Wilhelm von Flügge (resistance fighter)

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Wilhelm von Flügge (born August 8, 1887 in Düsseldorf , † January 4, 1953 in Istanbul ) was a German government assessor and later an employee of IG Farben who was active in the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

Wilhelm von Flügge grew up as the son of the Prussian district administrator Erich von Flügge in Düsseldorf. He attended the Greiffenberg High School in Putbus and passed his Abitur there in 1905 . He then studied political science at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Like his father, he joined the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg . In 1913 he passed his assessor exam . He then became a government assessor in Greifswald until the outbreak of the First World War . He then served a year as an orderly officer in the 4th Cavalry Division, but was appointed to the Reich Office of the Interior as early as 1915 . In 1916 he switched to the War Food Office as a consultant . There he was co-editor of the anthology Fertilizers in the War. Contributed to the war economy and wrote an essay on the sale of artificial fertilizers. In 1917 he became Reich Commissioner for Fish Supply .

In 1921 he became Reich Commissioner for the supervision of imports and exports. In 1924 he retired from politics and managed the Mecklenburg property of his family in Speck and Jakobsdorf for several years . During the Great Depression of 1929 he wrote several memoranda. This is how the contact with Magnus von Knebel and later with the conservative resistance around Carl Friedrich Goerdeler arose . Even before the seizure of power, attempts were made to counteract the National Socialists .

During the time of National Socialism , Flügge initially worked as a freelancer for IG Farben . As a large landowner, he feared a strict interpretation of the Nuremberg race laws and emigrated to Vienna. From 1937 he officially worked for IG Farben, where he was a representative in Beirut . During his work-related stays in the German Reich, he continued to have contact with the resistance group. He was able to establish contacts with diplomats from third powers through his Beirut location. Among other things, he worked with others to draft a constitution for the empire after Hitler was overthrown.

After the outbreak of the Second World War he belonged to the inner circle of the resistance group around Wilhelm Canaris . Formally, he was still paid by IG Farben, in fact he worked for the resistance in the defense office . He maintained contacts with various conservative groups of the resistance, so in addition to those already mentioned also with General Hans Oster , Adam von Trott zu Solz and the Kreisau Circle . From the end of 1943 he disguised himself as an employee of the Nordsee AG.

In 1944 the Gestapo found out about him . In April 1944, Flügge was lured into the German Reich and arrested at Vienna Airport. From there he was brought to Berlin and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . He was initially assigned to the Austrian resistance. However, after the July 20 assassination attempt , his contacts were revealed. Flügge was initially brought to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Shortly before the end of the war, he came to Dachau from the Flossenbürg concentration camp . As part of a transport of prominent concentration camp prisoners to South Tyrol, he was freed from the hands of the SS in Niederdorf on April 30, 1945.

Flügge came to Rottach am Tegernsee after the war , where he was taken in by friends. He earned his living as a bank advisor. At the same time he worked on the book German Administration , a work on constitutional reform in Germany, which was based on his sketches for the new Reich constitution. Flügge later moved to Istanbul, where he worked as a consultant for a Turkish bank. He died there on January 4, 1953.

Works

  • Fertilizers in war. Contributions to the war economy . Volume 15. Edited together with H. Großmann and Rittmeister Buebb. Berlin 1917
    • The sales of artificial fertilizers during the war , pp. 38–52.
  • The fish in the war economy . In: Contributions to the war economy . Issue 34/38. Berlin 1918.
  • German administration . Hamburg 1948.

literature

  • Sebastian Sigler: Wilhelm v. Flügge - double game in Istanbul . In: Corps students in the resistance against Hitler edited by Sebastian Sigler. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2014. pp. 407-429. ISBN 978-3-428-14319-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. Peter Koblank: The Liberation of Special Prisoners and Kinship Prisoners in South Tyrol , online edition Mythos Elser 2006