Wilhelm Kunze

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Wilhelm Hermann Otto Kunze (born November 15, 1894 in Leipzig ; † August 20, 1960 there ) was a German major general and division commander of the Wehrmacht . He had contacts with the resistance group on July 20, 1944 . After the war he spent several years in Soviet special and prisoner-of-war camps and after his release to the GDR he became a functionary of the National Democratic Party of Germany and a secret informant for the Ministry for State Security . In 1960 he was sentenced to a prison term as a dissident and died a little later in prison.

Life

Training and First World War

Kunze's ancestors lived as craftsmen in the Ore Mountains since the 17th century. He was born in 1894 as the son of a doctorate public prosecutor at the Reich Court in Leipzig. Kunze attended the 3rd Higher Citizens School from 1901 to 1905 and the humanistic St. Thomas School in Leipzig from 1906 to 1912 . He passed his Abitur in 1914 at the grammar school in Zwickau, where his father last worked as a senior public prosecutor. One of his classmates in Leipzig was the future inspector of the German Navy, Friedrich Ruge .

After school, Kunze wanted to become a career officer and applied to the Saxon army . On March 12, 1914, he was appointed Fahnenjunker in the Prinz-Johann-Georg-Kaserne of the 10th Infantry Regiment No. 134 . In the first few days he became friends with his comrade Dietrich von Choltitz . He also mentioned Lieutenant Johannes Frießner as a further acquaintance . Both were promoted to the rank of general during World War II .

From August to October, meanwhile the First World War had begun, he was a platoon leader in the 8th Infantry Regiment No. 107 with the rank of ensign . Then he was promoted to lieutenant . He served in Belgium, France and Russia. In October 1915 he suffered serious combat injuries. From 1915 to 1916 he was used as a company commander in Lorraine . Kunze finally fought at Verdun and the Somme . From 1916 to 1917 he was a battalion adjutant. In 1917 he was involved in building up the Polish Armed Forces in Warsaw. From 1917 to 1918 he was a regimental adjutant and took part in the Third Battle of Flanders . Afterwards he was an orderly officer with Major General Fritz von Lossberg . In 1918 he became a lieutenant battalion leader and regimental adjutant again. In 1919 he was briefly adjutant in the Grenzjäger battalion. Then a transfer to the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 38 took place. In 1920 the unit was grouped in the 11th Infantry Regiment.

Weimar Republic and World War II

Kunze was released from service with the collapse of the Saxon Kingdom. In 1919 he began studying law and economics at the University of Leipzig . In 1921 he became engaged to Hanne Froebel, a descendant of the pedagogue Friedrich Froebel . With her he had a son. They moved to the Leipzig-Gohlis district . After the uprisings in Hamburg, he reappeared as an officer. In 1920 he became an orderly officer in Breslau and adjutant at a military training area in Falkenberg. Since 1921 he worked on the staff of the 11th (Saxon) Infantry Regiment in the König-Albert-Kaserne in Leipzig. From 1926 to 1929 he was a regimental adjutant. At the same time as a watch officer in Berlin, he made friends with Captain Friedrich Olbricht .

As a captain , he worked for the regimental staff from 1927 to 1929. From 1929 to 1934 he was then company commander . In 1934 Kunze was promoted to major and in 1937 to lieutenant colonel. From 1934 to 1938 he headed the war school in Dresden. From 1938 to 1939 he was in command of the 2nd Battalion of the 101st Infantry Regiment. From 1939 to 1940 he was in command of the 455 Infantry Regiment. In 1940 he was appointed colonel . From 1940 to 1942 he led the 445 Infantry Regiment and from 1942 to 1943 the 685 Infantry Regiment. From July 1 to December 8, 1943, he was major general in command of the 336th Infantry Division . During his service the unit was deployed in Melitopol and the Crimea .

Due to defamation, he was observed by the Gestapo from 1942 onwards for allegedly undermining military strength. There was an indictment before the Leipzig court martial and, surprisingly, an acquittal in 1943. In March 1944 he was with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden for discussion. The dictator promised rehabilitation. In June 1944 the officers Friedrich Olbricht, Erwin Rommel , Erich Fellgiebel , Karl Sack and Albrecht Mertz von Quirnheim and the former Mayor of Leipzig Carl Friedrich Goerdeler inaugurated him in the plans of July 20, 1944 . Goerdeler provided it for the military district IV in Dresden. He agreed, but did not actively participate in the coup. At the urging of Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler , he was removed from his position in 1944. A subsequent application to the Flick group failed. During the last days of the war he was deployed in the Volkssturm , with whose troops he voluntarily surrendered to the Americans in 1945.

New beginning, internment, prisoner of war, SMT conviction and time in the GDR

After the surrender, the Soviet administration appointed him as police chief and second mayor of Oschatz. In this function, Kunze was also involved in the management of the Oschatz hospital. As a local politician, he now shaped the "anti-fascist-democratic upheaval" in the Soviet occupation zone . But a little later he was arrested and interned in the Soviet special camp No. 1 Mühlberg . There he was given the function of overseer in a special detention bunker. From Mühlberg he was deported via Frankfurt (Oder) to the Soviet Union and declared a prisoner of war . He was imprisoned in the Krasnogorsk camps near Moscow, Woikowo near Ivanovo , Minsk and Brest. There he wrote for the German prisoner of war newspaper. In 1949 a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to a total of 25 years of forced labor . While in custody he attended the Antifa Central School in Moscow.

In 1953 he was released early in the German Democratic Republic. He found employment as a research assistant in the historical department of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR and as a teacher of tactics at the Friedrich Engels Military Academy in Dresden, where former Wehrmacht officers Wilhelm Adam , Heinz-Bernhard Zorn and Bernhard Bechler also taught. He was also a riding instructor for the Society for Sport and Technology . Otto Korfes and Friedrich Paulus were among his circle of friends in Dresden . He became a member of the block party NDPD and was active in the working group of former officers .

Kunze let himself be integrated into the power apparatus of the SED and under the code name GM Trocken became secret informator (GI) of the Ministry for State Security. However, he provided insufficient information and criticized the GDR. In 1960 he was sentenced by the 1st Senate of the Leipzig District Court, chaired by Kurt Bachert, to a prison sentence of one and a half years for fulfilling the offense of “ propaganda and hate speech endangering the state ” ( Section 19 StGB-GDR ).

He died a few months later of cancer in the Leipzig-Kleinmeusdorf detention hospital and was buried in the southern cemetery.

Awards

Works

  • Family tree of the Kunze family. Leipzig 1928.
  • Family tree of the Froebel family. Taucha 1935.

literature

  • Hans Brückl: Between brown and red. The decreed anti-fascism of the GDR and the "case" of Wilhelm Kunze. With a foreword by Peter Maser . Editions La Colombe, Bergisch Gladbach 2001, ISBN 3-929351-14-5 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Schollmeyer , Ellen Strauch: The history of the Oschatzer Hospital 1895 to 2005 . Wagner, Großschirma, 2005, accessed January 12, 2015
  2. ↑ Hans Brückl: Between brown and red: the decreed antifascism of the GDR and the "case" of Wilhelm Kunze . Editions La Colombe, 2001, p. 156
  3. ^ Rudolf Hoffmann: Report on the stay in the Mühlberg camp from September 1945 - July 1946. 1950, p. 21, accessed from www.lager-muehlberg.de on January 12, 2015
predecessor Office successor
Walther Lucht Commander of the 336th Infantry Division in
1943 		Wolf Hagemann
personal data
SURNAME Kunze, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kunze, Wilhelm Hermann Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German major general
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH 20th August 1960
Place of death Leipzig