Wilhelm Meinberg

Wilhelm Meinberg

Wilhelm Meinberg (born March 1, 1898 in Wasserkurl ; † February 8, 1973 in Kamen ) was a German politician ( NSDAP , DRP ), SS group leader (1941), manager and military economic leader .

Life

After attending the Realgymnasium in Unna , where Meinberg took a secondary school diploma, he took part in the First World War. He received the Iron Cross II. Class and was taken prisoner by the British.

After the end of the war, Meinberg became a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and - according to his own statement - of the German National People's Party in November 1919 . In 1923 he founded a Stahlhelm group that took part in the fighting during the occupation of the Ruhr in the same year . He joined the SA in 1929 and the NSDAP ( membership number 218.582) on April 1, 1930 , to which he transferred the Stahlhelm Group and for which he became an agricultural regional advisor in the agricultural policy apparatus of the NSDAP district of Westphalia.

Since 1931 Meinberg was a member of the board of the Westphalian Chamber of Agriculture and since 1932 a member of the Prussian state parliament . In March 1933 he was appointed President of the Reichs-Landbund . On May 6, 1933, Ferdinand von Lüninck , who at that time was already the Westphalian state commissioner in the field of cooperatives and associations, appointed him “State Commissioner for the Chamber of Agriculture”. Afterwards Meinberg was a co-founder and from June 1933 to April 1937 Reichsobmann of the Reichsnährstand and from July 20, 1933 the country leader for the province of Westphalia and from February 20, 1934 a full member of the German Reichsbauernrat .

In the SS , Meinberg had held the rank of Obersturmbannführer from November 9, 1933, and that of Brigade Leader from January 1, 1935.

Since Meinberg had tried in 1936/37 to take over Richard Walther Darré's office as Reichsbauernführer during a long illness from Richard Walther Darré , a court of honor proceedings were initiated against him, which, however, on the intervention of Hermann Göring, were suspended for a year and then no longer accepted because Göring Meinberg had already recalled Hermann Göring to the board of the Reichswerke at this point in time . From 1937 to 1945 he was a member of the board and Paul Pleiger's deputy . He also held numerous board positions in the Reichswerke. He was responsible for all human resources and organized the group in the style of SS leadership, for which he was appointed SS group leader (general rank) on January 30, 1942. His adjutant in the Reichswerke was Karl Kritzler , who had joined the NSDAP in August 1930.

Meinberg was a member of the supervisory board of Dresdner Bank and was appointed military manager in June 1940. He was appointed to the Defense Economic Council of the Reich Chamber of Commerce and to the Defense Economic Committee at the Lower Saxony Chamber of Commerce in Hanover.

In addition, Meinberg was a member of the National Socialist Reichstag from 1933 until his resignation in 1943 . In 1941, Göring appointed Meinberg to be the “Special Representative for Coal Transport” as the representative for the four-year plan.

In his role as SS-Gruppenführer, he took part in the Gruppenführer conference on October 4, 1943 in Poznan, where Heinrich Himmler gave the first speech in Poznan .

After the end of the war, Meinberg was in British and American captivity for 22 months. He then initially worked as a farmer. According to the British secret service, in the post-war period he was a close employee of the former State Secretary in the Reich Propaganda Ministry, Werner Naumann , who wanted to infiltrate the FDP with the Naumann circle . In 1953 Meinberg became a member of the German Reich Party , for which he was elected chairman of the board of directors on November 29. He remained in this position until 1955. He was also elected chairman of the party, which he remained until 1960, with a one-month break in 1957. He ran for this party unsuccessfully in the federal elections in 1953, 1957 and 1961. After the founding of the NPD , he became its board member, editor of the party newspaper Deutsche Nachrichten and from 1967 to 1973 partner of the Deutsche Nachrichten Verlags-GmbH .

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• We are the party of the future . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1960, p. 20 ( online - conversation with the DRP board members Wilhelm Meinberg and Adolf von Thadden).
• Wilhelm Meinberg: The German Reich Party in the crisis of our time. Excerpt from: Reichsruf series of publications, undated Reprint in: Fred R. Richards: Die NPD. Alternative or return? Series: Geschichte und Staat, 121. Olzog, Munich 1967, pp. 143–147.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Meinberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wilhelm Meinberg in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 400.
2. ↑ Gerd Wysocki: Work for the War. Mechanisms of rule in the armaments industry of the “Third Reich”; Labor, social policy and state police repression at the Reichswerke “Hermann Göring” in the Salzgitter area 1937/38 to 1945. Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-925151-51-6 , p. 64.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Helene Albers: The quiet revolution in the country: Agriculture and Chamber of Agriculture in Westphalia-Lippe 1899-1999. ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2005 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. (PDF). 
4. ^ Daniela Münkel : National Socialist Agricultural Policy and Everyday Farmers' Life. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main / New York 1996, ISBN 3-593-35602-3 , p. 106, note 32.
5. ↑ Gerd Wysocki: Work for the War. P. 65.
6. ↑ Gerd Wysocki: Work for the War. P. 479.
7. ^ Romuald Karmakar : The Himmler project . DVD 2000, Berlin, ISBN 3-89848-719-9 .
8. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , pp. 400 (with reference to the source BAK N 1080/273).
9. ↑ Meinberg, Wilhelm . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Maack bis Muuss] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 807 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 375 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
10. ↑ Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: Extras in Uniform: The members of the Reichstag 1933-1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , p. 408-410, here p. 410 .