Jakob Schmid

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Jakob Schmid in February 1947.

Jakob Schmid (25 July 1886, in Traunstein[1] – 16 August 1964) was a German janitor of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU). On 18 February 1943, he turned in the siblings Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl, members of the resistance group White Rose, when they gave out pamphlets against Nazi Germany.

Schmid and the Scholl siblings[]

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

On February 18, 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 Scholl siblings to the consul of the university, Ernst Haeffner, who turned them over to the Gestapo.

As a result of the arrest of the Scholl siblings, they and other members of the White Rose were sentenced to death in a show trial on February 22, 1943. Three of them—Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl and Hans Scholl—were executed that very day by guillotine in Stadelheim Prison.

For arresting the Scholl siblings, Schmid received a reward of 3,000 Reichsmarks and was promoted from blue-collar worker to professional employee.[2] Hundreds of students cheered Jakob Schmid at a thank-you ceremony organized by the University of Munich to successfully crush student resistance; Schmid responded with a Nazi salute.[3]

After the war[]

Three days after the end of the Second World War, on 11 May 1945, Schmid was arrested by American occupation forces.[1] A trial under the chairmanship of  [de] classified him as a "Major Offender" according to the categorisation established by the American denazification process and sentenced him to five years in a labor camp. Furthermore, he lost his claim of public earnings and his right to hold public office. He appealed the sentence twice without success, once with the justification he had simply "done his duty". He was released in 1951 and his pension was renewed.[2]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c : 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.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b 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. Abgerufen am 2. Januar 2018.
  3. ^ Dietmar Süß (2013-07-26), "Nationalsozialismus: Der Spion nebenan" [National Socialism: The Spy Next Door], Die Zeit (in German), Hamburg, ISSN 0044-2070, retrieved 2017-01-13
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