Sonder- und Ehrenhaft

Last updated April 02, 2024

In Nazi Germany, Sonder- und Ehrenhaft ("special or honorable detention") was an administrative status assigned to certain particularly prominent political prisoners, notably political leaders of Nazi-occupied countries and disgraced members of the German elite. Because of their political value or former status, they were treated uncommonly well, and all but a few of them survived the war.^[1]

Classification

The Nazi regime classified its political prisoners into numerous categories, including

Erziehungshäftlinge, "educational detainees";
Vorbeugehäftlinge, "preventative detainees";
Protektoratshäftlinge, "protectorate detainees"; as well as
Sonderhäftlinge and Ehrenhäftlinge, "special detainees" and "detainees of honor".^[1]

The latter category also included the "personal prisoners of the Führer " – opponents of the regime too prominent to be killed outright, as well as people like Hitler's failed assassin Georg Elser, who was initially kept alive with the intention of putting him on a show trial after the war.^[1]

Prisons

The SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt , led by Heinrich Himmler, was responsible for the detention of the Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge. It built special detention centers for these prisoners in or near several concentration camps. Most of these facilities were much more comfortable than the camps' normal prisoner barracks.^[1]

As the war wore on, the SS increasingly requisitioned a great number of hotels, castles, palaces and mansions and repurposed them as detention centers. These included:^[1]

Schloss Hirschberg near Weilheim, the guesthouse of the Auswärtiges Amt .
Rheinhotel Dreesen in Bonn-Bad Godesberg after April 1944.
Hotel Ifen, a mountain hotel in the Kleinwalsertal, Austria.
Hotel Forelle, a luxury hotel in Tyrol, Austria.
Schloss Itter, a palace in Tyrol.

Several other detention centers for high-level prisoners were planned. Albert Speer was charged to rebuild the Schwarzburg castle in the Schwarzatal, Thuringia, for this purpose, but the project was eventually abandoned. Inspired by the American prison of Alcatraz, SS officers searched the Baltic Sea coast for a suitable location of an island prison. In 1942, the SS decided to use the Pakri Islands near Baltischport (now Paldiski in Estonia) for this purpose, but the German defeat at Stalingrad put this position at risk and the project was also abandoned.^[1]

Conditions

The conditions under which the Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge were detained ranged from comfortable to luxurious, depending on their status. The prisoners did not have to work, were allowed to wear civilian clothing and ate the same food as their guards. After the war, Ernst Kaltenbrunner testified at the Nuremberg Trials that the prominent prisoners at places like Hotel Ifen or Bad Godesberg received "a triple diplomat's ration, that is to say, nine times the ration of a normal German during the war, as well as a bottle of Sekt each day."^[1]

Many detainees were allowed to receive visits by their family or to have their spouses live with them, and some of the highest-ranking prisoners, such as King Leopold III of Belgium, were allowed a small retinue of servants and followers. However, the prisoners normally had to pay for the cost of their detention. Kurt Schuschnigg, for instance, whose assets the Nazis had confiscated, was billed even for the cost of his relocation to Sachsenhausen.^[1]

List of Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge

The following is an incomplete list of notable Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge. Unless noted, the people listed here survived their detention.^[1]

Léon Blum, the former French Prime Minister, held with his wife at Buchenwald concentration camp.
Yakov Dzhugashvili, the son of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, died at Sachsenhausen in 1943.
Georg Elser, a German man who had tried to assassinate Hitler. Detained at Sachsenhausen, he was shot on 9 April 1945.
Philippe Pétain, the leader of Vichy France, was detained at Schloss Sigmaringen after September 1944, nominally as head of the French government-in-exile.
André François-Poncet, a French diplomat, detained at Hotel Ifen.
Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz, the niece of Charles de Gaulle, detained at Ravensbrück.
Princess Mafalda of Savoy, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, held at Buchenwald and killed in 1944 in an Allied air raid.
Miklós Horthy, Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, arrested in 1944 for lack of cooperation with Nazi Germany and held at Schloss Hirschberg.
Leopold III, King of Belgium and his Family, for lack of cooperation with Nazi Germany, detained first at the Royal Castle of Laeken, then at Hirschstein in Saxony from June 1944 to March 1945, and then at Strobl, Austria.
Benito Mussolini, the former Fascist leader of Italy, was briefly detained at Schloss Hirschberg after his rescue in the Gran Sasso raid, before being sent back to Italy to lead a German puppet state.
Martin Niemöller, a noted German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor, detained at Sachsenhausen and Dachau.
Francesco Saverio Nitti, the former Italian Prime Minister, detained at Hotel Ifen.
Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, Head of the House of Hohenzollern and Prince of Prussia, Placed Under House Arrest and Supervision and had his home at Cecilienhof watched.
Friedrich Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern.
Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia.
Kira Kirillovna, Princess of Prussia.
The family of Rupprecht von Bayern, Crown Prince of Bavaria.
Albert Sarraut, the former French Prime Minister, detained at Hotel Ifen.
Kurt Schuschnigg, the former Austrian chancellor, detained at Sachsenhausen with his wife and children, who joined him voluntarily.
Yaroslav Stetsko, member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Refused the German request to retract the proclamation of Ukrainian statehood of 30 June 1941 in Lviv, in which he had stated that the new Ukrainian state would "cooperate closely with Germany". But so as not to harm German-Ukrainian relations, agreed to be taken into custody. On 9 July he was taken to Berlin and released on 12 July, but was ordered to stay in Lviv.^[2]

Bibliography

The detention of the Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge is covered in a 2010 monograph by German historian Volker Koop:

Koop, Volker (2010). In Hitlers Hand: "Sonder- und Ehrenhäftlinge" der SS. Böhlau-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-412-20580-5.

