The Wannsee Conference Participants – and a Secretary

The Wannsee Conference was a meeting at the state secretary level. As such, most of the guests were not ‘prominent’ National Socialists. The few names that are still familiar – Heydrich, Eichmann and Freisler – remain in our collective memory because they are associated with other Nazi crimes. In this respect, the first edition of ‘The Participants’ from 2017 closed an important gap in the historical research on this event. It was the first time in-depth biographical research was conducted on all the conference participants while also incorporating previous knowledge from individual studies. The presentation of these men’s biographies usually begins with their first political activities after World War I and continues to trace their career paths within the Nazi political system, extending into the post-war period when possible. 

The subtitle, ‘The Men of the Wannsee Conference’ had been chosen because the editors, Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller, were also interested in characterising the participants as a group, as there were many overlaps regarding age, family background and education; yet the most obvious feature was that ‘no women were included on the guest list. Given the pronounced chauvinism of the National Socialists, who did not tolerate women in leadership positions, except for perhaps in welfare professions, this is hardly surprising’.¹ The perpetrators on this level of the hierarchy were entirely male. 

The Secretary

At the Eichmann trial it was revealed that at least one person had attended the meeting as a stenographer. Werlemann’s name was first mentioned in a newspaper article in 1962. For decades, historians studying the Nazi era appear not to have been interested enough in this detail to examine the archival documents, perhaps for the same reason as with the judiciary: Her presence had no influence on the meeting’s course and content. She was ‘merely’ a cog in the bureaucratic machine.

Werlemann was also not mentioned in our permanent exhibition from 2020, although the research findings of our long-standing freelancer, historian Marcus Gryglewski, were known before the opening. The curators were interested in explaining the role of the Wannsee Conference participants, particularly regarding their hierarchy within the larger political system. It was felt that the secretary’s inclusion would complicate the matter and entail a discussion on an entirely new topic.

Because of this omission, it is important that the second edition of the anthology about the participants includes a new chapter on Ingeburg Werlemann’s biography. Another essay explores how female Nazi perpetrators were addressed by the judiciary and in historiography in recent decades. 

Marcus Gryglewski researched the existing sources relevant to Ingeburg Werlemann, née Wagner. Tracing evidence of her work as a secretary in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Security Main Office) today is nearly impossible. In at least seven of her court testimonies, given between 1962 and 1970 and all of which are discussed in detail in this essay, she never mentioned her convictions nor her role during the Nazi era. According to those close to her, her work as Adolf Eichmann’s secretary was not a topic of discussion, at least not in the years before her death in 2010. However, it is hard to imagine that this was true in the 1960s: Werlemann/Wagner had to testify as a witness for the first time just three and a half weeks after her former boss – whose trial received worldwide media attention – was executed in Jerusalem in 1962. She must have been rattled by this court appearance. According to German law at the time, she needn’t have feared prosecution due to her subordinate position, yet she evidently chose not to assist in the investigation of the crimes committed by the RSHA. Instead, she repeatedly deferred to gaps in her memory. When she was asked about her presence at the Wannsee Conference, she admitted to having taken notes at a meeting in Wannsee but claimed not to remember anything else: ‘I don't even remember whether Jewish matters were discussed’.² Using trial transcripts, Gryglewski was able to definitively prove that she had indeed taken notes at the meeting on 20 January 1942, where according to Werlemann/Wagner, there had been much ‘talking all at once’.

‘Clearly aligned ideologically’

Based on Werlemann/Wagner’s résumé and the stages of her career, which Gryglewski examines in detail, it is clear that ‘Jewish affairs’ played a recurring role in her work. Her development was exemplary and perfectly in line with the expectations of the Nazi regime: Born in 1919, Werlemann joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls) at the age of 14. She later became a member of the Deutschen Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front) and the Nationalsozialistischen Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People’s Welfare Organisation). She joined the NSDAP in 1938 after the ban on admissions was completely lifted. After training as an office clerk, she worked for two years beginning in June 1936 for Mitteldeutsche Textil AG, which had dismissed all its Jewish employees, including Joseph Chotzen, earlier that year. (We offer seminars on the history of the Chotzen family as part of our educational program). She later transferred to a new job as a shorthand typist at the Generalbauinspektor (General Building Inspector’s) implementation centre for the redesign of the Reich capital. The office at the time was primarily concerned with evicting Jewish tenants from their homes. On 1 March 1940, she began working for the SS in Department IV D4, ‘Emigration and Evacuation’, at the RSHA. In the offices at Kurfürstenstraße 115/116, she first worked for Theodor Dannecker at the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Berlin, before moving to the anteroom outside Adolf Eichmann’s office. The main focus of her work there was ‘Jewish affairs’: evictions, emigration, the planning of deportations to Madagascar (Madagaskar-Plan), and finally, the Wannsee Conference.

As of October 1943, the special requirements also applied to the female employees of an SS office: For her marriage with Heinz Wagner in June 1944, her colleagues at the department certified to the Race and Settlement Office that she was ‘clearly aligned ideologically’. One colleague described Werlemann/Wagner in court in 1967 as ‘a deeply committed National Socialist.’ And yet this deep conviction and the value she placed on her work suddenly ceased to play a role after 1945. 

Involvement of Women in Nazi Atrocities  

In his essay ‘Judiciary and Historiography Regarding the Role of Women in National Socialist Mass Crimes’, Wolf Kaiser explains why someone like Ingeburg Werlemann had to testify in court but was not accused of any crime. He traces this development from the post-war period, beginning with the main and subsequent Nuremberg War Crimes Trials in which only two women were indicted, to the present day and addresses the current research on women’s involvement in Nazi crimes. It was important to add this text to the book’s new edition as the first focused specifically on the role of male perpetrators. 

The decision to include the biography of a woman in the anthology, someone who – compared to the other participants – inevitably played a subordinate role, raised several questions for our staff. As we were preparing the second edition, we realised that, in 2017, we had not yet agreed to use inclusive language in our publications. More than six years later, language usage has evolved. In many places, it was easy to add the female form – in others, further research was required: did a certain (professional) group consist only of men, or might women have been included as well? Most importantly, we had to discuss whether to consider Ingeburg Werlemann an actual participant in the Wannsee Conference. Should the German book, which now uses inclusive gendered language throughout, be retitled ‘Die Teilnehmer*innen,’ a plural form in German that includes both men and women? Or would inclusive language, which aims to create more equality between the genders, in this case actually place too much emphasis on the female role, thereby distorting the truth? After all, as a secretary, Werlemann would not have had the right to speak at the meeting and was not responsible for what was discussed. What definition of perpetrator are we assuming if we choose not to present Werlemann/Wagner as a ‘participant’? What are the larger implications of focusing on the employees of criminal institutions and their role in Nazi society?

In the end, we made a pragmatic publishing decision not to change the title and subtitle. Examining the hierarchy below the level of state secretaries would be a different book project and for that new research is necessary. 

Author: Dr. Ruth Preusse, Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference