Wolfgang A. Mommsen

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Wolfgang A. Mommsen in the 1960s. Photo by Werner Held

Wolfgang Arthur Mommsen (born November 11, 1907 in Berlin ; † February 26, 1986 in Koblenz ) was a German historian, archivist and President of the Federal Archives (1967–1972).

Live and act

Wolfgang Arthur Mommsen, the son of the engineer Hans Mommsen and Anna Germershausen (and grandson of the historian Theodor Mommsen ), studied languages ​​of the ancient Orient and history and received his doctorate in 1933. He was then trained at the Berlin Institute for Archival Science and in 1936 was employed as an archive assistant at the Brandenburg House Archive of the Hohenzollern .

In 1939 he became State Archives Councilor in Berlin. In 1940 he and Kurt Dülfer belonged to the German Archives Commission Latvia-Estonia in the Baltic States, which was supposed to secure the relevant archives in connection with the resettlement of Baltic Germans. With the attack against the Soviet Union, he was used for so-called "archive protection" at various locations in the occupied Soviet Union. He belonged to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . In October 1942 he was appointed by Staff Leader Gerhard Utikal as deputy head of the “Special Staff Archive” of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg for the Rear Army Area North , his superior was Ernst Zipfel . In April 1943 he organized the removal of archival holdings from Vitebsk (one wagon) and Smolensk (five wagons), inspected the confiscated state archives in Bryansk and Gomel and reported: The most important holdings from the Smolensk State Archive (approx. 8%) are thus on the part of the Special Staff Archives [to Vilnius] evacuated . Parts of the archived material were brought to Posen , where Heinrich Himmler planned to set up a Baltic German institute. In April 1943 he was called up for military service.

After the war he was in Bavaria, went to the Bavarian State Archives in Nuremberg in 1947 and in 1952 he became archivist at the Federal Archives in Koblenz. From 1967 to 1972 he was president. According to Stefan Rebenich , Mommsen made a living in his time in Nuremberg by securing the files of the Nuremberg war crimes trials . He brought many important legacies to the Federal Archives in Koblenz and promoted the establishment of the German Historical Institute (DHI) in London.

On the occasion of his retirement in 1972 he was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit .

Behavior in the Nazi state

Mommsen joined the NSDAP in May 1937 and worked in the Prussian Secret State Archives in 1938.

Astrid M. Eckert observes in her study of German archival material at Mommsen a "tendency to set off", Mommsen said that the handling of German cultural property under Soviet rule was worse than “all of our crimes in the east on cultural property”. When Mommsen was about to be appointed head of the Federal Archives, the Berlin Document Center reported to the US State Department that Mommsen had served Heinrich Himmler in Estonia . On the other hand, it was expressly stated that Mommsen was not aware of any openly anti-Semitic statements.

Mommsen witnessed the murder of Jews in Riga. On March 29, 1942, he noted in his diary: “They have been shooting the Jews for weeks.” He assumed that “there should be nothing left of the Jews in Riga. Now it's the turn of the Jews from the Reich, who are allowed to shovel snow here for a few days on their way to death. "

Stefan Rebenich sees Mommsen as having an “affinity with National Socialist ideologues ”, like the feeling of superiority towards the Russians. After the convocation in 1943, his belief in the "final victory" had waned and the distance to the regime had grown; he criticized the Holocaust. Like his cousin Ernst Wolf Mommsen and other bourgeois functionaries of National Socialism, Wolfgang Arthur Mommsen was an important factor of stability for the West German state, and he was also not ready to critically examine his own past.

Fonts

  • The bequests in the German archives (with additions from other holdings). (= Directory of the written personal papers in the German archives and libraries , Volume 1, Parts I and II), edited by Wolfgang A. Mommsen. Publications of the Federal Archives 17 / I and 17 / II. Boldt, Boppard 1971, 1983
  • Stefan Lehr, Ed .: Wolfgang A. Mommsen. Records from the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine 1942–1944 . In: Journal for East Central Europe Research , 44, 1995, pp. 453-513 full text p. 514: Summary in Engl.

literature

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Stefan Rebenich: The Mommsens . In: Volker Reinhardt, Thomas Lau (ed.): German families. Historical portraits from Bismarck to Weizsäcker , CH Beck: München 2005, pp. 147–179, here p. 172.
  2. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost , p. 88
  3. ↑ Ulrike Hartung: Abducted and lost , pp. 120f
  4. ↑ Astrid M. Eckert: Battle for the files: The Western Allies and the return of German archive material after the Second World War . Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart 2004, pp. 125/126.
  5. ↑ Stefan Rebenich: The Mommsens . In: Volker Reinhardt, Thomas Lau (ed.): German families. Historical portraits from Bismarck to Weizsäcker , CH Beck: München 2005, pp. 147–179, here p. 175.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 416.
  7. ↑ Astrid M. Eckert: Battle for the files: The Western Allies and the return of German archives after the Second World War . Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart 2004, p. 144.
  8. ↑ Astrid M. Eckert: Battle for the files: The Western Allies and the return of German archives after the Second World War . Franz Steiner Verlag 2004, p. 156.
  9. ↑ Stefan Lehr: An almost forgotten 'eastern mission': German archivists in the Generalgouvernement and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Düsseldorf: Droste 2008, p. 161.
  10. ↑ Stefan Rebenich: The Mommsens . In: Volker Reinhardt, Thomas Lau (ed.): German families. Historical portraits from Bismarck to Weizsäcker , CH Beck: München 2005, pp. 147–179, here pp. 173/174.
  11. ↑ Stefan Rebenich: The Mommsens . In: Volker Reinhardt, Thomas Lau (ed.): German families. Historical portraits from Bismarck to Weizsäcker , CH Beck: München 2005, pp. 147–179, here p. 175.
  12. ↑ Diary entries. Partly published elsewhere in Ukrainian. Some aspects of Nazi looted art can be derived from it.
personal data
SURNAME Mommsen, Wolfgang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mommsen, Wolfgang Arthur
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and archivist
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1986
Place of death Koblenz