Leopold Gutterer | |
|---|---|
| State Secretary Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda | |
| In office 23 May 1941 – 22 April 1944 | |
| Minister | Joseph Goebbels |
| Preceded by | Karl Hanke |
| Succeeded by | Werner Naumann |
| Vice President Reich Chamber of Culture | |
| In office 23 May 1941 – 22 April 1944 | |
| President | Joseph Goebbels |
| Preceded by | Karl Hanke |
| Succeeded by | Werner Naumann |
| Head of Department II (Propaganda) Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda | |
| In office March 1938 – 23 May 1941 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1902-04-25)25 April 1902 Baden-Baden,Grand Duchy of Baden,German Empire |
| Died | 27 December 1996(1996-12-27) (aged 94) Aachen,North Rhine-Westphalia,West Germany |
| Political party | Nazi Party |
| Alma mater | Goethe University Frankfurt |
| Occupation | Newspaper editor |
| Awards | Golden Party Badge |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Nazi Germany |
| Branch/service | Schutzstaffel (SS) German Army |
| Years of service | 1927–1945 1944–1945 |
| Rank | SS-Brigadeführer Unteroffizier |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
Leopold Gutterer (25 April 1902 – 27 December 1996) was aNazi Party official and propagandist. He rose to the positions ofState Secretary in theReich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and Vice President of theReich Chamber of Culture inNazi Germany. In both offices, he reported directly toReichsminister of PropagandaJoseph Goebbels. He was also an SS-Brigadeführer. After the conclusion of theSecond World War, he underwentdenazification and was sentenced to serve time in alabor camp.
Gutterer was born inBaden-Baden and, after graduating from the localGymnasium in 1920, he served in theFreikorps as a member of theMarinebrigade Ehrhardt. He also was a member of theDeutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the largest and most activeantisemitic organization in theWeimar Republic. He worked for a time as a newspaper editor in 1922 before enrolling in courses on German studies, theater andethnology at theGoethe University Frankfurt, though it is unclear whether he earned a university degree.[1]
On 23 May 1925, Gutterer joined theNazi Party (membership number 6,275) and, as an early Party member, he would later be awarded theGolden Party Badge.[2] He co-founded a Nazi newspaper, theFrankfurter Beobachter (Frankfurt Observer) inFrankfurt am Main and worked as an editor and publisher from 1927. That same year, he also joined theSS in Frankfurt (SS number 1,028).[2]
Gutterer next served as the Nazi PartyBezirksleiter inGöttingen, and was made the editor of theNiedersachsen Beobachter (Lower Saxony Observer), working full-time for the Party from 1929. A persuasive orator, he was named a national Party speaker (Reichsreder) and delivered propaganda addresses at party events throughout Germany. Because of this, he was arrested several times and served several short jail sentences. He served successively from 1931 as anOrtsgruppenleiter,Bezirksleiter andKreisleiter inHanover before becoming thepropaganda leader ofGau Southern Hanover-Brunswick.[1] He had a leading role in coordinating election rallies forAdolf Hitler in the successful Nazi campaign for the1933 Lippe state election.[3]
After theNazi seizure of power, Gutterer was appointed to a government post with the rank ofRegierungsrat (government councilor) on 1 April 1933 in the recently-establishedReich Ministry for Propaganda. There he worked in Department II (Propaganda) where the planning and execution of all large-scale propaganda campaigns took place. Gutterer headed the desk that was responsible for all mass rallies.[4] He was also in charge of coordinating the Ministry's participation in theWinterhilfswerk annual winter donation drive. In addition to staging theMay Day celebrations inBerlin and theNuremberg rallies, he was in charge of the planning and designing of the annualReich Harvest Thanksgiving Festivals that were held from 1933 to 1937 at theBückeberg Hill.[5]
On 1 January 1935, Gutterer was promoted toOberregierungsrat (senior government councilor). After serving as deputy department head, and being promoted toMinisterialrat (ministerial councilor) in April 1937, he took over as head of Department II in March 1938.[6] His next promotion took place 20 April 1938, directly to the rank of Ministerial Director, skipping the intermediate rank ofMinisterialdirigent.[1] In August 1940, all of the ministry's specialist departments, with the exception of two press departments underOtto Dietrich, were subordinated to Gutterer.State SecretaryKarl Hanke, the highest ranking civil servant in the Ministry, had fallen out of favor with Goebbels because of his romantic involvement with theReichminister's wifeMagda, and he had been on leave since August 1939. On 23 May 1941, Gutterer was officially named to succeed Hanke as State Secretary.[7] He also concurrently held the post of Vice President of theReich Chamber of Culture. Goebbels wrote of Gutterer in his diary that day: "He will certainly always be a loyal follower to me."[8]
Gutterer was involved in the persecution of Germany's Jews. On 15 August 1941, he chaired a meeting with some forty officials from other ministries and agencies to discuss the issue of forcing German Jews to wear a special visible identification marking, known as theyellow badge.[9] This was already being done inoccupied Poland. Gutterer justified this on the grounds that the marking of Jews was a matter vital to the morale of the German war effort. Gutterer proposed numerous measures of intensified restriction and persecution, the precondition for the enforcement of which was the identification of Jews. He noted that only 19,000 of the 70,000 Jews in Berlin were working. The rest, he said, should be "carted off to Russia … best of all actually would be to kill them." Goebbels took the proposal to Hitler and, on 19 August, obtained his consent to move forward with the identification procedure.[10] A police regulation was signed on 1 September, published on 5 September and went into force on 19 September 1941.[11]
Gutterer was invited by SS-ObergruppenführerReinhard Heydrich to represent the Propaganda Ministry at theWannsee Conference, the meeting called to coordinate the implementation of theFinal Solution.[12] Originally scheduled for 9 December 1941, it was postponed to 20 January 1942, and Gutterer was unable to attend due to a scheduling conflict, but he expressed an interest in attending any follow-up meetings.[13] On 8 May 1942, Gutterer delivered a speech openingThe Soviet Paradise, an anti-Soviet propaganda exhibition in Berlin'sLustgarten that was visited by over 1.3 million people over the following month.
Goebbels had been dissatisfied with Gutterer's performance for some time and, on 22 April 1944, he was replaced as State Secretary byWerner Naumann. Gutterer was compensated by being appointed a managing director ofUFA, the mammoth Nazi film production company, at "a huge salary".[4] Later that year, he was called up for service in theWehrmacht. Though holding the rank of SS-Brigadeführer since 9 November 1940,[2] he was deployed at thefront lines as anon-commissioned officer in ananti-tank gun unit during the final phase of theSecond World War until he was taken prisoner by the American forces.[3]
After being released, Gutterer initially livedincognito as a farmhand in the village ofMotten in theRhön Mountains ofBavaria until October 1947, before he was identified,interned at a camp inHammelburg and tried in the Germandenazification process. Classified as a Group II "offender", he was sentenced to five years in alabor camp. However, in a hearing before theNuremberg Appeals Chamber on 14 December 1948, this verdict was reduced to one year in a labor camp, lifelong deprivation of pension, surrender of 80 percent of personal assets and an eight-year professional ban. From 1955 to about 1962, he was the managing director of anews cinema inDüsseldorf. In the mid-1960s, he worked as the director of theTheater Aachen.[14] In 1985, Gutterer was one of the few contemporary Nazi officials that were interviewed by the American historianNathan Stoltzfus, during his research into theRosenstrasse protest against the deportation of Berlin's Jews. Gutterer died in December 1996 inAachen.
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