Hunter, August Friedrich

Lawyer, District President

Born: 21.08.1887 in Diez

Died: 17.06.1949 in Poznan (Poland)

Jäger, son of the Bierstadt pastor Anton Jäger, studied law, served as a first lieutenant in the First World War and became a district court judge in Wiesbaden in 1926.

After 1933, he was particularly aggressive in his efforts to bring the state church of Hesse-Nassau into line with the NSDAP - the church had caused him considerable difficulties a few years earlier when he divorced. Jäger became a member of the NSDAP in 1933. Lawyer Wilhelm Stuckart supported his rise. Initially, Jäger became State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior and Wiesbaden District Leader of the German Christians (DC), and shortly afterwards "State Commissioner of all Prussian churches" and Ministerial Director. During the 3rd State Church Congress, the Aryan paragraph for pastors was passed in the state parliament under Jäger's decisive influence. The integration of all regional churches in the Reich according to the "Führer principle", which Jäger had pushed for, failed due to resistance from the Württemberg and Bavarian regional churches. Hitler grew tired of the "theologian squabble" and withdrew his previous goodwill from the partially failed German Christian movement. Jäger had overstepped the mark and produced widespread resistance. On September 29, 1934, he was forced to retire as legal administrator of the German Protestant Church (DEK).

In 1938, Jäger, now President of the Senate of the Berlin Court of Appeal (Political Criminal Senate), resigned from the church. At the beginning of the war, his old patron State Secretary Stuckart appointed him Deputy Chief of the Civil Administration at the Poznan Military Command. In 1940, he became district president and deputy to Reich Governor Greiser for the "Reichsgau Posen", in which 4.6 million people lived. Jews and Poles were expelled for the "Germanization of the Warthegau" and the Litzmannstadt (Łódź) ghetto and the Kulmhof (Chełmno) extermination camp were established. Stolen children came from the Lebensbornheim Bad Polzin (Połczyn Zdrój) to the adoption center in the Landeshaus in Wiesbaden. Over a million people were systematically murdered or expelled in the area for which Jäger was one of the main perpetrators. After the end of the war, Jäger fled to West Germany under a false name. After his arrest, he was extradited to Poland and executed there in 1949.