Wilhelm Führer (26.4.1904 Rüstringen – 12.7.1974 Mengen)

The son of a maritime pilot, Führer worked as an elementary school teacher in Oldenburg from 1923 to 1926 and, after graduating from grammar school, studied astronomy at Kiel University, where he received his doctorate in 1933. From 1933 to 1936, he was an assistant at the University of Munich's observatory. There, he was involved in the deposition of the director, who was considered politically unreliable and was expelled from the university under the National Socialist Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service in 1934. Führer had already joined the far-right Bund Wiking (Viking League) by the age of 19. He joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and the SS in 1933.

In subsequent years, he carved out a career as a scientific official in both state and party posts. From April 1934 to November 1936 he was in charge of the teaching staff at the University of Munich, and until 1939 he was director of teaching staff in the Munich-Upper Bavaria regional administrative division (Gau). From 1936 to the beginning of 1939 he held various positions in the Bavarian Ministry of Culture before transferring to the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin as an advisor for the natural sciences on February 1, 1939. He became a ministerial adviser there in 1943 and a ‘Hauptsturmführer‘ (Main Strom Leader) in the SS that same year. In 1944/45 he was an aide-de-camp on Heinrich Himmler's personal staff.

Imprisoned from the end of the war until the summer of 1948, Führer was subsequently sentenced to four years in a labor camp. Just one year later, however, the North Württemberg tribunal classified him as a ‘lesser offender‘ and then in 1950 as a ‘follower.‘ Upon his release, Führer worked as a timber merchant.