On 20 January 1942, 15 National Socialist functionaries got together at the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to discuss how they would murder all the Jews in Europe. In this series I am looking at the participants of the Wannsee conference and today I am going to discuss Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, a participant who may not have known precisely what was going on before he arrived at the conference.
Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger was born 24 April 1890 in the little village of Grünfier which is today Zielonowo in Poland. Zielonowo today has around sixty houses and the village would not have been larger in 1890. As a result of the territorial changes which occurred after WW1, whereas Grünfier stayed it Germany, it was now less than 2km from the border and the largest nearby town, Filehne, became Wielen in Poland.
The father of Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger was a Lutheran pastor and his son remained in the church all of his life. The father must have been quite well off as he could afford to send his son to a private school here in Gnesen, which is today Gniezno in Poland. From there, Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger went onto study law at the universities of Freiburg, Berlin and Greifswald. On 11 October 1911 he passed his first state exam which allowed him to work as a civil servant, in his case in the court at Mogilno, his career being interrupted by WW1.
Between 1914 and 1918 he served in a Prussian infantry battalion, Jäger-Battalion Von Neumann (1. Schlesisches) Nr. 5. This unit had been formed on 21 November 1808 during the Napoleonic War and in this photograph we can see a parade on the occasion of the centenary of the creation of the battalion. The unit was based in Hirschberg, today Jelenia Góra. It was mobilised from 1 – 4 August 1914 and from 4 – 7 August, it was transported to the west. It crossed the French border on 8 August and participated in the Battle of Longwy from 22 – 30 August. From 31 August 1914 it found itself in the region of the Argonne Forest and Varennes but by the middle of September 1914 was unable to make headway. By 25 September 1914, it was in fixed trench positions in the Argonne where it stayed until 1 August 1915 when it was transferred to the eastern front to Galicia. On 21 April 1917 it was transferred back to the Western Front, to Flanders, where it took place in the battles of Cambrai and the defence of the Siegfried Line. On 18 November during the aftermath of the Battle of Caporetto it was transferred to the Italian front where the Allied line had completely collapsed. Following this victory it was sent to Upper Alsace on 5 December and held in reserve until 8 February when it was once more sent into the line for a three week period. Pulled back for further training ahead of the Ludendorf Offensives, it advanced from 21 March – 6 April before going over to the defensive and the retreat from France. During this time Kritzinger reached the rank of reserve lieutenant. He was slightly injured at least once and was awarded the Iron Cross first and second class as well as the Order of the House of Hollenzollern. Towards the end of the war he was reported as missing as was captured by the French. He stayed in France as a prisoner-of-war until 1920.
On his return, he found that not only was his home village almost in the newly created state of Poland but the town of Mogilno, where he was working earlier, was also transferred to Poland. He was able however to resume his career in Hirschberg where his army unit had been based.
In May 1921, he passed his second state exam, Assessorexamen which allowed him to become an assistant judge at the court of Striegau in Lower-Silesia (today Strzegom in Poland), not far from Hirschberg. On 30 May 1923, he married Walti Luise Agnes, Duchess of Schwerin und Krosigk, the daughter of a large landowner. The couple had three children. Walti lived to be 98 dying in 1996, I am unaware however if she even gave any interviews relating to her husband’s role at the Wannsee Conference.
Kritzinger worked in the 1920s in various roles such as the Mnistry of Justice where he specialised in international law and at the Prussian Trade Ministry where his work was related to savings banks. From around 1928 his specialisation was in the field of constitutional law and was so highly regarded that he was even able to advise ministers on legal points of view. As a Prussian civil servant he was largely apolitical. He could of course vote, and said later that he cast his support for the DNVP, the national conservative party of Alfred Hugenberg. This party was formed in November 1918, only a couple of weeks after the Armistice. It was opposed to the Weimar Republic and seemingly wanted a return to the monarchy. As can be seen in this poster from the 1930 general election, anti Semitism was part of its platform.

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