Gau Eastern Hanover (German: ''Ost-Hannover'') was a regional district of the
NSDAP established in 1925 in the north eastern part of the Prussian
Province of Hanover, comprising the governorates of
Stade
Stade (), officially the Hanseatic City of Stade (german: Hansestadt Stade, nds, Hansestadt Stood) is a city in Lower Saxony in northern Germany. First mentioned in records in 934, it is the seat of the district () which bears its name. It is l ...
and
Lüneburg in their then boundaries. Originally called Gau Stade-Lüneburg, it was renamed Gau Ost-Hannover on 1 October 1928. Initially the Gau was a mere regional Nazi party subsection, but with the growing subjection of all
public administration to Nazi party influence after the
Machtergreifung
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...
, the Gau usurped from 1933 to 1935 more and more the functions of the Provincial government and its superordinate
Free State of Prussia. However, after the German constituent states were ''de facto'' abolished in 1935, the Gaue replaced them in their responsibilities. Gau East Hannover - like all Nazi party structures - was dismantled after
Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945. In 1946 the
Control Commission for Germany - British Element (CCG/BE) reconstituted the
Province of Hanover as the
State of Hanover
The State of Hanover (german: Land Hannover) was a short-lived state within the British Zone of Allied-occupied Germany. It existed for 92 days in the course of the dissolution of the Free State of Prussia after World War II until the foundatio ...
and later the same year it merged with three smaller neighbouring reconstituted
German states to form the new state of
Lower Saxony within the
British Zone of Occupation. The municipality of
Amt Neuhaus was allocated to
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
History
The Nazi Gau (plural Gaue) system was originally established in a
party conference on 22 May 1926, in order to improve administration of the party structure. From 1933 onward, after the
Nazi seizure of power
Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...
, the ''Gaue'' increasingly replaced the German states as administrative subdivisions in Germany.
At the head of each Gau stood a
Gauleiter, a position which became increasingly more powerful, especially after the outbreak of the
Second World War, with little interference from above. Local Gauleiters often held government positions as well as party ones and were in charge of, among other things, propaganda and surveillance and, from September 1944 onward, the
Volkssturm and the defense of the Gau.
The position of Gauleiter in East Hanover was held by
Otto Telschow
Otto Telschow (27 February 1876 – 31 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official who served as ''Gauleiter'' in Eastern Hanover from 1925 to 1945.
Early years
Telschow was born in Wittenberge, the son of a judicial officer. Until 1893 he was ...
for the duration of the existence of the Gau.
The
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was located in the Gau Eastern Hanover. The camp was liberated by the British Army in April 1945 who found the remaining 60,000 inmates in a state of starvation and near-death while the camp was littered with unburied bodies of dead inmates.
References
External links
Illustrated list of Gauleiter
{{Coord missing, Germany
Eastern Hanover
1933 establishments in Germany
1945 disestablishments in Germany
Hanover