919 as a sergeant of the reserve from the army and joined in the next three years several volunteer corps to.

From 1919, he graduated in law at the Universities of Heidelberg and Erlangen , which he in 1922 with the first State examination and promotion to Dr. jur. completed. After completing his legal clerkship , he joined the Bavarian civil service as a court assessor in November 1924 . From the beginning of January 1926 he worked as the second public prosecutor in Frankenthal and from the beginning of April 1929 as a district judge in Mellrichstadt and from the beginning of October 1929 in Frankenthal.

Stepps SS ranks
date	rank
April 1934	SS-Obersturmbannführer
November 1934	SS standard leader
	SS-Oberführer
June 1943	SS Brigade Leader

Even before the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” in 1933, Stepp joined the NSDAP ( membership number 400.206) in October 1930 and the SA in early August 1931 , from which he switched to the SS in November 1933 (SS number 36.224). In May / June he was the managing mayor of Frankenthal for a few weeks and also local special representative of the OSAF . In June 1933 he moved to the district court of Munich I as a public prosecutor , where he was already working as a judge from July 1934.

In January 1935 Stepp was transferred to the Bavarian Political Police , where he was promoted to the Oberregierungsrat from the beginning of February 1935 to the end of November 1937 and took over the deputy management and in October 1936 the management of the state police headquarters in Munich. After disputes over competencies with the Secret State Police Office in Berlin , he resigned from the police service at the end of November 1937. At the beginning of December 1937 he became president of the regional court in Kaiserslautern and at the beginning of October 1938 he took over the chairmanship of the local special court .

After the beginning of the Second World War , Stepp took part in the war as a soldier in the Wehrmacht and left the army with the rank of captain in November 1942. He then served as President of the Higher Regional Court in Munich until the end of the war. In the SS he reached the rank of SS Brigade Leader in June 1943 .

After the war, quilting was until May 1948 in the Allied internment . After a trial in Munich, he was denazified as the main accused in August 1948, and after a new trial in March 1950 he was only classified as a suspect. After further proceedings, he was awarded the pension of a regional court president in October 1956. His last places of residence were Pasing and Eichenau .

Fonts

• “The competence of the German Reich according to the new Reich constitution and the previous Reich constitution”, Erlangen 1922 (dissertation).

Web links

• Joachim Lilla : Stepp, Walther , in: ders .: Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) functionaries in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945 , Bayerische Landesbibliothek Online