Hans von Dohnanyi (; originally ''Johann von Dohnányi'' ; 1 January 1902 – 8 or 9 April 1945) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
jurist
A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...
. He used his position in the
Abwehr
The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
to help Jews escape Germany, worked with
German resistance German resistance can refer to:
* Freikorps, German nationalist paramilitary groups resisting German communist uprisings and the Weimar Republic government
* German resistance to Nazism
* Landsturm, German resistance groups fighting against France d ...
against the
Nazi régime, and after the failed
20 July Plot
On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The ...
, he was accused of being the "spiritual leader" of the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, and executed by the SS in 1945.
Early life
Hans von Dohnanyi was born to the
Hungarian composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
Ernő Dohnányi
Ernő or Erno is a Finnish and Hungarian masculine given name. Notable people with the name include:
*Ernő Balogh (1897-1989), Hungarian pianist, composer, editor, and educator
*Ernő Bánk (1883-1962), Hungarian painter and teacher
* Ernő Bér ...
and his wife, the
pianist
A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
Elisabeth Kunwald.
After his parents divorced, he grew up in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
. He went to the
Grunewald Grunewald is the name of both a locality and a forest in Germany:
* Grunewald (forest)
* Grunewald (locality)
Grünewald may refer to:
* Grünewald (surname)
* Grünewald, Germany, a municipality in Brandenburg, Germany
* Grünewald (Luxembourg), ...
''
Gymnasium'' there, becoming friends with
Dietrich and
Klaus Bonhoeffer
Klaus Bonhoeffer (5 January 1901 – 23 April 1945) was a German jurist and German resistance to Nazism, resistance fighter against the Nazism, Nazi régime who was executed after the 20 July Plot, July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.
Early life
Klaus ...
. From 1920 to 1924, he studied
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
in Berlin.
In 1925, he received a
doctorate
A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...
in law with a dissertation on "The
International Lease Treaty and Czechoslovakia's Claim on the Lease Area in
Hamburg Harbour
The Port of Hamburg (german: Hamburger Hafen, ) is a seaport on the river Elbe in Hamburg, Germany, from its mouth on the North Sea.
Known as Germany's "Gateway to the World" (''Tor zur Welt''), it is the country's largest seaport by volume ...
".
After taking the first state exam in 1924, he married
Christel Bonhoeffer, daughter of
Karl Bonhoeffer
Karl Bonhoeffer (; March 31, 1868 – December 4, 1948) was a German neurologist, psychiatrist and physician.
Life
Bonhoeffer was born in Neresheim in the Kingdom of Württemberg to Friedrich von Bonhoeffer (1828–1907), who worked as judge ...
and sister of his school friends, in 1925. About this time, he began putting the
word stress
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as i ...
on the "a" in his last name (which is of Hungarian origin, where it is stressed on the first syllable), and removed the
acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
(which indicates vowel length, not word stress, in Hungarian). He and his wife had three children:
Klaus
Klaus is a German, Dutch and Scandinavian given name and surname. It originated as a short form of Nikolaus, a German form of the Greek given name Nicholas.
Notable persons whose family name is Klaus
* Billy Klaus (1928–2006), American baseba ...
(
mayor of Hamburg
The government of Hamburg is divided into executive, legislative and judicial branches. Hamburg is a city-state and municipality, and thus its governance deals with several details of both state and local community politics. It takes place in two ...
from 1981 to 1988),
Christoph Christoph is a male given name and surname. It is a German variant of Christopher.
Notable people with the given name Christoph
* Christoph Bach (1613–1661), German musician
* Christoph Büchel (born 1966), Swiss artist
* Christoph Dientzenho ...
, (an orchestra
conductor) and Barbara.
Career
Dohnányi worked at the
Hamburg Senate
The government of Hamburg is divided into executive, legislative and judicial branches. Hamburg is a city-state and municipality, and thus its governance deals with several details of both state and local community politics. It takes place in two ...
for a short time and in 1929, began a career at the
Reich Ministry of Justice
''Reich'' (; ) is a German language, German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word "realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emp ...
, working as a personal consultant with the title of
prosecutor
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...
to several justice ministers.
In 1934, the title was changed to ''Regierungsrat'' ("government councillor"). In 1932, he was adjutant to
Erwin Bumke
Erwin Konrad Eduard Bumke (7 July 1874 – 20 April 1945) was the last president of the Reichsgericht, the supreme civil and criminal court of the German Reich, serving from 1929 to 1945. As such, he should according to the Weimar Constitution h ...
, the Imperial Court President (''Reichsgerichtspräsident''; at this time, Germany was still officially the German Empire, ''Deutsches Reich''), in which capacity he put together
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
's lawsuit against the Empire, which Prussia had brought after the ''
Preußenschlag'',
Franz von Papen
Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk (; 29 October 18792 May 1969) was a German conservative politician, diplomat, Prussian nobleman and General Staff officer. He served as the chancellor of Germany i ...
's dissolution of the Prussian social-democratic government through an emergency decree in 1932. As an adviser to
Franz Gürtner
Franz Gürtner (26 August 1881 – 29 January 1941) was a German Minister of Justice in the governments of Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher and Adolf Hitler. Gürtner was responsible for coordinating jurisprudence in Nazi Germany and provided ...
from 1934 to 1938, Dohnányi became acquainted with
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
,
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 19 ...
,
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
and
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering; ; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1 ...
. He had access to the justice ministry's most secret documents.
Resistance
Spurred by the murders of alleged plotters of the 1934
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives (German: ), or the Röhm purge (German: ''Röhm-Putsch''), also called Operation Hummingbird (German: ''Unternehmen Kolibri''), was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Chancellor Ad ...
, "legitimised" murders carried out on government orders,
without trial or sentence, Dohnányi began to seek out contacts with
German resistance German resistance can refer to:
* Freikorps, German nationalist paramilitary groups resisting German communist uprisings and the Weimar Republic government
* German resistance to Nazism
* Landsturm, German resistance groups fighting against France d ...
circles. He made records for himself of the régime's crimes, so that in the event of a collapse of the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, he would have evidence of their crimes. In 1938, once his critical view of
Nazi racial politics became known,
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
had him transferred to the ''
Reichsgericht
The Reichsgericht (, ''Reich Court'') was the supreme criminal and civil court in the German Reich from 1879 to 1945. It was based in Leipzig, Germany. The Supreme Court was established when the Reichsjustizgesetze (Imperial Justice Laws) came in ...
'' in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
as an adviser.
Shortly before the outbreak of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
,
Hans Oster
Hans Paul Oster (9 August 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a general in the ''Wehrmacht'' and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the ''Abwehr'' (German military inte ...
called Dohnányi into the
Abwehr
The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
of the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Led by
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the '' Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi r ...
, it quite quickly became a hub of resistance activity against Hitler.
Dohnányi protected
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have ...
from conscription by bringing him into the Abwehr with the claim Bonhoeffer's numerous ecumenical contacts could be useful for Germany.
[
In 1942, Dohnányi made it possible for two Jewish lawyers from Berlin, Friedrich Arnold and , to flee with their loved ones to ]Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, disguised as Abwehr agents. Altogether, 13 people were able to leave Germany without hindrance, thanks to Dohnányi's forgeries and operation known as U-7. Dohnányi covertly went to Switzerland to make certain the refugees would be admitted. He also ensured they received money to support themselves.[
During late February 1943, Dohnányi busied himself with ]Henning von Tresckow
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the Nazi Germany, German Army who helped organize German resistance to Nazism, German resistance again ...
's assassination
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
attempt against Hitler and the attempted coup d'état
A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...
. The bomb that was smuggled aboard Hitler's plane in Smolensk
Smolensk ( rus, Смоленск, p=smɐˈlʲensk, a=smolensk_ru.ogg) is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River, west-southwest of Moscow. First mentioned in 863, it is one of the oldest c ...
after being carried there by Dohnányi, however, failed to go off.[
On 5 April 1943, Dohnányi was arrested at his office by the ]Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
on charges of alleged breach of foreign currency violations: he had transferred funds to a Swiss bank on behalf of the Jews he had saved. Among the transactions in question were ones with Jauch & Hübener. Both Bonhoeffer and Christel Dohnányi were also arrested, although she was released about a month later.[
Military judge ]Karl Sack
Karl Sack (9 June 1896 – 9 April 1945) was a German jurist and member of the resistance movement during World War II.
Life
Karl Sack was born in Bosenheim (now Bad Kreuznach. He studied law in Heidelberg where he joined a Burschenschaft ( B ...
, himself a member of the resistance, deliberately delayed Dohnányi's trial; however, in 1944, Dohnányi was delivered to Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...
. His involvement in the 20 July Plot
On 20 July 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of Nazi Germany, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Kętrzyn, in present-day Poland. The ...
came to light after the plan failed. Also, the Gestapo found some of the documents he had earlier saved and hidden and decided Dohnányi was "the spiritual head of the conspiracy” against Hitler.[ On Hitler's orders, on 6 April 1945, he was condemned to death by an SS ]drumhead
A drumhead or drum skin is a membrane stretched over one or both of the open ends of a drum. The drumhead is struck with sticks, mallets, or hands, so that it vibrates and the sound resonates through the drum.
