Wilhelm Graefer

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Wilhelm Gräfer (born October 8, 1885 in Bad Gandersheim , † April 5, 1945 in Bodenwerder ) was mayor of the Hanseatic city of Lemgo from 1924 to 1945 , before he was sentenced to death by a court martial and executed shortly before the end of the Second World War . Its role in the time of National Socialism has been viewed more critically in the recent past.

Grave of the former mayor Wilhelm Gräfer in Lemgo

The mayor

Wilhelm Gräfer from Bad Gandersheim was elected head of the city on December 19, 1923 as the successor to Mayor Karl Otto Floret. In terms of his political stance, he was considered to be national-conservative. His tenure in 1933 was the takeover of the Nazis . On May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP . Gräfer adjusted to the new rulers in good time, but had to defend himself against some party comrades who wanted to take over his post. In 1936 he was expelled from the party because he had previously been a member of a Masonic lodge , but tried successfully to be reopened. The Lippe State Minister Adolf Wedderwille (1895–1947) described Gräfer as an agile and adaptable person . However, Gräfer's relationship with the party was not without tension, and that did not change when he was appointed mayor for life in 1942. The anti-Jewish policy was followed just as consistently in Lemgo as elsewhere in Germany.

End of the war in Lemgo

The city of Lemgo survived the war almost unscathed by the spring of 1945. On April 1st, the first Easter holiday, the combat commander of the Hanseatic city, captain and Nazi command officer Walter Heckmann, had scattered units and individual soldiers collected in order to defend Lemgo with them. His superior was Major General Paul Goerbig , who from Lüdenhausen gave the order to Heckmann that "Lemgo down to the last man" was to be defended. Heckmann was referred to the help of the Volkssturm , which had been set up on the orders of the party leadership. On April 3, the 2nd US Panzer Division approached the tank barriers erected by Heckmann on the arteries from the south and opened artillery fire on the city. In the early morning of April 4, Mayor Gräfer and the factory owner Herbert Lüpke (1912–2007), who had a good command of English, drove with a white flag to Hörstmar, a village on Lemgo's city limits, to meet the American Lieutenant Colonel Hugh R. O. Farrell (66th Panzer Regiment, 2nd Armored Division) negotiate a non-combat surrender. The Americans, who had precise knowledge of the Lemgo defense positions through their aerial reconnaissance, asked to speak to a responsible German officer and granted a 30-minute break from fire. Gräfer and Lüpke drove directly to the command post of the combat commandant in the lead-thorn barracks to brief Heckmann. Heckmann had the two negotiators arrested immediately and ordered them both to be brought to Barntrup .

What exactly happened could not be fully clarified later, as the statements of those involved were contradictory. Allegedly, Heckmann yelled at Gräfer: “That'll cost you your head!” And threatened Lüpke with the special court. When he was interrogated, Heckmann claimed that he had said: “This is treason, I have to arrest you!” Herbert Lüpke himself could no longer remember the exact wording.

During the guarded transport to Barntrup, there was a change to a wood gas truck at Rieper Berg. The truck had to stop on the uphill stretch towards Dörentrup. A soldier belonging to the transport gave the two arrested persons a sign that they could escape. Both jumped off the car, ran into a forest and tried separately to escape their pursuers. However, Gräfer was arrested again after a short time, and the manufacturer Lüpke managed to escape. The truck drove on to Kerssenbrockschen Castle in Barntrup. A local pastor was able to speak to the mayor before he was personally driven to Lügde on the same day with Captain Heckmann in his car , where a court martial was hastily set up. At the same time, the headquarters of Kampfgruppe Goerbig was relocated to Lügde.

The court martial

On the evening of April 4, 1945 at around 6 p.m., a hastily summoned court martial met in Lügde, made up of several German officers and Major General Goerbig as chairman and prosecutor. Some local group leaders were present as listeners and Captain Heckmann as a witness. The charges against Gräfer were treason and Gräfer defended himself by claiming that he had invoked a decree of the Minister of the Interior, according to which he had the right to negotiate with occupying powers. Major General Goerbig, acting as court lord, replied that he should have done this only after the Americans had moved in. His premature action was treason and he intervened in a military operation as a civilian and betrayed the weakness of the German defense. After the rather short hearing, the verdict was passed: "The accused will be shot and hanged." At the same time, the 2nd US Armored Division had taken the city of Lemgo without major fighting and had advanced in the evening via Barntrup to Groß Berkel .

Until the execution of the judgment, Gräfer remained in the custody of Major General Karl Becher, who was responsible for the defense of the Lemgo area. On the evening of April 4th, Becher moved his command post to Hehlen on the Weser. The next morning, early in the morning, Graeffer was driven from Hehlen to Bodenwerder , where he was shot in the market square. The corporal Hubert Lentzen, who was used as the driver of Major Kreuter, reported the events to a police station in Lemgo on June 15, 1945, according to which he had observed a group of several soldiers standing close together, including three SS soldiers and some Civilians. Suddenly he saw some rifle butts go through the air and apparently the butt was hit. Immediately afterwards he heard a shot and then the soldiers bent down and picked up a body. Until then he was in the vehicle with Major Kreuter, whereupon the Major gave the order to continue the journey. When he returned to the scene five minutes later, he saw Graefer's head mutilated beyond recognition and the lifeless body was hanging on a tree and remained there for two days until it was removed shortly before the arrival of the Americans. Dutch forced laborers who had come through Bodenwerder on their home march brought the first news of the mayor's death to Lemgo. Ten days later, citizens of Lemgo picked up Gräfer's remains from Bodenwerder.

