Wolfram Sievers
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Wolfram Sievers (Hildesheim, July 10, 1905- June 2, 1948) was Reichsgeschafsführer, or General Secretary, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935 to 1945.
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[edit] Early life
Sievers was born in 1905 in Hildesheim, the son of a Protestant church musician. It is reported that he was musically gifted, that he played the cembalo, organ, and piano, and loved German Baroque music. He was expelled from school for being active in the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund and went on to study history, philosophy, and religious studies at Stuttgart's Technical University while working as a salesman. A member of the Bündische Jugend, he became active in the Artamanen-Gesellschaft ("Artaman League"), a nationalist back-to-the-land movement.[1]
[edit] Ahnenerbe
Sievers joined the NSDAP in 1929. In 1933 he headed up the Externsteine-Stiftung ("Externsteine Foundation"), which had been founded by Heinrich Himmler to study the Externsteine in the Teutoburger Wald. In 1935, having joined the SS that year, Sievers was appointed Reichsgeschafsführer, or General Secretary, of the Ahnenerbe, by Himmler. He was the actual director of Ahnenerbe operations and was to rise to the rank of SS-Standartenführer by the end of the war.
In 1943 Sievers became director of the Institut fuer Wehrwissenschaftliche Zweckforschung (Institute for Military Scientific Research), which conducted extensive experiments using human subjects. He also assisted in assembling a collection of skulls and skeletons for August Hirt's study at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg as a part of which 112 Jewish prisoners were selected and killed, after being photographed and their anthropological measurements taken.[2]
[edit] Trial and execution
Sievers was tried during the Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg following the end of World War II. Since the Institute for Military Scientific Research had been set up as part of the Ahnenerbe, the prosecution at Nuremberg laid the responsibility for the experiments on humans which had been conducted under its auspices on the Ahnenerbe, and Sievers, as its highest administrative officer, was accused of actively aiding and promoting the criminal experiments.[3]
Sievers was charged with being a member of an organization declared criminal by the International Military Tribunal (the SS), and was implicated in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In his defense he alleged that as early as 1933 he had been a member of an anti-Nazi resistance movement which planned to assassinate Hitler and Himmler, and that he had obtained his appointment as Manager of the Ahnenerbe so as to get close to Himmler and observe his movements. He further claimed that he remained in the post on the advice of his resistance leader to gather vital information which would assist in the overthrow of the Nazi regime.[4]
Sievers was sentenced to death on 20 August 1947 for, and hanged on June 2, 1948 at Landsberg prison in Bavaria.
[edit] References
- ^ Lixfeld, Hannjost; James R. Dow (1994). The Nazification of an Academic Discipline: Folklore in the Third Reich. Indiana University Press. pp. 198-199. ISBN 0253318211.
- ^ http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/
- ^ Epstein, Fritz T., War-Time Activities of the SS-Ahnenerbe (in On the Track of Tyranny: Essays Presented by the Wiener Library to Leonard G. Montefiore, on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday. Ayer Publishing. 1971. pp. 79-81.)
- ^ McDonald, Gabrielle Kirk; Olivia Swaak-Goldman (2000). Substantive and Procedural Aspects of International Criminal Law: The Experience of International and National Courts. BRILL. p. 1755. ISBN 9041111344.
[edit] External links
- Befragung beim Nürnberger Prozess (Englische Fassung)
- Kriegsverbrechergefängnis (WCP No 1) Landsberg
- Michael H. Kater: Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935-1945. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-486-56529-X
- Hans-Joachim Lang: Die Namen der Nummern. Hoffmann und Campe, 2004, ISBN 3-455-09464-3
