Wilhelm Maul

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Wilhelm Maul (right) as a participant in the reception of the millionth resettler in the Reichsgau Wartheland

Wilhelm Friedrich August Maul alias Wilhelm Egge (born June 8, 1903 in Gelsenkirchen , † March 2, 1985 in Darmstadt ) was a senior Nazi functionary. Already active in the party and in party service before 1933, he made a career after 1933 and from 1940 to 1945 he was the Gau propaganda leader of the Reichsgau Wartheland , which belonged to the annexed part of Poland. After the Second World War , Maul went into hiding, changed his surname and called himself Egge.

Origin, education, occupation

Wilhelm Maul was born on June 8, 1903 as Wilhelm Friedrich August Maul and the first son of the works assistant Wilhelm Maul and his wife Frieda Maul in Gelsenkirchen. In 1909 the family moved to Styrum . Wilhelm Maul attended high school after elementary school and graduated from primary school .

After finishing school, Wilhelm Maul did a commercial apprenticeship at Röchling'schen Eisenwerke in Saarbrücken for a year . From 1923 to 1925 he studied four semesters at the commercial college of the TH Munich . According to his own statements, he dropped out of the course due to a serious illness.

In 1925 he worked in the sales department of the iron and steel works in Bochum and in 1929 became head of the sales department at Siegen-Solinger Gußstahlaktienverein (Central German steelworks) in Frankleben near Merseburg , but left there because of "ideological contradictions".

In 1933 Wilhelm Maul married Martha Borchert in Schkeuditz , Merseburg district. The marriage had at least four children.

Party career

Before taking power

Already during his studies, in 1923, Maul became a member of the Munich Wiking Association . From 1929 he did voluntary work in party service. Between 1929 and 1933, he worked as a member of the SA ( Sturmabteilung ) and official administrator, local group propaganda leader, circle speaker, employee in the district staff, in the Gau leadership and in the Gauamt NS-Hago. He also stated that from November 1, 1931 to March 1933, he had taken on voluntary work for the party in the Alpine and Danube Reichsgauen . Maul joined the NSDAP on November 1, 1931 . His party book bears the number 684368.

After coming to power

After January 1933 Maul was trained at the party official school in Wannsee and from then on took over full-time party activities, which involved moving to Halle (Saale) and Lützen . Wilhelm Maul worked as a Gau speaker , Gau department head, deputy Gau training administrator of the DAF and Gau managing director of the DAF. From 1934 to 1937 he was also headmaster of Gauschule II Lützen des Gaues Halle-Merseburg . From December 1936 to December 1939 he was head of the Reich Propaganda Office / Gau Propaganda Head of Gaus Halle-Merseburg. In addition, since March / April 1938, after the German troops marched into Austria , he was the representative of the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Vienna as well as acting head of the Reich Propaganda Office in Vienna. In 1939 he took on a corresponding activity in Moravia .

Maul also advanced his career by taking on additional functions: a. as a board member of the Deutschen Landesbühne eV, was a member of the advisory board of the state planning association of the province of Saxony and a member of the advisory board of the Institute for German Economic Propaganda in Berlin.

It can be assumed that Maul accompanied the German Wehrmacht during the attack and occupation of Poland in 1939. In November 1940, the Gaupersonalamtsleiter Wartheland and the Gauleiter and Reich Governor Arthur Greiser proposed him for the War Merit Cross, 2nd class. Maul had moved in with the troops and had done a great job of caring for the people's and Baltic Germans and the Wehrmacht.

Gau propaganda leader and cultural administrator of the Warthegau

In the middle of the photo, Joseph Goebbels leafing through the book, Wilhelm Maul standing behind him to the right of the viewer. Arthur Greiser next to Goebbels.

In January 1940, after the invasion of Poland, Maul was in Posen , in the newly founded Reichsgau Wartheland , Gau propaganda leader and state cultural administrator.

Maul was thus also given the task of “culturally Germanizing” the model gau Wartheland. As early as September 1940 he was co-organizer of the Poznan Music Weeks. From January 1941 he became head of the Reichsgau Wartheland cultural ring. In August 1941, on the occasion of another music week in Poznan, Maul and the Lord Mayor of Poznan, Gerhard Scheffler , established the music prize of the Reichsgau Wartheland. In October 1941 he became President of the Association for the Promotion of German Art in the Reichsgau Wartheland. In May 1942 the 75th birthday of the German Theater was celebrated in Litzmannstadt (Lodz). The central point of the celebrations was Maul's speech, in which, according to the Litzmannstädter Zeitung, he appealed that in the struggle against Slavic lack of plan and discipline, each individual must draw the will of a great future from their inner forces, which alone could give a great shape and form. The Litzmannstädter Zeitung also reported on Maul's speech: “With the passion of an old National Socialist, Pg. Maul approached the questions and tasks of artists in the new, young eastern regions. (...) The prerequisite for his work, which is essential, educational and, in the broadest sense, popular education, is: First and foremost, to be a National Socialist and fanatical confessor of German essential principles. "

Stays in Lodz can be proven several times for Maul. As early as April 11, 1940, Maul visited Lodz with his wife, Gauleiter Geiser and his daughter Ingrid, as well as Gau economic advisor Paul Patzer. For Geiser, the subsequent visit to the Litzmannstadt ghetto can be proven.

