Wilhelm Ziegelmayer

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Wilhelm Ziegelmayer (born January 18, 1898 in Schweich near Trier , † January 4, 1951 in Berlin ) was a teacher and nutritionist. During the time of National Socialism, he headed the department for catering, procurement and replenishment in the army administration service as a senior government councilor . He was considered the strategic head of the German military and community catering. After 1945 he acted as coordinator of food policy in the Soviet occupation zone .

Education and professional career until 1933

Wilhelm Ziegelmayer attended the Trier teacher training college from 1918 to 1920. He then worked as a middle school teacher for zoology, botany and geology. From 1921 to 1925 he studied biology, chemistry and physiology at the universities of Frankfurt am Main, Marburg, Perugia and Naples. In 1925 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil.

From 1926 to 1932 he was a middle school teacher in Berlin and Potsdam - a. a. from 1926 to 1927 at the educational experimental school Schulfarm Insel Scharfenberg in Tegeler See in Berlin - active, as well as board member of the "Reichsverein für Volksernahrung".

Time for National Socialism

From 1933 to 1945, Ziegelmayer worked as a councilor or senior councilor in the Army Administration Service in Berlin. There he headed the department for catering, procurement and supplies . He was responsible for the German military and community catering. His standard work, Raw Material Issues of German People's Nutrition , published in 1936, was repeatedly reprinted and from 1941 increasingly referred to the changes brought about by the territorial conquests after the German invasion of the Soviet Union . In the Army Administration Office, Ziegelmayer was considered the "strategic head of German military and communal catering".

During the Leningrad blockade in 1941, Ziegelmayer was responsible for calculating the nutritional needs of the trapped population. He put the food supplies in the city in relation to the number of people and came to the conclusion that it was not necessary to put the lives of German soldiers at risk to conquer the city. Leningrad could be "destroyed by a scientifically based method", he wrote in his diary on September 10, 1941, since it was certain "that people cannot live with such a ration". Ziegelmayer was surprised that the majority of people held out and survived for two and a half years, and he was amazed throughout his life that "only" about one million people starved to death.

In addition to his function at the Army Administration Office, from 1941 to 1945, Ziegelmayer was head of the nutrition science section in the nutrition and agriculture department of the Berlin magistrate. He also became a National Socialist command officer in 1944 . In 1944 he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the authorized representative for health care Karl Brandt .

Post-war period, Soviet occupation zone, GDR

From autumn 1945 until 1949 Wilhelm Ziegelmayer was Vice President of the German Administration for Trade and Supply in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, as well as Vice President of the German Economic Commission and Director of the Institute for Nutrition and Catering Science in Berlin-Dahlem with its branch in Potsdam-Rehbrücke. From 1947 to 1950 he was also director of the Institute for Nutrition and Food Science in Potsdam-Rehbrücke. With this function, according to the historian Götz Aly, Ziegelmayer was "the top nutritionist in the Soviet zone". His standard work "Raw Material Issues of German National Nutrition" was reissued, but without the extension "Outlook on the Greater Economy" added in 1941, which has now been shortened. As an “old nutritionist” he was astonished to his Russian colleagues that the majority of the starved population trapped in the Leningrad blockade of 1941–1944 survived despite extreme hunger that claimed a million lives: “It is a mystery to me what a miracle there is happened to you. "

From 1946 to 1950, Ziegelmayer was also a professor at the agricultural faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin . In addition, he worked as director of the Institute for Inventory Management and Agricultural Research and as an honorary professor at the Technical University in West Berlin .

Fonts (selection)

  • The scientific basics of cooking and nutrition. In connection with the basic concepts of colloid chemistry and physical chemistry . Julius Beltz, Langensalza 1929 (3rd edition 1942)
  • Raw material questions of the German national nutrition. A presentation of the nutritional and nutritional tasks of our time . Steinkopff, Dresden and Leipzig 1936 (4th expanded edition 1941 with an outlook on German large-scale economy)
  • The feeding of the German people. A contribution to increasing German food production. (Completely revised edition of "Raw Material Issues d. German People's Nutrition", first edition 1936) Steinkopff, Dresden and Leipzig 1947
  • Nutrition. Basics of nutrition and catering science. Beltz, Langensalza 1948
  • Three years of the food industry in the Eastern Zone . Deutscher Zentral-Verlag, Berlin 1948

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Harry Waibel: Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, p. 382f.
  2. ↑ Joachim Drews: The "Nazi Bean". Cultivation, use and development of soybeans in the German Empire and Southeastern Europe (1933–1945) . Lit, Münster 2004, p. 177.
  3. ↑ Joachim Drews: The "Nazi Bean". Cultivation, use and development of soybeans in the German Empire and Southeastern Europe (1933–1945) . Lit, Münster 2004, p. 19; Drews quotes here from Birgit Pelzer / Reinhold Reith . Margarine. The career of artificial butter . Wagenbach, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-8031-3605, p. 108.
  4. ↑ a b c Götz Aly / Susanne Heim: thought leader of annihilation. Auschwitz and the German plans for a new European order. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, p. 358.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 693.
personal data
SURNAME Ziegelmayer, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nutritionist
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Keep quiet
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 1951
Place of death Berlin