Jakob Schmid (25 July 1886, in

Traunstein Traunstein (Central Bavarian: ''Traunstoa'') is a town in the south-eastern part of Bavaria, Germany, and is the administrative center of a much larger district of the same name. The town serves as a local government, retail, health services, ...

Sönke Zankel
''Vom Helden zum Hauptschuldigen – Der Mann, der die Geschwister Scholl festnahm.''
(PDF-Datei; 372 kB) (''tr. "From hero to main culprit - the man who arrested the Scholl siblings"'') In: Elisabeth Kraus (Hrsg.): ''Die Universität München im Dritten Reich. Aufsätze. Teil I.'' S. 581ff. – 16 August 1964) was a German

janitor A janitor (American English, Scottish English), also known as a custodian, porter, cleanser, cleaner or caretaker, is a person who cleans and maintains buildings. In some cases, they will also carry out maintenance and security duties. A simil ...

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

(LMU). On 18 February 1943, he turned in the siblings

Hans Scholl Hans Fritz Scholl (; 22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's ...

and

Sophie Scholl Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been f ...

, members of the

resistance group A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objectives ...

White Rose The White Rose (german: Weiße Rose, ) was a Nonviolence, non-violent, intellectual German resistance to Nazism, resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, ...

, for distributing pamphlets against

Nazi Germany 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 ...

Schmid and the Scholl siblings

Schmid worked from 1926 as a janitor at the university. On 1 November 1933, he joined the SA and, on 1 May 1937, the

NSDAP The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

. On 18 February 1943, at around 11:15 am, he noticed the Scholl siblings giving out pamphlets in the atrium of the university. He confronted them as they were leaving the building and turned them over to the secretary, Albert Scheithammer. Since the principal Walther Wüst was absent, Schmid and Scheithammer took the Scholls to the consul of the university, Ernst Haeffner, who turned them over to 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 ...

. The Scholls and other members of the White Rose were

sentenced to death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

in a

show trial A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...

on 22 February 1943. Three of them—

Christoph Probst Christoph Ananda Probst (6 November 1919 – 22 February 1943) was a German student of medicine and member of the White Rose (''Weiße Rose'') German resistance to Nazism, resistance group. Early life Probst was born in Murnau am Staffelsee. ...

, Sophie Scholl and Hans Scholl—were executed the same day by

guillotine A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at th ...

Stadelheim Prison Stadelheim Prison (german: Justizvollzugsanstalt München), in Munich's Giesing district, is one of the largest Prisons in Germany, prisons in Germany. Founded in 1894, it was the site of many executions, particularly by guillotine during the Nazi ...

. Schmid received a reward of 3,000 Reichsmarks and was promoted from blue-collar worker to professional employee.''Gedächtnisvorlesung von Bundespräsident Johannes Rau aus Anlass des sechzigsten Jahrestags der Hinrichtung der Mitglieder der „Weißen Rose" am 30. Januar 2003.''
(''tr. "Memorial lecture by Federal President Johannes Rau on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the execution of the members of the 'White Rose'."'') In: ''bundespraesident.de''. Retrieved 2 January 2018. Hundreds of students cheered Schmid at a thank-you ceremony organized by the University of Munich to deter student resistance. Schmid responded with a

Nazi salute The Nazi salute, also known as the Hitler salute (german: link=no, Hitlergruß, , Hitler greeting, ; also called by the Nazi Party , 'German greeting', ), or the ''Sieg Heil'' salute, is a gesture that was used as a greeting in Nazi Germany. Th ...

After the war

Three days after the end of the

Second World War 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 ...

, on 11 May 1945, Schmid was arrested by American occupation forces. He was released after 13 weeks, but lost his job. In 1946, Schmid was put on trial by a denazification court under the chairmanship of . Schmid was classified by him as a "Major Offender" according to the categorization established by the U.S. military government. Schmid was sentenced to five years of hard labor in a labor camp, stripped of his pension, and lost his right to vote and hold public office. He appealed the sentence twice without success, once with the justification he had "done his duty". Schmid served his full sentence and was released in 1951. However, he had his pension and civil rights restored after his release. Schmid died in 1964.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmid, Jakob 1886 births 1964 deaths Sturmabteilung personnel Nazis convicted of crimes Prisoners and detainees of the United States military Prisoners and detainees of Germany Janitors Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich