Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (1879-1949)

Friedrich Karl Müller-Trefzer (1879-1960), as head of the state chancellery and ministerial director in the Ministry of the Interior, was an exposed representative of the higher Baden civil service, the majority of which accepted the National Socialist takeover in 1933 without fundamental reservations and put their administrative knowledge at the service of the dictatorship. Müller-Trefzer, who fought for his political rehabilitation and his pension benefits beyond the conclusion of his Spruchkammer proceedings in 1949, wrote down his memoirs in the early 1950s. Their concern is to present Müller-Trefzer himself and the Baden state administration as a whole, which had remained largely apolitical and had done objective work for the benefit of the general public, as antipodes of the National Socialist party apparatus. This narrative of exoneration is embedded in the broad description of his life. The detailed description of his childhood and youth, studies, training and first professional activity is followed by chapters on the period since the First World War, which encompassed the political system upheavals of 1918, 1933 and 1945, which Müller-Trefzer experienced in close proximity to the main regional actors.