Georg Konrad Morgen

Life and work

The story behind the role.

SS judge and chief investigator, Reich Criminal Police Office (1909-1982).

Georg Konrad Morgen (8 June 1909 – 4 February 1982) was a German SS Investigating Judge and Reich Police Official who investigated members of the SS for corruption and murder, especially in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. He rose to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). After the war, Morgen served as witness at several anti-Nazi trials and continued his legal career in Frankfurt. Konrad Morgen was able to investigate killings in the concentration and extermination camps as murder (under the normative laws) where there was no lawful order from Hitler authorising them. According to Professor David Fraser, "It is not possible to situate the juridical activities and criminal investigations carried out by Morgen within the camps without understanding the system as one that was legally constituted as part of a bureaucratic and legal struggle for domination within the Nazi state." In postwar testimony, Morgen said that these investigations were intended to impede Nazi mass killings. In their biography, historians Herlinde Pauer-Studer and J. David Velleman describe Morgen as a paradoxical figure who was at home in the SS despite not being a true believer in Nazi ideology. They write that Morgen cared only for criminal justice, not social or political injustices, and deplored the concentration camps mainly for their corrupting effects on SS men.

Encyclopaedic excerpts from Konrad Morgen; shortened for length and available under CC BY-SA 4.0.