Additionally outside of percus ...
court and executed two or three days later (depending on the source).
Proceedings after the war
After the fall of the Nazi régime, the chairman of the drumhead court, Otto Thorbeck
Otto Thorbeck (26 August 1912 in Brzeg, Brieg, Silesia – 10 October 1976 in Nuremberg) was a Germans, German lawyer and Nazi Germany, Nazi Schutzstaffel, SS judge in the ''SS Court Main Office, Hauptamt SS-Gericht''.
In 1941, Sturmbannführ ...
, and the prosecutor, Walter Huppenkothen
Walter Huppenkothen (31 December 1907 in Haan, Rhineland – 5 April 1978 in Lübeck)[West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...](_blank)
of being accessories to murder. After the Bundesgerichtshof
The Federal Court of Justice (german: Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) is the highest court in the system of ordinary jurisdiction (''ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit'') in Germany, founded in 1950. It has its seat in Karlsruhe with two panels being situat ...
(BGH) had at first quashed a lower court's two acquittals, it changed its mind in 1956 during the third revision of the case, quashed Thorbeck's and Huppenkothen's sentences, and acquitted them of the charges of being accessories to murder by their participation in the drumhead trial on grounds that the court had been duly constituted and the sentence had been imposed according to the law then in force, without either of the accused having perverted justice.
On the centenary of Dohnányi's birth in 2002, Günter Hirsch
Günter Hirsch (born 30 January 1943) is a German legal scholar who served as the seventh President of the Federal Court of Justice of Germany from 2000 to 2008.
Biography
Günter Erhard Hirsch was born in Neuburg an der Donau, the second child ...
, president of the BGH, called those who had sentenced Dohnányi to death "criminals calling themselves judges".[ Bundesgerichtshof, official website (8 March 2002). Retrieved 7 April 2011 ] Hirsch said the 1956 ruling was shameful because as a result, not a single one of the Nazi-era judges who sentenced 50,000 Nazi opponents to their deaths was found guilty after the war.
On 23 October 2003, Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
honoured Dohnányi by recognizing him as one of the Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...
for saving the Arnold and Fliess families, at risk to his own life. His name has been inscribed in the walls at the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
remembrance centre Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
in Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
.
His own grandson, Justus von Dohnányi
Justus von Dohnányi (born 2 December 1960) is a German actor, best known for portraying Wilhelm Burgdorf in 2004 film ''Der Untergang''.
Life and career
Born in Lübeck, von Dohnányi is the son of conductor Christoph von Dohnányi and actress ...
, starred as Wilhelm Burgdorf
Wilhelm Emanuel Burgdorf (15 February 1895 – 2 May 1945) was a German general during World War II, who served as a commander and staff officer in the German Army (Wehrmacht), German Army. In October 1944, Burgdorf assumed the role of the chief ...
in the 2004 film, '' Downfall''.
See also
*List of members of the 20 July plot
On 20 July 1944, Adolf Hitler and his top military associates entered the briefing hut of the Wolf's Lair military headquarters, a series of concrete bunkers and shelters located deep in the forest of East Prussia, not far from the location of t ...
* Widerstand
*Bonhoeffer Family
The Bonhoeffer family is a German family that, though originating in the city of Nijmegen, has been documented in the city of Schwäbisch Hall from 1513 onwards. Among the family's most notable members are Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Klaus Bonhoeffe ...
*Pius XII and the German Resistance
During the Second World War, Pope Pius XII maintained links to the German resistance to Nazism against Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. Although remaining publicly neutral, Pius advised the British in 1940 of the readiness of certain German generals t ...
References
Bibliography
* Smid, Marikje: ''Hans Dohnányi - Christine Bonhoeffer - Eine Ehe im Widerstand gegen Hitler.'' Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2002;
* Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern, ''No Ordinary Men'', NYRB (2013). (Bonhoeffer and von Dohnányi)
External links
*
German Historical Museum
official website
– his activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, at Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...
website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dohnanyi, Hans von
1902 births
1945 deaths
Jurists from Berlin
People condemned by Nazi courts
German resistance members
Hans
German Righteous Among the Nations
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
People who died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Resistance members who died in Nazi concentration camps
People executed by Nazi Germany by hanging
Resistance members killed by Nazi Germany
Austrian people executed in Nazi concentration camps
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
20th-century German lawyers
Civilians who were court-martialed
Executed members of the 20 July plot
Nazi-era German officials who resisted the Holocaust
Austro-Hungarian emigrants to Germany