Wilhelm Engler (lawyer)

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Wilhelm Adolf Walter Engler (born July 21, 1880 in Karlsruhe ; † October 7, 1958 there ) was a German administrative lawyer.

Life

As the son of Carl Engler , Wilhelm Engler served as a one-year volunteer in the 3rd Badischer Dragoon Regiment "Prince Karl" No. 22 after graduating from high school . In 1901 he began studying law at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and joined Werner Meißner in the Corps Rhenania Freiburg . When he was inactive , he moved to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , later to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and finally to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . In 1905 he passed the trainee examination in Heidelberg.

to bathe

After the assessor examination, he joined the internal administration of the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1909 . After participating in the First World War , he became district administrator in the district of Offenburg in 1924 . From 1926 to 1930 he was in the Reichsbanner black-red-gold . In 1930 he moved to Karlsruhe to work for the Badische Building Fire Insurance Company. Since 1931 senior government councilor , he became its acting head in December 1934 . The historian Michael Ruck writes about Engler's role in the Weimar Republic :

“Even among the social democratic officials, some of them turned out to be a boom long before the Nazi coup. Offenburg District Administrator Wilhelm Engler (1880–1958), for example, acted as an SPD sympathizer in the twenties and had also worked in the Reichsbanner since 1926; Because of his openly displayed anti-Semitism - which he was able to fully live out years later in the "General Government" - he clashed with Minister Remmele at the end of the twenties, then turned his back on his party and was then taken to an "apolitical" post at the building fire insurance company deported. "

- Michael Jerk

After the Reichstag election in March 1933 , he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 and again on May 1, 1937 (membership numbers 3,080,154 and 4,032,274).

Activity in the General Government

Shortly after the attack on Poland began , in September 1939 he was seconded to the head of civil administration in the Katowice district . December 13, 1939, he took office as District Chief in refounded district Katowice on. As early as the next month he was appointed head of the internal administration of the Katowice administrative district in the General Government. In the summer of 1941 he moved to the Lublin district as head of office , where he served as the highest official after Governor Ernst Zörner . In this function, Engler was often involved in discussions with the Governor General Hans Frank , who from 1941 onwards dealt quite bluntly with the “ final solution to the Jewish question ”. The official diary of the Governor General Frank, edited in 1975, kept a meticulous record of the participants, their decisions and their views. Minutes of a meeting of the government of the Generalgouvernement on October 17, 1941 in Lublin: “Oberregierungsrat Engler wishes a tightening of the regulations on the residence restrictions of Jews . Various restrictions have already been introduced in the Lublin district. But it would be welcomed if the death penalty were to be imposed on leaving the ghetto . "

On October 25, 1941, Engler's proposal was decided retrospectively to October 15 for the entire Government General. In the same ordinance, Poles were forbidden to give shelter to Jews, to procure food or to sell them, on pain of death. Bogdan Musial wrote in 1999:

“This meant that all Jews who were found illegally outside the ghetto had been declared outlawed. With this measure the German civil administration crossed the psychological threshold to the direct extermination of the Jews; because it had to be clear to every German that the Jews had the "choice" of either starving to death or being shot. "

- Bogdan Musial

The SS and police leader in Lublin was Odilo Globocnik from 1939 to 1943 , who was responsible for the Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps . Commissioned by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler to carry out the “Final Solution” in Poland, he supported and promoted the planned murder of the Lublin Jews with Zörner and Engler. The administration of the Lublin district approved the deportation of 1,600 Jews to the Belzec extermination camp “to beautify the cityscape”. In March and April 1942, over 30,000 residents of the Lublin ghetto were murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp (near Lublin), Belzec and Treblinka.