Many Lemgoers gave Mayor Gräfer the last escort and the Nikolaikirche was filled to the last seat during the funeral service. The funeral itself was only attended by the Gräfer family and some of the town's dignitaries.

coping with the past

When Walter Heckmann returned to Lemgo from captivity in June 1945, according to the police report he had to be temporarily taken into protective custody for his protection, as the population's anger against Heckmann is very great. Friends of the former mayor tried in the following years to find those responsible for the execution and to bring them to justice.

An investigation against Heckmann for crimes against humanity has been set, the complaint was to 1948 by Attorney General William Kesseböhmer the Hamm Court set on the grounds that he had only his military duty in accordance traded. A preliminary investigation was opened against the chairman of the court martial, General Goerbig, in 1948, which led to his arrest in Hamburg in April 1949 . At the court hearing in Paderborn , Goerbig defended himself by saying that Major General Becher had ordered him to shoot the mayor of Lemgo for treason in the battle for Lemgo. Becher received this order from General Franz Mattenklott (1884–1954). General Mattenklott was also questioned in Paderborn, confirmed Goerbig's statements and assumed “full responsibility” . The prosecutor was satisfied with it and Division Commander Becher, who died in 1957, was not even interrogated.

Another complaint against Goerbig in 1959 prompted the Paderborn public prosecutor to start further investigations because the other members of the court court were also charged. In addition, Gräfer was accused of having the death of German soldiers on his conscience because he had led an American unit behind the German lines and a German division had been destroyed by an American fire attack. However, all of the allegations could not be proven and the investigation was subsequently suspended.

In 1968, the friends of Graefers again obtained the retrial at the district court in Detmold , because they had found the American officer in the USA with whom Graefer had negotiated. Colonel Hugh R. O'Farrel testified that the allegations against Graefers were "absurd". There was never an action behind the German lines at Lemgo. The court refrained from interrogating new witnesses and the chief public prosecutor applied for Gräfer to be acquitted, with the standing court judgment reversed . The court martial was fraught with significant procedural defects and Gräfer was wrongly accused of being responsible for the deaths of German soldiers. It was thus established that Graefer was convicted and executed on the basis of false claims. His efforts to save Lemgo from destruction, given the absolute military superiority of the Americans, was evidently not punishable under the then applicable regulations . By order of the 1st major criminal chamber of the Detmold regional court on April 5, 1970, the death sentence against Wilhelm Graefer was overturned.

The Bürgermeister-Gräfer-Realschule was named after him and a street in Lemgo is named after him. At the church of Bodenwerder there is a memorial plaque for the city of Lemgo with the following wording:

“Mayor Wilhelm Gräfer, Lemgo, October 8, 1885 - April 5, 1945, was innocently executed at this point. He sacrificed his life for our city. Old Hanseatic City of Lemgo. "

Controversy about Wilhelm Graefer

For a long time Wilhelm Gräfer was seen as the man who gave his life for the city. In the post-war period, the image of selfless people who wanted to prevent the destruction of Lemgo and was executed for it dominated. State President Heinrich Drake wrote the following obituary on August 29, 1945: Posterity will honor and remember him as a dutiful and responsible German person and unwavering for the good of the city entrusted to him.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the local history was critically questioned during the years of the National Socialist dictatorship by young people who accused Wilhelm Gräfer of being all too compliant to enforce National Socialist policies. A bitter public controversy broke out between two factions. Some wanted to preserve the honorable memory of the mayor, others assumed that he was too close to National Socialism. A student working group from Bielefeld University then scientifically examined the position of the mayor in the Nazi state using Wilhelm Gräfer as an example .

The budding historians were critical of Graefer's work as mayor. The National Socialist Jewish policy was also consistently followed in Lemgo. Overall, it can be said that Wilhelm Graeffer enforced National Socialist policies from 1933 to 1945. Gräfer's action at the end of the war and shortly before the fall of the regime was not an indication of resistance, but a measure in an exceptional situation.

On December 14, 2009, the Lemgo City Council decided in a roll-call vote with 27 votes in favor, 15 votes against and 4 abstentions that the municipal secondary school will no longer be named after Gräfer.

literature

  • Karl Meier-Lemgo : The history of the city of Lemgo , printing and publishing house FL Wagener, Lemgo 1952.
  • Josef Wiese: Lemgo in difficult times , printing and publishing house FL Wagener, Lemgo 1950.
  • Arnd Bauerkämper , Werner Freitag , Rainer Tegt: On the position of the mayor in the National Socialist state - Wilhelm Gräfer in Lemgo. A case study . In: Lippische Mitteilungen aus Geschichte und Landeskunde , Volume 51, 1982, pp. 211–239.
  • Hanne and Klaus Pohlmann: Continuity and rupture, National Socialism and the small town of Lemgo , Publishing House for Regional History , Bielefeld 1990. ISBN 3-927085-17-0
  • Maria Junker, Malte Leimbach and Jan Schmelter from the Detmold Gymnasium Leopoldinum wrote a thesis entitled The Scandal about Wilhelm Graeffer in the Changing Times and Society , ( available online ), which was awarded the 2nd prize in the Federal President's history competition in 2011 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Controversy about Mayor Graefer
  2. ↑ One day in April
  3. ↑ On a tree . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1970, pp. 55 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Published in Lippische Mitteilungen 1982 , No. 51, pages 211–239.
  5. ↑ Controversy about Mayor Graefer
  6. ↑ Realschule in future without Mayor Graeffer , report in the Lippische Landes-Zeitung. LZ No. 293 of December 16, 2009, p. 17
  7. ↑ Entry in the database of the Körber Foundation ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.koerber-stiftung.de
  8. ↑ Lemgo City Archives
personal data
SURNAME Gräfer, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mayor of Lemgo (1924–1945)
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Gandersheim
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1945
Place of death Bodenwerder