Karl Wolff Handwritten Letter to Wife of Adolf von Oeynhausen

Karl Wolff Handwritten Letter to Wife of Adolf von Oeynhausen

From the Estate of Adolf von Oeynhausen. Karl Wolff Handwritten Letter to Wife of Adolf von Oeynhausen dated 4 April 1965. Wolff is asking for documents from the wartime that Adolf may have kept which will help Wolff in his on-going court case for war crimes. He mentions Himmler in this letter which is quite interesting.

Adolf von Oeynhausen came from the Westphalian noble von Oeynhausen family . He was the son of Börries von Oeynhausen, a former district administrator of the Büren district . After graduating from the Pforta state school, Oeynhausen studied law and political science at the universities of Lausanne, Munich, Berlin and Marburg. After completing his legal traineeship, he worked, among other things, as an unskilled worker on the board of the Hesse-Nassau State Insurance Agency. During the First World War he was a delegate to the Imperial Military Inspector of Voluntary Nursing from 1914 to 1917 and headed the committee for German prisoners of war in Upper Silesia from 1915 to 1919 . [1] He had already become a member of the financial administration in 1912. After the world war he rose to senior government councilor and head of the tax office in Hildesheim . In 1924, Oeynhausen fell victim to the personnel reduction regulations and was dismissed. He then took care of the management of the Grevenburg family estate. [2]

At the instigation of the NSDAP Gauleiter Alfred Meyer, Oeynhausen was appointed provisionally as district president on April 1, 1933 and finally as district president on June 16, 1933 because he was considered a reliable National Socialist. [3] [4]

At the time of the German Empire, Oeynhausen was a member of the German Conservative Party and was a member of the Höxter district council from 1907 to 1918 . After the end of the First World War he was active in the Escherich organization and the Westphalian League. He was then a member of the DNVP and later its paramilitary organization Stahlhelm . At the beginning of September 1931 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 623,499). Later he was, among other things, Gau specialist advisor for civil service issues. He was a member of the Association of National Socialist German Lawyers (BNSDJ), the NSV and the Reich Colonial Association . He was also a supporting member of the SS , joined the SS on November 9, 1937 (SS no. 289.217) and immediately became Sturmbannführer. [5] He reached the rank of SS brigade leader at the end of January 1941 . [1] From 1933 to 1943, Oeynhausen was district president of the Prussian administrative district of Minden in the province of Westphalia . In 1943 he left the civil service because there were increasing differences with the NSDAP Gauleiter Alfred Meyer , which were also triggered by Oeynhausen's stance on church issues. [6] [7] Meyer ensured that Oeynhausen was given an honorable farewell. He pushed for the Reich Interior Minister or at least his State Secretary to be present at the official ceremony and ensured that Oeynhausen was recommended for the award of the Golden Party Badge and the award of honorary citizenship of Bad Oeynhausen . [8th]

In 1943 he became the club leader of the Lippspringe sanatoriums (Auguste-Viktoria and the Cecilienstift). From 1945 to 1947 he was interned in the British Staumühle internment camp . [9] In the denazification process in 1949 he was classified in category IV (= follower). [6]

Oeynhausen was considered a convinced National Socialist with connections to the Berlin party leadership of the NSDAP. In January 1933, he hosted Adolf Hitler as a personal guest at his Grevenburg estate during the legendary Lippe “breakthrough election campaign” . During his time in office, Adolf von Oeynhausen suggested Wewelsburg to Heinrich Himmler as the “Reichsführerschule of the SS ”. [10] [11] [12]