Werner Essen

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Werner Essen (born November 25, 1901 in Günthersdorf , district of Grünberg i. Schles. , † September 23, 1989 in Bonn ) was a German population scientist and Baltic specialist .

Life

First years, studies and career entry

Werner Essen was the son of Pastor Adolf Essen, who was temporarily active in Elberfeld, and a brother of Pastor Kurt Essen , a member of the Confessing Church . He finished his school career with the school leaving examination in Elberfeld . He sympathized with the Völkisch movement early on . After the First World War , he joined Freikorps in 1919 . Essen later stated that he had taken part in the suppression of the Spartacus uprising in Berlin and the related unrest in Hamburg and that he had been involved in the Kapp Putsch . In this context, as a member of the Hacketau Freikorps, he had entered into the armed conflict with the Red Ruhr Army in 1920 . As a volunteer with the Killinger Assault Company , he is said to have participated in the suppression of the Third Polish Uprising in 1921 in the course of the fighting on St. Annaberg . According to its own information, Essen was also a member of the Black Reichswehr . Afterwards he was demobilized and in 1921 joined the student battalion in Danzig-Langfuhr . He was a member of the Gdańsk Guild Ostland and planned excursions to the Baltic States in this context.

From 1923 he studied mechanical engineering, geography and philosophy at the Technical University of Danzig . In 1925 he moved to the University of Munich , where he studied geography, anthropology and ethnology until completing his studies in 1928. According to his own statements, Essen stayed in Lithuania for three years with interruptions between 1926 and 1932 , where he researched the population and settlement areas of the German ethnic group. In Munich he was awarded a doctorate by Erich von Drygalski in 1929 with his dissertation “The rural settlements in Lithuania with special consideration of their population conditions”. phil. PhD .

From 1931 Essen was employed in the Research Institute for Agriculture and Settlement in Lithuania . In March 1931 he called for the “Operation in Prussia!” In order to use the young generation to prepare for the “resumption of the old stream of Germans and their German cultural values ​​from the south and west to the Prussian east”. During his stay in Lithuania, Essen kept in close contact with the National Socialists Walther Darré , Alfred Rosenberg and Erich Koch . He became a corresponding employee of the NS-Landpost and the Preußische Zeitung . He joined the NSDAP in early December 1931 . For the party, he was certified as a "fighting man". After his National Socialist activities in Lithuania and the German legation there became known, he left the country.

Consultant in the Reich Ministry of the Interior

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he was from 1934 Ost- und Volkstumsreferent in the department for demarcation and ethnicity in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (RMI). From 1936, his superior was Ministerialdirektor Ernst Vollert . Together with Hans Globke , Essen worked on the Nuremberg race laws .

Essen was the regional representative for Lithuania of the North-East German Research Foundation (NOFG) and was also a member of the Academy for German Law , where he played a leading role in the “Working Group for Nationality Law”. With other experts from this working group in cooperation with other Nazi institutions, he worked out the fundamentals of a new National Socialist ethnic group policy, which should be an alternative to the minority policy of the League of Nations, under strict secrecy . After the attack on Poland at the beginning of the Second World War , plans for the new legal regulation of the “ethnic reorganization of Europe” were rejected by the working group. On December 8, 1939, the working group met with Werner Hasselblatt (legal advisor to the German minorities in Europe), Hermann Behrends (leader of the BDO , deputy head of VoMi ) and Essen ( Wilhelm Stuckart's right hand in the RMI). At this meeting it was stated that “the entire Polish population cannot be destroyed”, but that a reserve should be created for Poland with the General Government. Volksdeutsche and Poles of Nordic character should apply for German citizenship upon revocation. The Jewish question was addressed, but not finally clarified. It no longer existed for the minority politicians.

Second World War - Reichskommissariat Ostland

In 1941 he moved from the Reich Ministry of the Interior to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . After the attack on the Soviet Union , he headed the Politics Department in the General Commissariat of Lithuania until October 2, 1941. From 1941 to 1944 he headed the Room Department (HA II) at the Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) in Riga . His area of ​​responsibility included spatial planning, spatial research, statistics, surveying and archiving. He was also responsible for race and settlement policy. From May 1942, the spatial planner Gottfried Müller worked out settlement plans within Essen's department . The spatial planning sketch completed in mid-November 1942 provided for a comprehensive population exchange in the RKO to the detriment of the Polish population. Lithuanians were to be settled in the south-east of their country and the area between Riga and Tilsit that would become vacant should be settled with a "Volkstumsbrücke" of 500,000 Germans. From Riga to Leningrad , German bases were to be built with a total of 300,000 German settlers. The Jewish population was not included in these plans. Ignoring the increasingly unfavorable course of the war in the German-Soviet War , Essen suggested in February 1943 that the Pripjet swamps be drained by the Dutch, which, according to Essen, could be used as a “substitute for the eliminated Judaism in the cities”.

