Wilhelm Krützfeld

Wilhelm Krützfeld (born December 9, 1880 in Hornsdorf, Seedorf municipality , Segeberg district , † October 31, 1953 in Berlin ) was a Prussian police officer . He kept in the Kristallnacht of 9 to 10 November 1938, the New Synagogue in Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin from destruction.

Memorial plaque on the house, Oranienburger Strasse 28, Berlin-Mitte

The memorial plaque is on the house next to the synagogue, in the ground floor zone on the pillar outside.

Life

Krützfeld served in the Prussian Army in the Guard in Spandau until 1907 and then became a police officer . After a long service in the state police office and in the Berlin police headquarters , he took over the police station 65 in Prenzlauer Berg in the 1930s and in 1938, as a lieutenant in the police force , headed police station 16 at Hackescher Markt in the Mitte district .

There was no significant resistance or openly articulated displeasure from the population against the pogroms. On the night of November 10, 1938, however, Krützfeld showed life-threatening moral courage and, along with other officers from his precinct, opposed a group of SA people who had already started a fire and forced them to retreat with words and armed force. He ordered immediate fire fighting, although the fire brigade had orders not to put out any burning synagogues. Krützfeld is said to have invoked the existing laws on monument protection .

The following day, the chief of police, Count Helldorff, merely reprimanded the district manager verbally, although harsher sanctions were customary for such or similar acts at the time.

But Krützfeld also helped the Jews living in his district . He and several other officials from his precinct repeatedly warned Jews about their arrest .

From 1940, Krützfeld was transferred to other districts. On November 1, 1943, after 36 years of police service, he retired at his own request “for health reasons” .

When the Berlin police were rebuilt in 1945, Wilhelm Krützfeld returned to the police force. In June 1947 he headed the Central Inspection in the Soviet sector .

Honors

tomb

Krützfeld's grave is located in Cemetery III of the Georgen Parochial Community ( Berlin-Weißensee ). It is dedicated to the city of Berlin as an honorary grave . Next to the New Synagogue, a plaque commemorates his courageous intervention.

The State of Schleswig-Holstein honored Wilhelm Krützfeld on November 9, 1993 by renaming the State Police School in Malente -Kiebitzhörn to "State Police School Wilhelm Krützfeld". On the occasion of an exhibition “Against Forgetting”, the following is stated in a memorial sheet from the police school on the question of the great importance of Wilhelm Krützfeld:

“He was neither persecuted by the Nazi regime nor a resistance fighter , he was neither a social democrat nor a communist , he was neither a classic hero nor a martyr . Maybe that's what makes him so important. Wilhelm Krützfeld was, as contemporary witnesses and evidence clearly show, a (Prussian) police officer who felt obliged to the state as a regulatory system to increase tolerance and human well-being. A man with common sense and moral courage who, through “great diligence and loyalty to duty”, made it from police chief to “police inspector in the district service” (later “district lieutenant”) and district chief. "

On the occasion of the 55th anniversary of his death, the Seedorf community honored their son with a memorial stone in the Berlin district. It was set on October 31, 2008 at Potsdamer Platz (named after Potsdamer Platz in the city of Berlin).

literature

• Heinz Knobloch : The courageous district chief. Unusual moral courage at Hackescher Markt. 2nd, expanded edition, Berlin: Morgenbuch Verlag, 1993, ISBN 978-3-371-00373-3
• Regina Scheer : Im Revier 16 , in: The Hackesche Höfe. History and stories of a living environment in the center of Berlin. Gesellschaft Hackesche Höfe eV (ed.), Berlin: Argon, 1993, pp. 74-79, ISBN 978-3-87024-254-1

Footnotes

1. ^ Regina Scheer : Im Revier 16 (In precinct No. 16) . In: The Hackesche Höfe. History and stories of a living environment in the center of Berlin , Gesellschaft Hackesche Höfe eV (ed.), Pp. 74–79. Edition, Argon, Berlin 1993, ISBN 978-3-87024-254-1 . here 78. Scheer explains how Heinz Knobloch came to the opinion that Wilhelm Krützfeld had saved the New Synagogue. Knobloch learned of the rescue from a report by the eyewitness Hans Hirschberg. On 9/10 November 1938, as the son of master tailor Siegmund Hirschberg, he experienced how his father and the policeman on duty from Revier 16, whom Hans knew as a customer of his father and made the district chief in his memory, started talking to each other, while the same policeman did his ordered extinguishing work on the New Synagogue. They talked about war experiences they had made on the same sector of the front. When Knobloch was doing research for his book The Courageous Reviervorsteher , he found out who was the chief in Revier 16 in 1938 and came to Krützfeld. But Krützfeld was not a soldier in the First World War. After Knobloch's book was published in 1990, Hirschberg had doubts about Knobloch's version. Other witnesses came forward, Inge Held, a neighbor, and Hirschberg's sister in Israel. They confirmed that Bellgardt was the savior of the New Synagogue. However, Krützfeld remains - besides his other merits - the credit that he fully covered Bellgardt in his actions. However, it is difficult to revise a myth that has once become popular.
2. ↑ LAB (Landesarchiv Berlin) C Rep. 303-09, No. 22 Bl. 241, 1 and 2.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Krützfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Wilhelm Krützfeld. Information about the person
• Kai Ritzmann: Done the right thing out of a sense of duty , in: Berliner Morgenpost, November 1, 2003.
• An example of moral courage. Memorial stone in the place of birth