Wolff Heinrichsdorff

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Wolff Heinrichsdorff (born September 23, 1907 in Marienburg ( West Prussia ), † August 24, 1945 ) was a German civil servant and writer. Heinrichsdorff was best known as a high-ranking employee of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in the years 1939 to 1945 and as head of the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question (1939-1945).

Life and work

Heinrichsdorff began studying law and medicine at the University of Hamburg in the late 1920s , which he completed in 1936 with a dissertation on The Liberal Opposition in Germany since January 30, 1933 with a doctorate to become Dr. phil. completed. Heinrichsdorff belonged to the NSDAP from 1930 .

During his studies he joined the National Socialist German Student Union , in which he was promoted to "Leader of the Hamburg Student Union" in 1930. In this capacity, Heinrichsdorff organized on May 15, 1933 the public burning of the works of numerous writers hated by the National Socialists by the Hamburg student body, which took place throughout the Reich as part of a series of similar actions. As a student leader, Heinrichsdorff stood out with the demand to introduce a special numerus clausus for Jewish students and to prohibit the habilitation and appointment of Jewish lecturers. In a public appeal on May 1, 1933, Heinrichsdorff declared: “The liberal fiction of equality before the law and the independence of the judiciary has fallen! The autonomy of the university must and will fall so that the ground can be prepared for the National Socialist University of Hamburg! ”From 1934 Heinrichsdorff worked as an advisor to the Reich leadership of the German student body and also became adjutant to the Reich Leader of the German Lecturer in Berlin . From 1937 he worked as an editor for the Nazi newspaper Rote Erde ; He had already gained his first relevant professional experience while studying at the Hamburger Universitäts-Zeitung .

After he was noticed by the responsible minister Joseph Goebbels as a skilled propagandist, Heinrichsdorff came to the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Berlin in 1939, where he quickly made a career as an official. There he finally achieved the rank of government councilor and rose to Goebbels' personal assistant. Aside from his administrative work in the ministry, Heinrichsdorff wrote numerous articles for National Socialist newspapers and magazines such as The Movement or The Jewish Question during these years . He also took over the main editorial management of the influential magazine for politics published by the SS "enemy researcher" Franz Six .

In 1939 Heinrichsdorff also took over the management of the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question on behalf of the Goebbels Ministry, and in succession to his colleague Wilhelm Zieglers . In September 1939, he made “international and plutocratic Judaism” responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War “appropriately” for this position. The decision of Chaim Weizmann and the World Jewish Congress to declare solidarity with the British side, as well as the position of prominent Jews such as Albert Einstein in favor of the British cause, Heinrichsdorff evaluated as evidence of the correctness of the National Socialist theses regarding Judaism and the Jews. About the British opponent of the war he judged that the English upper class was so "Jewish" that you knew who you were facing in England: "World enemy number 1: International Jews and power-hungry, hate-filled world Jewry ." In March 1941, he was an invited guest at the opening of the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question . In the SS he reached the rank of Hauptsturmführer in 1942.

As “master of Goebbels antechamber” he also temporarily controlled access to the Propaganda Minister and played an important role in suppressing the attempted coup of July 20, 1944 . On this day, Heinrichsdorff, who had become suspicious of the "suspicious" events in the capital, enabled Hans Wilhelm Hagen , an employee of Otto Ernst Remer , the commander of the Berlin Guard Battalion, who had come to his office , to question the legality of the military actions in the capital , access to Goebbels, who spent that day in his private apartment on Hermann-Göring-Strasse. The consequence of this report was that Goebbels, who had not noticed the events in the seclusion of his private apartment, returned to the ministry and by contacting Remer - who no longer implemented the instructions given to him by the Stauffenberg Group - the plan thwarted the putschists to take power in Berlin.

Most recently he was at the Volkssturm . On May 2, 1945 Heinrichsdorff was captured by members of the Red Army together with other prominent Goebbels employees such as Hans Fritzsche and Otto Kriegk after the Battle of Berlin . He was sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal on August 24, 1945 and executed on charges of war crimes.

Fonts

dissertation
  • The Liberal Opposition in Germany since January 30, 1933. Shown in the development of the "Frankfurter Zeitung". Attempt to systematize political criticism , Hamburg 1937.
Essays
  • The XXI. Zionist Congress in Geneva , in: The Jewish question of August 21, 1939.
  • New research on the Jewish question. The 4th workshop of the Reich Institute for the History of the New Germany , in: The Movement No. 28, 1939.
  • Jews Rule England , in: Zeitschrift fur Politik XXIX, pp. 639–47, 1939.
  • The Jewish decision. The Jews on England's side , in: The Jewish question of September 18, 1939.

literature

  • Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 73.
  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the accompanying CD, p. 241 there.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Archives Koblenz, R 55/24202.
  2. ↑ a b c d Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the accompanying CD, p. 241 there
  3. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 240.
  4. ↑ Uwe Bahnsen : The Shameful Night of the Book Burning , Die Zeit Online from May 13, 2008.
  5. ^ Letter to the Hamburg University Senator from April 1, 1933, quoted from Angelika Ebbinghaus / Karl Heinz Roth / Heidrun Kaupen-Haas: Heilen und Vernichten im Mustergau, 1984, p. 54.
  6. ↑ welt.de: A shameful night in Hamburg's history May 14, 2008.
  7. ^ Arnulf Kutsch / Frank Biermann / Ralf Herpolsheimer: Newspaper scientist in the Third Reich. Seven Biographical Studies , 1984, p. 206; Lutz Hachmeister : The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six, 1998, p. 136
  8. ↑ The Jewish Decision. The Jews on England's side , in: The Jewish question of September 18, 1939.
  9. ^ Arnulf Kutsch / Frank Biermann / Ralf Herpolsheimer: Newspaper scientist in the Third Reich. Seven Biographical Studies , 1984, p. 206.
  10. ^ Peter Hoffmann: The History of the German Resistance, 1933−1945 , p. 480, 1996.
  11. ^ Karl Maron: From Charkow to Berlin. Front reports from the Second World War , 1960, p. 579.
personal data
SURNAME Heinrichsdorff, Wolff
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German civil servant and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienburg ( West Prussia )
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1945