As head of the Gau Propaganda Office, Wilhelm Maul was not only one of the most important functionaries of this Gau, but also a high SA leader. He reached his highest rank in the SA when he was promoted to SA Brigade Leader on April 20, 1944 .

Starting in autumn 1944, Maul regularly published articles of perseverance in the Ostdeutscher Beobachter and promoted the Hitler cult with sentences such as “Führer, you once gave us the new home of Wartheland. Leader, we will keep it! ”To the extreme.

Personal benefit from political office

During his time in Poznan, Maul also served as a city councilor and was therefore able to use an apartment free of charge.

In September 1941 Maul received the former Polish domain Königshof near Neusiedeln , Samter (Szamotuły) district, including the entire closed business, for lease for 18 years. This had been approved by the Gauleiter and Reich Governor Arthur Greiser, although he was not authorized to do so, but actually the responsible district president. From this a lively correspondence developed between the responsible offices and Maul, which lasted until the beginning of 1942. At Greiser's request and express request, the lease was confirmed retrospectively by the Reich Minister for Nutrition and declared an exception. The occupation of the Samter district was associated with the expulsion of the Polish population, who made up the majority of the population, and the deportation and murder of the Jewish residents. Newly settled Germans were added to the already resident German minority.

Maul also acquired furniture from the recently expropriated property of Princess Ottilie Drucka-Lubecka at Freihufen Castle in the Rawitsch district .

End of war and post-war period

On January 28, 1945, the evacuation of the Warthegau began on January 16, Maul was drafted as an SS man for military service. His family stayed with the Schroedel-Siemau publishing family at their Untersiemau Castle near Coburg . During the German occupation, Hirt Reger and Schroedel-Siemau published some publications on the Warthegau (including Das Antlitz des Deutschen im Wartheland , Posen, 1943; Der Warthegau. Landscape and settlement in works by German painters , Posen 1943; Rufer des Ostens , Poznan, 1941).

With or after the end of the war, Maul changed his family name and called himself Wilhelm Egge from then on. The use of this name was not officially approved by the Koblenz district government until September 3, 1953 .

He remains friends and networked with his former colleagues and former Nazi officials. Also in the Naumann affair he was involved and was the outer circle of the Naumann circle attributed. So he wrote to Werner Naumann on December 28, 1952 , urging a meeting with other members of the Naumann group.

Wilhelm Maul and his family changed their place of residence several times after 1945 and lived in rural areas in Rhineland-Palatinate ( Langenlonsheim ) and Hesse , most recently in the Odenwald . Maul ran a steel trade.

He died on March 21, 1985 in Darmstadt.

See also

literature

  • Gabriele Melischek: The Vienna daily newspapers. A documentation vol. 4, 1938–1945 with an overview of the Austrian daily press of the Nazi era , 2003, p. 61.
  • Beate Baldow: episode or danger? The Naumann affair. Free University of Berlin, 2013, pp. 165ff. ( Online as PDF )
  • Sylwia Grochowina, Cultural Policy of The Nazi Occupying Forces in the Reich District Gdańsk – West Prussia, The Reich District Wartheland, and the Reich District of Katowice in the years 1939–1945, Toruń, 2017.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Federal Archives, document from documents with archive number 21680
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Federal Archives, documents from documents with archive number 695117
  3. ↑ Federal Archives, NSDAP index card
  4. ^ Federal Archives, document from documents with archive number 136 A1
  5. ↑ Melischek, Gabriele, Seethaler, Josef, Die Wiener Tageszeitungen: A Documentation Vol. 4, 1938-1945, Frankfurt a. M., 2003, p. 72
  6. ^ Sylwia Grochowina, Cultural Policy of The Nazi Occupying Forces in the Reich District Gdańsk – West Prussia, The Reich District Wartheland, and the Reich District of Katowice in the years 1939–1945, Toruń, 2017, p. 212
  7. ^ Sylwia Grochowina, Cultural Policy of The Nazi Occupying Forces in the Reich District Gdańsk – West Prussia, The Reich District Wartheland, and the Reich District of Katowice in the years 1939–1945, Toruń, 2017, page 193
  8. ^ Litzmannstädter Zeitung, May 21, 1942, number 140
  9. ↑ Klein, Peter, Die Ghettoverwaltung Litzmannstadt, Hamburg 2009, page 79
  10. ^ Andreas Mueller: Tatort Warthegau. Wagner Verlag, 2007, p. 49.
  11. ^ Federal Archives, documents from documents with archive number 21684. The SS files from Maul are considered lost.
  12. ↑ Baldow, Beate, Episode or Danger ?, the Naumann Affair, Diss. Freie Universität Berlin, 2012, page 165
personal data
SURNAME Maul, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Egge, Wilhelm; Maul, Wilhelm Friedrich August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political functionary (NSDAP) and SA leader
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1985
Place of death Darmstadt