Wilhelm Karpenstein

Wilhelm Karpenstein

Wilhelm Karpenstein (born May 24, 1903 in Frankfurt am Main , † May 2, 1968 in Lauterbach (Hesse) ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ). In the final phase of the Weimar Republic and after the seizure of power , he was Gauleiter in Gau Pommern . In 1934 he lost his political offices and was expelled from the NSDAP.

Life

Wilhelm Karpenstein was born as the son of a Reichsbahn inspector in Frankfurt am Main . After working briefly as a miner, he began studying law at the University of Frankfurt am Main . In 1923 he moved to the University of Greifswald in the province of Pomerania .

Karpenstein joined the NSDAP as early as 1921 . With the Greifswald professor Theodor Vahlen and the students Reinhard Sunkel and Joachim Haupt , he built up the party in Gau Pomerania , initially using the Greater German National Community as a front organization. In 1923 Karpenstein joined the German National Freedom Party . From 1924 Karpenstein published the North German Observer .

In 1925 Karpenstein returned to Hessen ( Darmstadt ) for four years . He worked as a trainee lawyer at various Frankfurt courts. During this time he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 17,333), which had now been re-admitted, on August 31, 1925 , but left again in 1927. In 1928 he rejoined the NSDAP, but was expelled that same year, according to his own statement because of a dispute with the Gauleiter of Hesse, Friedrich Ringshausen . In 1929 he passed his assessor examination and returned to Greifswald, where he worked as a lawyer in Ernst Jarmer's office. Also in 1929 he was accepted back into the NSDAP. In the Reichstag election in 1930 he was elected NSDAP member of the Reichstag for constituency 6 (Pomerania); he was a member of the Reichstag from September 1930 to August 1934.

On April 1, 1931, Karpenstein was appointed Gauleiter of Pomerania to succeed Walther von Corswant . The situation of the NSDAP in Pomerania was marked by internal party disputes. After the so-called Stennes Putsch , an internal party dispute in which SA men occupied a party building of the NSDAP in Berlin on April 1, 1931, numerous SA leaders were expelled from the party. Karpenstein supported these party exclusions, but had disputes with the remaining SA leaders and with the former deputy Gauleiter Robert Schulz .

Before and after the seizure of power in 1933 Karpenstein acted ruthlessly against political opponents. In November 1932 he called in Stolp for the annihilation and extermination of the German National People's Party , the leading party in Pomerania during the Weimar Republic. After the seizure of power, he campaigned for the Greifswald professors Fritz Klingmüller and Konrat Ziegler to be dismissed .

In 1933 Karpenstein became a member of the Prussian State Council and the Reichsrat . Unlike other Gauleiter, Karpenstein did not succeed in maintaining the office of senior president ; the post of President of the Province of Pomerania remained vacant after the removal of Carl von Halfern on October 1, 1933. In 1933 Karpenstein became an honorary citizen of Greifswald ( revoked on September 5, 1935). On January 25, 1934, he was awarded the NSDAP badge of honor.

Karpenstein's career ended abruptly in 1934. Following the so-called Röhm Putsch , Karpenstein was deposed as Gauleiter of Pomerania on July 21, 1934 and expelled from the party; his successor as Gauleiter was Franz Schwede-Coburg . The background was also disputes about the Bredow concentration camp near Stettin, which was set up by the then police chief Fritz Karl Engel and the local SS formation on the site of the former Vulcan shipyard , which was closed in March 1934. Karpenstein was in Gestapo custody in Berlin from October 1934 to 1936 . In July 1936 he was released from custody on the basis of a pardon, with the condition that he be in Germany but not within the Pomeranian Gau.

Karpenstein was a lawyer in Berlin from 1936, although his license was temporarily withdrawn. During the Second World War he was mostly a soldier. Most recently he served from 1942 in the heavy flak department 403, where he was promoted to lieutenant in 1943 . His efforts for political rehabilitation in the NSDAP were unsuccessful.

After the Second World War, Karpenstein worked from 1949 to 1951 as a district manager at the Hessian Farmers' Association and from 1951 to 1954 as an authorized signatory in a cloth factory. In 1954 he was again admitted to the bar, which he had been denied in 1950 as a former Gauleiter. Because of his responsibility for the Bredow concentration camp, he was initially still refused admission as a notary, Karpenstein complained against it and, after a settlement, was granted a notary admission in 1959. In 1965, he successfully sued IG Metall for a publication showing him as a prominent National Socialist before the Federal Court of Justice for compensation of DM 3,000. In these legal proceedings, Karpenstein was not jointly responsible for the events in the Stettin concentration camp.

literature

• Thorsten Hinz : The party makes the state . In: Baltic Studies Volume 92 NF, 2006, ISSN  0067-3099 , pp. 113-134.
• Kyra T. Inachin : The Rise of the National Socialists in Pomerania. Helms, Schwerin 2002, ISBN 3-935749-14-7 .
• Jan Mittenzwei: Karpenstein, Wilhelm (1903–1968) . In: Dirk Alvermann , Nils Jörn (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon für Pommern . Volume 2 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Pomerania. Series V, Volume 48.2). Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22541-4 , pp. 138-142.

Web links

• Wilhelm Karpenstein in the database of members of the Reichstag

Footnotes

1. ↑ Thorsten Hinz : The party makes the state . In: Baltic Studies Volume 92 NF, 2006, ISSN  0067-3099 , p. 128.