Wilhelm Schepmann

Wilhelm Schepmann

"Chief of Staff of the SA" and "Inspector for the shooting training of the German Volkssturm" Schepmann (standing in front) at the "Wehrschießen" of the Volkssturm

Wilhelm Schepmann (born June 17, 1894 in Baak , today Hattingen , † July 26, 1970 in Gifhorn ) was Chief of Staff of the SA from 1943 to 1945 .

Life

After attending grammar school, Schepmann completed the teachers' seminar and then worked as a primary school teacher in Hattingen. He took part in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 as a soldier in the Westphalian Jäger Battalion No. 7 and was deployed on the western and eastern fronts. During the war he was first a company commander with the rank of lieutenant in the reserve, then a battalion adjutant and finally a court officer. During the war years he was wounded three times, two of them seriously.

Schepmann joined the NSDAP in 1925 ( membership number 26,762). Together with Viktor Lutze, he organized the establishment of the SA in the Ruhr area ; in 1928 he was a party speaker . At the same time he worked as an NSDAP city councilor and SA leader in Hattingen and made a significant contribution to making the city one of the strongholds of the National Socialists in the Ruhr area. From 1932 to 1933 Schepmann was a member of the Prussian Landtag and from November 1933 a member of the Reichstag .

Schepmann had already resigned from school service in 1931; he worked full-time as a leader of the SA sub-group Westphalia-South with the rank of SA Oberführer. From November 1932 he took over the leadership of the SA group Westphalia . In February 1933 he was appointed police chief of Dortmund . On April 1, 1934 he was appointed leader of SA Group X ( Lower Rhine and Westphalia). As a result of the so-called Röhm Putsch , Schepmann took over the leadership of the SA group in Saxony from November 1934 .

In March 1936, Schepmann was temporarily commissioned with the administration of the position of the district chief of the Dresden-Bautzen district team and was appointed district chief three months later. In 1939 the district main team was renamed the administrative district. Schepmann then held the position of regional president of the Dresden-Bautzen administrative district until August 1943 .

After Viktor Lutze's accidental death on May 2, 1943, Max Jüttner took over the post of SA chief of staff. From August 1943 Schepmann finally became Chief of Staff of the SA ; he held this position until the end of the war.

After the end of the war, Schepmann lived under a false name ("Schumacher") in Gifhorn and worked as a material administrator in the local district hospital. He joined the SPD for camouflage purposes. In April 1949 he was finally recognized, arrested by the British Secret Intelligence Service and, at the end of June 1950, indicted before a Dortmund jury court for having, as the Dortmund police chief , forced the editorial staff of the daily newspaper Der Generalanzeiger to cease their anti-Nazi work. He was sentenced to nine months in prison, appealed and was acquitted in 1954. In the denazification process in April 1952 it was classified as unencumbered (category V).

Schepmann wanted to pursue his learned job as a teacher again, but the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education refused . Nevertheless, Schepmann was elected to the district council and community council in 1952 via the BHE list in the Gifhorn district . In 1956 he became honorary deputy mayor of Gifhorn. However, his re-election in 1961 aroused public offense, whereupon Schepmann resigned from his office.

literature

• Joachim Lilla: Senior administrative officials and functionaries in Westphalia and Lippe (1918–1945 / 46). Biographical manual. Aschendorff, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-402-06799-4 , pp. 262-263.
• Daniel Schmidt: Protect and serve. Policemen in the Ruhr area in democracy and dictatorship 1919–1939. Klartext, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-929-5 .
• Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).
• Ernst Kienast (Ed.): Handbook for the Prussian Landtag. Edition for the 5th electoral term, Berlin 1933, p. 378.
• Yves Müller: Wilhelm Schepmann - the last SA chief of staff and the role of the SA in World War II , in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 2015, issue 6, pp. 513-532

Web links

• Wilhelm Schepmann in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Wilhelm Schepmann at the Internet portal "Westphalian History"
• Newspaper article about Wilhelm Schepmann in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Schepmann. SA marches. In: Der Spiegel . Issue 21, May 17, 1961, accessed July 5, 2013.
2. ^ Max Jüttner in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible).