Steengracht von Moyland, Gustav Adolf.

Steengracht von Moyland , Gustav Adolf, born on 05-11-1902 in Schloss Moyland near Kleve in Nordrhein Westfalen, the son of Nicolaas Adriaan Steengracht van Moyland, a Dutch nobleman who received the title of Baron in 1888. and his wife Irene, born Edeln von Kremer-Auenrode, His son Hendrik who lived from 1869 untill 1932 inherited the title of Baron. Schloss Moyland is constructed by architect Ernst Friedrich Zwirner

Shortly after his birth, Moyland was made a naturalized citizen of Prussia and the German Empire in 1902. The family was Protestant denomination. In his childhood Gustav had a French nurse, to whom he owed good knowledge of French at an early age and sympathy for France.

Gustav Adolf Steengracht received private lessons up to the age of ten, from Easter 1913 he attended the humanistic grammar school in Freiberg / Saxony and from Easter 1915 the high school in Kleve. There he graduated from high school at Easter 1922. From Easter 1922 he was practically active in agriculture, and from winter semester 1922/23 he studied agriculture, from 26-11-1923 law at the University of Bonn (Exmatrikulation 28-02-1925). In 1923 he joined the corps Borussia in Bonn (Kösener SC). In this corps, he had, inter alia, the batches of the second and Erstchargierten held, he met, among other sons of Doorn living in Kaiser Wilhelm II   know, which he visited repeatedly in Doorn at the invitation of the sons of the emperor The Byzantinismus at the imperial Exilhof worked on the young Niederrheiner but rather strange. Among his acquaintances at the Bonn Borussen was also the risistance man Paul Graf York von Wartenburg, who described him as a “man of rare ability and character traits”: “He combined a great physical courage with the gifts of a warm heart. Always eager to help and eager to work, he was far from any selfish pursuit and aware of the responsibility that had fallen to him from his spiritual and master heritage. “He spent the winter semester of 1924/25 at the University of Lausanne, where he was enrolled in the Law Faculty. Paul York von Wartenberg survived the war and died 09-06-2002, age 100, in Neureichenau.

Since 1925 he was a member of the “Stahlhelm – Bund Deutscher Frontsoldaten”,

before 1933 his “Kreisführer” in the district of Xanten. As a Stahlhelm leader, he was transferred to the SA on 01-09-1933, became SA-Sturmfuhrer on 20-04-1934 and, without any data being known, was leader of the SA Sturm 11/56 and Reserve Sturmbanns respectively II / R 56. In personal stories Steengracht reported that during his time in the Stahlhelm “every weekend was a guerrilla war”. For the election of the Rhenish Provincial Council, he ran unsuccessfully in the first place of the election proposal of the “battle front black and white red” in the district of Kleve. Before 1933, he apparently already had first personal contacts with Franz von Papen

  On 16-05-1933, Steengracht married in Berlin Ilsemarie Baronesse von Hahn,  born on 14-12-1908 in Griva / Latvia, a lady of the company whom he had met in Berlin. The marriage produced a son who was born on 16-11-1936 in Moyland Nikolaus Adrian.

Gustav studied law and economic and became a lawyer, who joined the NSDAP Nr 2.837.625 and SA in 1933.  From 01-11-1935 bis 31-03-1937 Ortsgruppenleiter der NSDAP-Ortsgruppe Moyland-Schneppenbaum  In the same year he became the Area Farmer Führer of Kleve. In 1935 Moyland worked in the Office for Foreign Matters and in 1938 he became an assistant to Joachim von Ribbentrop,

  Nazi Germany’s foreign minster. Von Moyland was appointed as State Secretary as he succeeded Ernst von Weizsäcker

. After the war he was arrested as a war criminal and imprisoned in the Landsberg prison. He was declared guilty of neglecting a request of the Switzerland ambassador to allow 5.000 Jewish children to immigrate to Palastina, their destiny was thus fatal. In 1949 he was tried by the Americans at Nuremberg,

     the Wilhelmstrassen Trails, condemned for seven years in prison, but in January 1950 he was given an amnesty and freed from

Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) west-southwest of Munich and 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler

The prison was used by the Allied powers during the Occupation of Germany for holding Nazi War Criminals. In 1946, General Joseph T. McNarney,

  commander in chief of U.S. Forces of Occupation in Germany, renamed Landsberg War Criminal Prison No. 1.

The Americans closed the war crimes facility in 1958. Full control of the prison was then handed over to the Federal Republic of Germany. Landsberg is now maintained by the Prison Service of the Bavarian Ministry of Justice.

Steengracht spent the remainder of his life at his family castle, Schloss Moyland, close to the Dutch border. Steengracht used, the nobel title of Baron, wrongly, as the title given to his father in 1888 with the determination that only the oldest son could inherit the title. His oldest son was Baron Hendrik who died age 63, in 1932.

Death and burial ground of Steengracht von Moyland, Gustav Adolf.

  Gustav Steengracht von Moyland died age 66, on 07-07-1969, of a heart attack in Kranenburg hospital, after suffering severe circulatory collapse a few hours earlier and is buried on the small cemetery opposite the Castle Moyland.