As a result of the advance of the Red Army , Essen moved to the Naugard District Office in 1944 . Due to the war, he moved from there via Hamburg to Hesse in February 1945 .

post war period

In the spring of 1945 he was arrested in Hesse by members of the US Army and interned for 15 months. In August 1947 he took up research activities and worked in particular for the Göttingen working group and the German Office for Peace Issues. Essen was one of the co-founders of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council in April 1950 and, as a managing board member, also became the first director of the Herder Institute in Marburg in May 1950 . After differences with other board members, particularly due to insufficient research, Essen was replaced as director of the institute in May 1951 by Erich Keyser . Theodor Schieder was appointed to the board of the Herder Research Council for Essen .

From 1950 he was a ministerial advisor at the Institute for Spatial Research and was a corresponding member of the Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning . From 1951 until his retirement in 1966 he was Ministerialrat in the Federal Ministry for displaced persons, refugees and war victims . Until 1967 he was a member of the Association of German Professional Geographers.

During the public prosecutor's investigation into the former area commissioner in Schaulen, Hans Gewecke , Essen was also questioned in 1957. In his statements, Essen assigned sole responsibility for the murder of Jews in Lithuania to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler and stated that the civil administration there viewed this “with disgust”. Contrary to the truth, Essen claimed that “the liquidation of the Jews in Lithuania essentially took place in the short period between the invasion and the start of civil administration (July 22), e. Partly with the help of Lithuanian forces ”. The historian Christoph Dieckmann explains that the murder of Jews increased after the arrival of the civil administration and was supported by the civil administration.

Essen is listed in the GDR Brown Book . His estate is in the Herder Institute's document collection .

literature

  • Christoph Dieckmann : Reflections on German occupation in Eastern Europe 1941–1944: the example of Lithuania . In: Annaberger Annalen No. 5, 1997, Yearbook on Lithuania and German-Lithuanian Relations No. 5, ISSN  0949-3484 .
  • Michael Fahlbusch : Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” from 1931–1945 . Nomos, Baden-Baden 1999, ISBN 3-7890-5770-3 .
  • Ingo Haar : Historian under National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east (= critical studies on history . Volume 143). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35942-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften” from 1931–1945 , Baden-Baden 1999, p. 88.
  2. ↑ a b c Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east. , Göttingen 2000, p. 246.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Christoph Dieckmann: Considerations on German occupation in Eastern Europe 1941–1944: the example of Lithuania . In: Annaberger Annalen No. 5, 1997, p. 43 f.
  4. ↑ Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften” from 1931–1945 , Baden-Baden 1999, p. 228.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east. , Göttingen 2000, p. 246.
  6. ^ Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east (= critical studies on history . Volume 143). Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35942-X , p. 246.
  7. ↑ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 140.
  8. ^ Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east. , Göttingen 2000, p. 302 ff.
  9. ^ Ingo Haar: Historians in National Socialism. German history and the "Volkstumskampf" in the east. , Göttingen 2000, p. 317 f.
  10. ↑ a b Christoph Dieckmann: Reflections on German occupation in Eastern Europe 1941–1944: the example of Lithuania . In: Annaberger Annalen No. 5, 1997, p. 37.
  11. ↑ a b Michael Fahlbusch: Science in the Service of National Socialist Politics? The “Volksdeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaften” from 1931–1945 , Baden-Baden 1999, p. 587.
  12. ^ A b c Eduard Mühle : For the people and the German East: the historian Hermann Aubin and the German research on the East , Droste, Düsseldorf 2005, p. 422.
  13. ↑ Christoph Dieckmann: Plan and Practice. German settlement policy in occupied Lithuania 1941-1944 . In: Science, Planning, Expulsion: Reorganization Concepts and Resettlement Policy in the 20th Century , Series: Contributions to the History of the German Research Foundation, 1. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08733-8 , p. 96.
  14. ↑ Christoph Dieckmann: Plan and Practice. German settlement policy in occupied Lithuania 1941-1944 . In: Science, Planning, Expulsion: Reorganization Concepts and Resettlement Policy in the 20th Century , Series: Contributions to the History of the German Research Foundation, 1. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08733-8 , p. 108.
  15. ↑ Ute Wardenga, Norman Henniges, Heinz Peter Brogiato, Bruno Schelhaas: The Association of German Professional Geographers 1950–1979. A socio-historical study of the early phase of the DVAG. Self-published by the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography V., Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-86082-078-0 , p. 72. In: Forum. Issue 16 ( online: PDF file, 4.3 MB, 133 pages ).
  16. ↑ Quoted in: Christoph Dieckmann: Reflections on German occupation in Eastern Europe 1941–1944: the example of Lithuania . In: Annaberger Annalen No. 5, 1997, p. 37.
  17. ^ Kai Arne Linnemann: The legacy of research on the East. On the role of Göttingen in the history of the post-war period . Tectum, Marburg 2002, ISBN 3-8288-8397-4 , p. 12.
  18. ^ Herder Institute: Baltic history in the archive. (Overview of the holdings of the estate in the archive database).
personal data
SURNAME Essen, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German population scientist and Baltic specialist
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Günthersdorf , district of Grünberg i. Schles.
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1989
Place of death Bonn