In a meeting with Frank on May 31, 1942, Engler reported, among other things, on questions of security and the liquidation of the Jews in the Lublin ghetto: “Recently, around 40,000 Jews were taken out of the city of Lublin. Those Jews who worked in factories or who worked as homeworkers in the German interest were resettled in a new ghetto. There are 3,000 to 4,000 Jews. Outside the city of Lublin there are various small towns with a strong Jewish population and a camp that is permanently occupied by Jews. It is hoped that in the course of time the most possible cleansing of Jews from the district will be achieved. It turned out that precisely in the Lublin district the Jew was the drone and that the population is happy to have got rid of these elements that oppressed them. "

In the spring of 1943 Zörner was relieved of his office because he opposed the further Germanization of his district in order not to drive the Poles living there into the slowly growing resistance movement. A few months later, under massive pressure from the SS , his head of office, Engler, was relieved of his post in Lublin under the pretext of his previous membership in the Reichsbanner. Hans Frank received “the previous head of office of Lublin ORR Dr. Engler ”to say goodbye to the Wawel . This “honor” does not suggest that Engler was in opposition to official politics. The new governor in Lublin Richard Wendler , a brother-in-law of Himmler, wanted a confidante in the important post of head of office.

Homecoming

Engler returned to the service of the Badische Building Fire Insurance Institute in Karlsruhe. By order of the US military government , he was provisionally suspended on June 30, 1945.

He was on the official wanted list of the US Army advancing in Karlsruhe ; But she was looking for a "Upper Government Councilor Engler from Lublin". His first name and year of birth were not known; presumably the identity was never established. Because of this ambiguity, Engler avoided automatic arrest and arrest . He continued to lead a civil life with no legal persecution. On December 31, 1946, he was finally put into retirement by order of the French military government .

Art in Baden

As a pensioner , Engler devoted himself to art. In 1946 he was elected 2nd chairman of the Badischer Kunstverein , whose business he was now in charge of. In 1954 he achieved his subsequent promotion to government director "by way of reparation" . Obviously, he was able to prove that the previous regime prevented him from further promotion. On August 10, 1954, he received the Cross of Merit on ribbon .

Bedridden for over two years in a serious accident in 1956, he died at the age of 78. The Deputy Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg Hermann Veit and the Karlsruhe City Director Eugen Keidel paid tribute to Engler's decades of commitment to Karlsruhe and culture in their funeral speeches. Like Werner Meißner in his Rhenanen obituary, they didn't mention “the East” with a single syllable.

literature

  • Wolfram Angerbauer (Red.): The heads of the upper offices, district offices and district offices in Baden-Württemberg from 1810 to 1972 . Published by the working group of the district archives at the Baden-Württemberg district assembly. Theiss, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-8062-1213-9 , pp. 237 .
  • Hans-Jörg Volkmann: Who was Wilhelm Engler? In: The messenger from the Upper Rhine (Corps newspaper of the Rhenania Freiburg). No. 290.
  • Werner Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945. (= Publications by the Institute for Contemporary History , Sources and Representations on Contemporary History, Volume 20). Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-421-01700-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Hans-Jörg Volkmann: Who was Wilhelm Engler? In: Der Bote vom Oberrhein (Corpszeitung der Rhenania Freiburg) , No. 290.
  2. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 35/678
  3. ↑ Michael Ruck : Corpsgeist and State Consciousness - Officials in the German Southwest 1928 to 1972 . Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, p.?.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945 . Stuttgart 1975, p. 948.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Präg, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer (ed.): The service diary of the German Governor General in Poland 1939-1945 . Stuttgart 1975.
  6. ↑ Service diary, p. 427.
  7. ↑ 3. Ordinance on residence restrictions in the Generalgouvernement of October 15, 1941 (VO.Bl. GG. P. 595).
  8. ^ A b Bogdan Musial: German civil administration and persecution of Jews in the Generalgouvernement. A case study on the Lublin District 1939–1944, Vol. 10 of the German Historical Institute in Warsaw . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999 (and 2011. ISBN 978-3447064934 ).
  9. ↑ Service diary, p. 500.
  10. ^ Service diary on July 24, 1943.
  11. ↑ WANTED - The wanted list of the Americans 1945 . Druffel Verlag Stegen 2002, p.?.
  12. ^ In Amtvorsteher (1996).
  13. ↑ Information from the Federal President's Office (2013)
  14. ↑ Der Bote vom Oberrhein (Corpszeitung der Rhenania Freiburg), No. 189 (1959).
personal data
SURNAME Engler, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Engler, Wilhelm Adolf Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 1958
Place of death Karlsruhe