Related Research Articles

Karl-Otto Koch was a mid-ranking commander in the Schutzstaffel (SS) of Nazi Germany who was the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. From September 1941 until August 1942, he served as the first commandant of the Majdanek concentration camp in occupied Poland, stealing vast amounts of valuables and money from murdered Jews. His wife, Ilse Koch, also took part in the crimes at Buchenwald.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days before the Anschluss. His positions in Nazi Germany included deputy governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland, and Reich commissioner for the German-occupied Netherlands. In the latter role, he shared responsibility for the deportation of Dutch Jews and the shooting of hostages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp</span> Nazi concentration camp

Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kurt Schuschnigg</span> Chancellor of Austria from 1934 to 1938

Kurt Alois Josef Johann von Schuschnigg was an Austrian politician who was the Chancellor of the Federal State of Austria from the 1934 assassination of his predecessor Engelbert Dollfuss until the 1938 Anschluss with Nazi Germany. Although Schuschnigg considered Austria a "German state" and Austrians to be Germans, he was strongly opposed to Adolf Hitler's goal to absorb Austria into the Third Reich and wished for it to remain independent.

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 throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.

SS-Totenkopfverbände was the Schutzstaffel (SS) organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps for Nazi Germany, among similar duties. While the Totenkopf was the universal cap badge of the SS, the SS-TV also wore this insignia on the right collar tab to distinguish itself from other SS formations.

Margaret of Prussia was the youngest child of Frederick III, German Emperor, and Victoria, Princess Royal. She was also the younger sister of Emperor Wilhelm II and the granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She married Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, the elected King of Finland, making her the would-be Queen of Finland had he not decided to renounce the throne on 14 December 1918. In 1926, they assumed the titles of Landgrave and Landgravine of Hesse. The couple had six sons and lost three of them in wartime, two during the First and one during the Second World War.

Philipp, Prince and Landgrave of Hesse was head of the Electoral House of Hesse from 1940 to 1980.

Niederkirchnerstraße is a street in Berlin, Germany and was named after Käthe Niederkirchner. The thoroughfare was known as Prinz-Albrecht-Straße until 1951 but the name was changed by the East German government. The street was the location of the SS Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo. The site is now marked by the Topography of Terror memorial and a museum, which includes a permanent exhibition showing the crimes of Nazism.

Johann Baptist Albin Rauter was a high-ranking Austrian-born SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era. He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940–1945. Rauter reported directly to the Nazi SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, and also to the Nazi governor of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. After World War II, he was convicted in the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad.

Oranienburg was an early Nazi concentration camp, one of the first detention facilities established by the Nazis in the state of Prussia when they gained power in 1933. It held the political opponents of the Nazi Party from the Berlin region, mostly members of the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party, as well as a number of homosexual men and scores of the so-called undesirables.

Josias, Hereditary Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont was the heir apparent to the throne of the Principality of Waldeck and Pyrmont and a general in the SS. From 1946 until his death, he was the head of the Princely House of Waldeck and Pyrmont. After World War II, he was sentenced to life in prison at the Buchenwald Trial for his part in the "common plan" to violate the Laws and Usages of War in connection with prisoners of war held at Buchenwald concentration camp, but was released after serving about three years in prison.

The Anschluss, also known as the Anschluß Österreichs, was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938.

The transport of concentration camp inmates to Tyrol refers to a transfer of 139 high-profile prisoners (Prominenten) of the Nazi regime in the final weeks of the Second World War in Europe from Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria to South Tyrol.

The Federal State of Austria was a continuation of the First Austrian Republic between 1934 and 1938 when it was a one-party state led by the conservative, nationalist, and corporatist Fatherland Front. The Ständestaat concept, derived from the notion of Stände, was advocated by leading regime politicians such as Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg. The result was an authoritarian government based on a mix of Italian Fascist and conservative Catholic influences.

The Battle of Castle Itter was fought on 5 May 1945, in the Austrian village of Itter in the North Tyrol region of the country, during the last days of the European Theater of World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince Friedrich Leopold of Prussia (1895–1959)</span> Prussian prince and art collector (1895–1959)

Franz Joseph Oskar Ernst Patrick Friedrich Leopold Prinz von Preußen was a German art collector and dealer. During World War II, he was an inmate at Dachau concentration camp.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Iken, Katja (17 March 2011). "High Society im Goldenen Käfig: "Sonder- und Ehrenhaft" im "Dritten Reich"". Spiegel Online . Retrieved 20 March 2011.
↑ Karel C. Berkhoff, Marco Carynnyk (1999). The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Its Attitude toward Germans and Jews. Harvard Ukrainian Studies. p. 150.