Goebbels, Paul Joseph “Fop from Babelsberg”.

Paul Joseph Goebbels, born, 29-10-1897 in Rheydt, in the Odenkirchenerstrasse 202

. In 1899 the family moved too Dahllener Strasse 156 in Reydt and  here he spent the rest of his infancy and some time of his youth. His first name was Paul but but never appears to have been used. His family were Catholics; his father Fritz Goebbels was a factory clerk, his mother Maria Catharina, originally of Dutch descent. Her maiden name was Odenhausen and she was the daughter of a blacksmith who had emigrated from Germany to the Netherlands and was married there to a Dutch girl, Johanna Korvers. Katherine was born in Ubach over Worms, Netherlands, in 1869. She too was a devout Catholic.   The Goebbels’s had four siblings: Hans (1893–1947), Konrad (1895–1949), Elisabeth, died as Joseph was 18 years old (1901–1915) and  Maria, 12 years younger as Josph (1910–1949). Brother Hans, SA Oberführer was arrested in 1945

Anka Stalherm , whose mother was Jewish, was born into a wealthy family in Recklinghausen, Germany, in 1897. She studied law and economics at Freiburg University. In May 1918 she met Joseph Goebbels. He immediately fell in love with the woman with the “extraordinary passionate mouth” and the “brown-blond hair” that lay “in a heavy coil on her marvelous neck.” They gradually grew closer and became a couple. “Mine was a sense of fulfillment infinite and without measure.” Their different backgrounds caused Goebbels problems: “Within it (the university) I was a pariah, an outlaw, who was merely tolerated, not because I achieved less or was less intelligent than the others, but simply because I lacked the money that flowed to the others so generously from their fathers’ pockets.”

Goebbels joined the NSDAP in December 1928, and eventually served as a Kreisleiter. A member of the SA-Reserve (1932 – 1933), he was promoted to Reichsamtsleiter der NSDAP in 1936 and died age 56 in 1949. Joseph Goebbels here congratulating his sister Maria on the occasion of her marriage with film director Max Kimmich

  –

Josef was educated at a Christian Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur, university entrance examination, in 1916. (see Did you know). A good student he won a Catholic scholarship and eventually achieved a grade from Heidelberg University. Albert Speer   is buried in Heidelberg. Goebbels was under five feet tall with a bad limp caused by a bone operation as a child and in 1914 was rejected by the German Army. Congenital birth defects was a disqualification for high office and so he told people his limp was the result of a wound suffered while fighting in the First World War. It was later claimed that he spent the next two days crying hysterically in his room. He remained malicious till the end, and laughter he paid back later, when powerful. Congenital birth defects was a disqualification for high office and so he told people his limp was the result of a wound suffered while fighting in the First World War. His two most influential teachers, Friedrich Gundolf

     and his doctoral supervisor at Heidelberg, Max Freiherr von Waldberg, were Jews. because of his Jewish ancestry, von Waldberg was one of several Heidelberg professors forced to retire in April 1933, when the Third Reich passed a Civil Service Law to remove university faculty members of “non-Aryan” descent. Waldberg died age 80 on 06-11-1938 in Heidelberg.

 

His intelligence and political astuteness were generally acknowledged even by his enemies Goebbels spent the next ten years writing novels, plays and poems. When he failed to find a publisher for his work he developed the theory that this was because the publishing companies were owned by Jews. He was also rejected as a reporter by the newspaper Berliner Tageblatt. Goebbels joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1922, no 8762. Goebbels described one of their first meetings with Adolf Hitler (did you know) in his diary: “Shakes my hand. Like an old friend.  And those big blue eyes. Like stars. He is glad to see me. I am in heaven. That man has everything to be king.” Hitler admired Goebbels’ abilities as a writer and smooth speaker. They shared an interest in propaganda and together they planned how the NSDAP would win the support of the German people. He edited Der Angriff (The Attack) and used the daily newspaper to promote the idea of German nationalism.In 1928 Goebbels, Herman Goering (did you know) (see Goering Peter) (Karin Fock) and (see Goering-Sonnemann) and ten other members of the Nazi Party were elected to the Reichstag. Soon afterwards Goebbels became the party’s Propaganda Leader, his right hand and successor, after Hitler death, was Werner Naumann. When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January, 1933, he appointed Goebbels as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, his secretary was Brunhilde Pomsel, she is 100 yaers old now   As several disputes arose between Ernst Hanfstaengl and Germany’s Propaganda Minister, Ernst Putzi Hanfstaengl was removed from Hitler’s staff in 1933. Goebbels was not only the propaganda minister in Hitler’s regime, but also had a decisive voice in German movie production an actres Lida Baarova,

   met Goebbels in 1936, while working for Ufa films. Gradually, they became closer and started a relationship that lasted over two years. Their love affair caused serious complications between Goebbels and his wife Magda. Mrs Goebbels eventually decided to ask Hitler for permission to divorce Goebbels. The Führer intervened on 16-08-1938. Baarová was told by Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorff the Police President of Berlin, that she had to quit her relation with Goebbels and leave Germany, on Hitler’s direct order.

    Helldorff, involved in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler, was condemned by jurist, Roland Freisler 

  at the Volksgericht and later put to death at Plötzensee Prison,  age 47, on 15-08-1944. So enraged was Hitler at his participation in the plot that Hitler ordered that he be forced to watch all others hanged before him and then hanged last. The 20 July treaten at the Bendlerblock in Berlin was saved by Major Otto Ernst Remer  commander of the Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland  who refused to arrest Joseph Goebbels after talking to Hitler in the Wolfschanze by phone. Lida Baarova fled to Prague in 1. During World War II Goebbels played with his malicious nature an important role in building up hatred for the allies. He had little confidence in the abilities of other ministers in the government and made attempts to have Joachim von Ribbentrop, with his influential wife Annelies Henkell-Ribbentrop, dismissed from office. When the Red Army made advances into Nazi Germany, Hitler invited Goebbels and his family to move into his Führerbunker,

 where his mistress Eva Braun (Braun parents) had arrived too. On 30-04-1945 Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide and were burned by SS Obersturmbannführer, Erich Kempka his driver and buried in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. General Hans Voss and Martin Bormann asked Goebbels to join leaving groups out of the Führerbunker with SS Brigadeführer, Wilhelm Mohnke, but he replied: ‘The captain must not leave his sinking ship. I have thought about it all and decided to stay here. I have nowhere to go because with little children I will not be able to make it’.”

             

   

 Daughter Helga was Hitler’s favorite and Heidrun Elisabeth Goebbels (29 Oct. 1940–1 May 1945), nicknamed Heide. Youngest child of Joseph and Magda. Hitler called her the “reconciliation baby” because she was born after her parents repaired their marriage in the wake of Joseph’s affair with Czech actress Lida Baarova. Heide shared her father’s birthday and was considered a “little flirt”.

Death and burial ground of Goebbels, Paul Joseph  “Fop from Babelsberg”.

  a U.S. naval officer and judge, published an account apparently based on eye-witness testimony: “At about 8:15 pm, Goebbels arose from the table, put on his hat, coat and gloves and, taking his wife’s arm, went upstairs to the garden.” They were followed by Goebbels’s adjutant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Günther Schwägermann. Schwägermann was captured by the Americans, escaped in 1947 and disappeared. “While Schwägermann was preparing the petrol, he heard a shot. Goebbels had shot himself and his wife took poison. Schwägermann ordered one of the soldiers to shoot Goebbels again because he was unable to do it himself.” One SS officer later said they each took cyanide and were shot by an SS trooper. An early report said they were machine-gunned to death at their own request. According to another account, Goebbels

shot his wife and then himself. The corpses were burnt but not completely, as everybody went his own way. When the Russians captured the Chancellery, they discovered the graves in the garden and the remains of the bodies,

  in two wooden ammunition boxes, were taken to the Russian headquarters in Plötzensee for autopsies by Professor Nikolai Krayevski. Vice Admiral, Hans Erich Voss. Voss died age 72, on 18-11-1972, in Berchtesgaden, had already indentified Hitler and Eva Braun and the Goebbels couple and General der Infanterie, Hans Krebs who was also laying in the garden after his suicide. The bodies, also the Goebbels children, were then buried near the SMERSH headquarters at hospital ground in Buch, near Berlin and later moved to a forest near Rathenow, not far from Stendal, to where the SMERSH unit had been transferred. As the Smersh headquarters were moved to Magdeburg, the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun were buried behind the headquarters in the Westendstrass No 32. The corpses of Josef Goebbels and Magda Goebbels (see Harald Quandt) and (Günther Quandt),  their children and General Krebs on No 36, witnessed by Major Vasily Orlovsky. The burials were carried out by Colonel Gorbushin the deputy chief of SMERSH in the Third Stock Army. When SMERSH or rather its post-war successor, the NKVD/KGB, vacated the properties in Westendstrasse 32 and 36. On 04-04-1970, a Soviet KGB team with detailed burial charts secretly exhumed five wooden boxes. The remains from the boxes were thoroughly burned and crushed, after which the ashes were thrown into the nearby river Ehle, from the Schweinebrücke, Pig Bridge, which would bear some irony, Magdeburgerstrasse, West of Biederitz, on 05-04-1970. 

                    

              

   

Schweinebrücke, “Pig Bridge”, over the river Ehle, near Biederitz, Magdeburg.

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com