Joachim von Winterfeldt-Menkin

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Joachim von Winterfeldt-Menkin as a member of the Reichstag in 1912

Joachim von Winterfeldt , from 1925 von Winterfeldt-Menkin (born May 15, 1865 in Grünberg ; † July 3, 1945 in Harmshagen ), was a German lawyer , Prussian senior presidential councilor and state director of the Brandenburg province as well as a legal knight of the Order of St. John .

family

He came from the von Winterfeld family belonging to the primeval nobility , the Brandenburg aristocratic family with the same ancestral home near Salzwedel, and was the son of the landowner , royal Prussian district administrator and secret councilor , manor and Reichstag member Ulrich von Winterfeldt (1823-1908), lord of Menkin and others ( Prenzlau district ), and Marianna von Stülpnagel (1836–1873).

Winterfeldt married Elisabeth Freiin von Entreß-Fürsteneck on May 16, 1899 in Berlin (born June 27, 1878 in Gardelegen , † July 21, 1954 in Haus Alsbach near Engelskirchen ), the daughter of the Prussian major general Eugen von Entreß-Fürsteneck and Margarethe Nette .

Since November 23, 1925, with the approval of the Ministry of Justice in Berlin, he used the name "von Winterfeldt-Menkin".

Life

Winterfeldt attended high schools in Glogau, Brandenburg and Prenzlau and studied law and political science in Lausanne, Rome, Leipzig and Greifswald. He began his career in 1888 as a court clerk , in 1892 government clerk in Frankfurt (Oder) and 1894 Regierungsassessor . From 1895 to 1896 he worked at the district office of the Prenzlau district with his father, who was district administrator there at the time. From 1897 to 1903 he was district administrator of the Prenzlau district himself and in 1903 went to Potsdam as senior president and deputy president of the Brandenburg province . In 1904 he became a member of the Commission for Monument Preservation of the Province of Brandenburg. From 1911 to 1930 he was State Director of Brandenburg. From 1928 to 1931 he was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society .

Politically he was active from 1907 to 1918 for the German Conservative Party as a member of the Reichstag and from 1905 to 1918 a member of the Prussian mansion. Winterfeldt was sent to Brest-Litovsk in 1917 to negotiate the peace preliminaries with Russia with the Kerensky government . Overall, however, he was rather hostile to the parliamentary system. In terms of his political attitude, he was more of a monarchist and was described by the Reich Chancellery as a “right-wing personality”. After being awarded an honorary doctorate (1934), he withdrew from the public eye to his estates in the Uckermark ( Menkin with Wollschow and Fahrenholz in the Prenzlau district). In 1942 he published his memoir Seasons of Life .

Winterfeldt died on the refugee route in Harmshagen and was buried in Menkin's hereditary funeral.

Work for the Red Cross

In 1902, Winterfeldt took over the chairmanship of the men's branch of the Red Cross in Prenzlau on a voluntary basis , was deputy chairman of the RK of the Province of Brandenburg from 1904 to 1912, a member of the Central Committee from 1916 and President of the Prussian and German Central Committee from 1919. In 1921 he became the first president of the DRK. With the entry into force of a new DRK statute on November 29, 1933, with which further harmonization measures took place, Winterfeldt-Menkin resigned as president and was appointed honorary president by the Reich president and DRK patron Paul von Hindenburg . On May 12, 1933, he had declared in a letter to Adolf Hitler : "On behalf of these one and a half million men and women in the German Red Cross, I declare my unconditional willingness to submit to your leadership and to follow you".

Udo von Alvensleben , who visited Winterfeldt-Menkin in Menkin on August 19, 1929, judged in his diary: “Winterfeldt was able to do a lot as the state director of Brandenburg. It is a successful life, but it is on the left of the right-wing people and the left-wing people on the right. He is inspired by an indestructible verve. "

Honors

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl-Wilhelm Reibel: Handbook of the Reichstag elections 1890-1918. Alliances, results, candidates (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 15). Half volume 1, Droste, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-7700-5284-4 , pp. 150-153.
  2. ^ German Red Cross: Leaves of the German Red Cross. 12th year, 1933, p. 515f.
  3. ^ German Red Cross: General Report of the German Red Cross 1931-1933. 1934, p. 5.
  4. ^ German Red Cross: Leaves of the German Red Cross. 12th year, 1933, p. 276.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 679.
  6. ↑ Udo von Alvensleben (art historian) , visits before the downfall, aristocratic seats between Altmark and Masuria , compiled from diary entries and edited by Harald von Koenigswald, Frankfurt / M.-Berlin 1968, p. 242
personal data
SURNAME Winterfeldt-Menkin, Joachim von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Winterfeldt, Joachim von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, Prussian senior president, state director of the province of Brandenburg, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH May 15, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünberg
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1945
Place of death Harmshagen