| Hans Globke | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 10, 1898 Düsseldorf, Germany |
| Died | February 13, 1973 (aged 74) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Lawyer, Politician |
| Known for | Advisor to Konrad Adenauer |
| Political party | CDU |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Spouse | Augusta Vaillant |
Hans Josef Maria Globke (10 September 1898, Düsseldorf, Rhine Province – 13 February 1973) was a high ranking public servant after World War II in the Federal Republic of Germany. His role as a civil servant in Nazi Germany resulted in controversies after the war.
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Globke was born in Düsseldorf to Josef Globke and his wife Sophie (née Erberich), both Roman Catholics and Centre Party-supporters. Shortly after Hans Globke's birth the family moved to Aachen, where his father opened a draper's shop. When he finished high school at the Catholic Kaiser-Karl-Gymnasium in 1916, he was drafted into the army until 1918. After World War I he studied Law and Political Sciences at the universities of Bonn and Cologne, graduating in 1922 from the University of Gießen with a dissertation on the immunity of the members of the Reichs- and Landtags.
During his studies - having joined while being enlisted in the army - he was a member of Katholische Deutsche Studentenverbindung Bavaria Bonn, which was the local chapter of the Cartellverband. The close contacts with fellow KdStV-members together with his membership since 1922 in the Centre Party played a significant role in his later political life. In 1934, he married Augusta Vaillant, the sister of a fellow fraternity member.
Having finished his Assessorexamen in 1924, he was briefly active as a judge in the police court of Aachen, after which he climbed to vice police-chief of Aachen in 1925 and Regierungsassessor in 1926. In December 1929 Globke became administrative councillor to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.
He helped to formulate the "emergency" legislation that gave Hitler unlimited dictatorial powers. He was also the author of the law concerning the dissolution of the Prussian State Council on 10 July 1933, and of further legislation which 'co-ordinated' all Prussian parliamentary bodies.[1]
He wrote a legal commentary on the new Reich Citizenship Law, one of the Nuremberg Laws introduced at the Nazi Party Congress in September 1935, which revoked the citizenship of German Jews [1] [2] and co-authored various legal regulations, such as an ordinance that required Jews with non-Jewish names to take on the additional first names of Israel or Sara.[3] He also served as chief legal advisor in the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of Interior, the section headed by Adolf Eichmann that implemented the Holocaust bureaucratically. [4]
In 1938, Globke was appointed "Ministerial Counsel" due to his "extraordinary efforts in drafting the law for the Protection of the German Blood".
His membership application for the Nazi Party was rejected on 24 October 1940 by Martin Bormann, reportedly due to his close alliance with the Centre Party, which had been representing Roman Catholic voters in Weimar Germany.[5]
He was Director of the Federal Chancellory of West Germany between 1953 and 1963 and as such was one of the closest aides to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
Globke's key position as a national security advisor to Adenauer despite his involvement with the Office for Jewish Affairs during the Holocaust and in anticommunist activities in post-war West Germany made both the West German government and CIA officials wary of exposing his past.
This led for instance to the withholding of Adolf Eichmann's alias from the Israeli government and Nazi hunters in the late '50s, and CIA pressure in 1960 on Life magazine to delete references to Globke from its recently obtained Eichmann memoirs.[6] [7] [8]
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