Former Green Party politician Renate Künast has discovered that her father was a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) through the newly digitized membership records. Using a search tool provided by the newspaper “Spiegel”, Künast entered her father Willy Künast’s name and birth year (1914). The search immediately yielded a result showing that he joined the party on May 1, 1933, just weeks after Hitler seized power.
Speaking to “Spiegel”, Künast noted that while the discovery was not a complete shock, it has been deeply unsettling. She currently spends time discussing the private matter with her husband and friends. After further searching, she also found records for her father’s older brother, who joined the NSDAP in 1937. Künast reflected on the period after the war, recalling that in many families, a “code of silence” prevailed regarding such histories.
The implementation of this searchable database on “Spiegel”‘s website led the publication to approach several politicians about the potential links to their families’ Nazi pasts.
Ex-Federal Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach (SPD), shared his experience with the newspaper. While he was relieved to confirm that none of his grandparents belonged to the NSDAP, he did find one link: his great-uncle. This relative, the brother of his grandmother, joined the NSDAP in May 1932. Lauterbach stated that his great-uncle was described as a committed National Socialist, though he was later denazified after the war and pursued a career with the police in Wuppertal.
Bodo Ramelow, current Vice President of the Bundestag and former Minister-President of Thuringia (Die Linke), emphasized the importance of the increased transparency regarding these Nazi party files. He stated the goal is not to re-open old legal cases, but rather “to remember and to deal with the history of one’s own family”. Ramelow revealed that, even before these records became accessible, he knew his grandfather was an early NSDAP member and his mother was an early member of the “Bund Deutscher Mädel” (the girls’ wing of the Nazi party). He explained that he has always openly discussed his family history because it is intrinsically connected to his own personal development.
