Alfred Meyer

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This article is about the Nazi Party official. For the German writer, see Alfred Meyer (writer). For German admiral born Alfred Meyer, see Alfred Meyer-Waldeck.
Alfred Meyer
Meyer in 1941
Deputy Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
In office
17 July 1941 – 11 April 1945
LeaderAlfred Rosenberg
Oberpräsident of the Province of Westphalia
In office
4 November 1938 – 11 April 1945
Preceded byFerdinand von Lüninck
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Minister of State of the Free State of Lippe
In office
1 February 1936 – 11 April 1945
Preceded byHans-Joachim Riecke
Succeeded byHeinrich Drake
Reichsstatthalter of the Free State of Lippe
In office
16 May 1933 – 11 April 1945
Reichsstatthalter of the Free State of Schaumburg-Lippe
In office
16 May 1933 – 11 April 1945
Gauleiter of the Gau of North Westphalia
In office
31 January 1931 – 11 April 1945
Personal details
Born
Gustav Alfred Julius Meyer

(1891-10-05)5 October 1891
Göttingen, Province of Hanover, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died11 April 1945(1945-04-11) (aged 53)
Hessisch Oldendorf, Province of Westphalia,
Free State of Prussia, Nazi Germany
Cause of deathSuicide
Political partyNazi Party
EducationJurisprudence and political science, Ph.D.
Alma materLausanne University
University of Bonn
University of Würzburg
ProfessionLegal consultant
Known forWannsee Conference participant
Civilian awardsGolden Party Badge
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
Branch/serviceImperial German Army
Years of service1912–1920
RankHauptmann
Unit68th (6th Rhenish) Infantry Regiment
363rd Infantry Regiment
Battles/warsWorld War I
Military awardsIron Cross, 1st and 2nd class
War Merit Cross, 1st and 2nd class with Swords
Wound Badge

Gustav Alfred Julius Meyer (5 October 1891 – 11 April 1945) was a Nazi Party official and politician. He joined the Nazi Party in 1928 and was the Gauleiter of North Westphalia from 1931 to 1945, the Oberpräsident of the Province of Westphalia from 1938 to 1945 and the Reichsstatthalter of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe from 1933 to 1945. In 1941 he became the Permanent Deputy to the Reichsminister of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. He represented the ministry with Georg Leibbrandt in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Near the end of World War II in Europe, Meyer committed suicide in April 1945.

Early life[edit]

Meyer was born in Göttingen, the son of a Prussian civil servant who was stationed there for his official duties. The middle-class family was originally from Essen. He was educated at the Gymnasium in Soest, graduating in 1911.[1]

A conservative and a monarchist, Myer aspired to become a Prussian military officer. However, upon graduation, he entered the University of Lausanne to study law. After one term in Lausanne, he unexpectedly received an appointment as a Fahnenjunker (cadet officer) with the 68th (6th Rhenish) Infantry Regiment in Koblenz in 1912. He passed his officer exam and was commissioned as a Leutnant on 16 June 1913.[2] During World War I he fought with Infantry Regiment 363 on the Western Front, earning the Iron Cross first and second class and the Wound Badge.[1] Promoted to Oberleutnant in June 1916, he was wounded and captured by the French in April 1917.[1] This experience, according to Meyer, was especially traumatic and left him with a hatred against France.[1] Released from captivity in March 1920, the downsized Reichswehr had no use for him and he left the army in October with the rank of Hauptmann.[1]

After the war, Meyer studied jurisprudence and political science at the Universities of Bonn and Würzburg.[1] He graduated with a PhD in 1922 and joined the legal department of a Gelsenkirchen mining firm.[1] In 1924, he joined the local Masonic lodge.[1] Meyer was also the chairman of the local Kyffhäuserbund unit.[1] He married Dorothee Capell in 1925 and had five daughters with her.[1]

Career in Nazi Germany[edit]

The Nazi Party was still extremely weak in Westphalia during the late 1920s, and had only about three hundred members in the city of Gelsenkirchen during this period.[1] On 1 April 1928, Meyer joined the Party (membership number 28,738). As an early Party member, he would later be awarded the Golden Party Badge. Later that year, he rose to the position of Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Group Leader) and, on 1 October 1929, he was promoted to Bezirksleiter (District Leader) of the Emscher-Lippe district within Westphalia. In November 1929, he was also elected as the only Nazi party representative to the Gelsenkirchen city council where he remained until January 1931.[3]

In September 1930, Meyer was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 17, North Westphalia, and on 31 January 1931, he was appointed the Nazi Party Gauleiter of the newly-formed Gau Westphalia-North. He also became the editor of the local Party newspaper, the Westfälische Landeszeitung Rot-Erde. On 24 April 1932, he was elected to the Prussian Landtag. Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Meyer was appointed to the Westphalia Provincial Landtag on 12 March, becoming its president in April. On 10 April, he was made the province's plenipotentiary to the Reichsrat, serving until its abolition on 14 February 1934. Adolf Hitler appointed him as the federal Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the German States of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe on 16 May 1933. He was returned to the Reichstag at the election of 12 November 1933, retaining his seat until the fall of the Nazi regime. On 1 August 1934, he was named to Hans Frank's Academy for German Law. Additionally, he also became the Staatsminister (Minister of State) in charge of the state government of Lippe, succeeding Hans-Joachim Riecke, effective 1 February 1936. He also was named a Minister of State in the Schaumburg-Lippe government of Landespräsident (State President) Karl Dreier [de]. Finally, on 4 November 1938 he was made Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Westphalia, thus uniting under his control the highest party and governmental offices in his jurisdictions. In the Nazi paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung, he was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer on 20 April 1936 and to SA-Obergruppenführer on 9 November 1938.[4]

On 6 September 1939, Meyer was made Chef der Zivilverwaltung (Chief of Civil Administration) in the West. On 29 May 1940 he was appointed Acting Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District VI during the absence in Norway of Josef Terboven. On 17 July 1941 he was named Ständiger Stellvertreter (permanent deputy) to Reichsminister Alfred Rosenberg in the newly-established Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMO).[5] Meyer was responsible for the departments of politics, administration and economics. In his role in the East, he used workers that were mainly Jewish for slave labor assigned to a variety of works.

Wannsee Conference participant[edit]

The meeting minutes of the Wannsee Conference showing "Gauleiter Dr. Meyer" at the top of the participant list.

On 20 January 1942, Meyer was Rosenberg's representative at the Wannsee Conference, which was called to discuss the implementation of the Final Solution. The official minutes of the conference indicate that Myer and Josef Bühler, the representative of the General Government, both expressed the opinion that preparatory measures for the Final Solution should be carried out immediately in their respective jurisdictions. Nine days after the conference, Myer convened a meeting at the RMO office for representatives of several other ministries and the armed forces high command (OKW). The RMO representatives advocated broadening the definition of who was a Jew. They supported the position of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who had chaired the Wannsee meeting, that Mischlinge of the first degree should be included. Myer wrote a letter on 16 July 1942 proposing that a request be addressed to Hitler urging that a decision be made on the Mischlinge question.[6]

Defeat and death[edit]

On 16 November 1942, Myer was made Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau. During the war, he was awarded the War Merit Cross, 1st and 2nd class with Swords. On 25 September 1944, he became the commander of Nazi Volksturm militia forces in his Gau. He made plans to construct a "Westphalia Wall" to serve as a defensive position but the Allied assault proved unstoppable, and Münster fell to the combined British and American forces on 3 April 1945. In mid-May 1945, a body, decomposed beyond recognition but later determined to be Meyer, was found in Hessisch Oldendorf by the River Weser. Next to the body was a pistol and a suicide note, in which the unrepentant Nazi wrote: "The last part of my Gau was lost today. We defended Rinteln and the Weser bravely. In the last free part of my Gau I take leave of the Führer, to whom my most heartfelt wishes belong, [and] of Germany."[7]

Fictional portrayals[edit]

Myer was portrayed by Harald Dietl [de] in the 1984 German film Die Wannseekonferenz, by Brian Pettifer in the 2001 BBC/HBO film Conspiracy and by Peter Jordan in the 2022 German film Die Wannseekonferenz.

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Heinz-Jürgen Priamus: Dr. Alfred Meyer (1891-1945) Biography at Historisches Centrum Hagen
  2. ^ Priamus 2017, p. 267.
  3. ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 290–291.
  4. ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 290–293.
  5. ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 294–296.
  6. ^ Priamus 2017, pp. 275–276.
  7. ^ Miller & Schulz 2017, pp. 289, 296, 298.

Sources[edit]

  • Alfred Myer entry in the Westfälische Geschichte internet portal
  • Höffkes, Karl (1986). Hitlers Politische Generale. Die Gauleiter des Dritten Reiches: ein biographisches Nachschlagewerk. Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag. ISBN 3-87847-163-7.
  • Miller, Michael D.; Schulz, Andreas (2017). Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders of the Nazi Party and Their Deputies, 1925-1945. Vol. 2 (Georg Joel - Dr. Bernhard Rust). R. James Bender Publishing. ISBN 978-1-932-97032-6.
  • Priamus, Heinz-Jürgen (2017). "Alfred Myer, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories:From German Monarchist to Nazi Desk Perpetrator". In Jasch, Hans-Christian; Kreutzmüller, Christoph (eds.). The Participants: The Men of the Wannsee Conference. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-785-33671-3.

External website[edit]

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