Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden

Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden was born on 10 Dec 1922 in Calau in Lower Lusatia, Brandenburg. His father had been an officer in Germany’s Imperial Navy in the First World War, working afterward as a post official. Until her marriage, his mother had worked as a secretary in a Leipzig law office.

Not much is known about Lehnigk-Emden’s early years. He was an only child. Because of extreme near-sightedness, he began wearing glasses while a young child. He lived for a long time with his grandmother as his father had been transferred from Calau and moved away with his wife. Between 1929 and 1933 he attended primary school near Senftenberg, then Realgymnasium, joining the Deutsches Jungvolk in 1935. He graduated from secondary school with an “Abitur” certificate in 1940.

In connection with his later trial, assertions circulated that as a child and younger teenager,  Lehnigk-Emden had health problems and social difficulties. But according to family members, such information simply reflected a legal strategy and merits scepticism: the aim was to have the case tried under juvenile law, avoiding a life sentence in case of a guilty verdict. 

After convalescing, in early 1943 Lehnigk-Emden returned to his unit, which meanwhile had been transferred to the Pyrenees in the framework of restoration of the ‘Stalingrad Divisions’. Here the 3^rd Infantry Division was newly formed as the 3^rd Panzergrenadier Division. In the summer, the unit was transferred to the Lyon area and then to central Italy in the area around Perugia and Viterbo. 

When Mussolini fell on 25 July 1943, Lehnigk-Emden was home on leave. Following the armistice, his division directed the disarming of the Italian army north of Rome, then moving southward along the coast.

Lehnigk-Emden re-joined his regiment near Chiusi. In early Oct., now retreating, he and his unit arrived at the Volturno Front in the Caiazzo area. At this time, he led the 1^st platoon of the 3^rd Company of Grenadier Regiment 29 (motorized). 

On the evening of 13 October, Lehnigk-Emden claimed to have seen light signals coming from the nearby farm of the Albanese family. He reported this to his superior, First Lieutenant Raschke. Thereupon Lehnigk-Emden, accompanied by two non-commissioned officers, went to the farmstead, arrested four men and a fourteen-year-old boy and took them to the command post. Two women followed the group out of fear for the fate of the men. After arriving at the command post, they were all shot. Lehnigk-Emden later returned to the Albanese farm accompanied by the two non-commissioned officers and some soldiers. Six women and nine children and teenagers were killed there. A total of 22 civilians died.

In Jan. 1946 Lehnigk-Emden was released from detention; but he remained in stationary treatment. After retraining as a technical draftsman, from Sept. 1947 to March 1948 he worked as a draftsman for an architect in Braunschweig. He then attended a technical school for structural and civil engineering in Holzminden, where he qualified as a civil engineer and architect in 1950. He here became acquainted with his later wife; after their marriage, the pair moved to Ochtendung, near Koblenz. 

In March 1952, Lehnigk-Emden founded an architectural and engineering firm in Ochtendung. He would build many schools, sports halls, athletic fields, and apartments, as well as local industrial facilities. He became active in communal politics as a Social Democratic city councilor, being awarded a badge of honour by the state of Rhineland-Pfalz for his engagement. Furthermore, he would serve as president of the local carnival association, co-founder of the branch of the local Worker’s Welfare Association, and, in the 1950s, president of the local branch of the VdK (the Association of War-Wounded, Surviving Dependents, and Social Insurance Pensioneers in Germany). 

Because of his serious war wounds and a limp, Lehnigk-Emden was classified as 70% incapacitated; on 1 Jan. 1983, he retired, aged 60.

In 1988, the Italian American Joseph Agnone discovered documents on the Caiazzo massacre in the National Archives, Washington, and handed them on to the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prosecutor’s office. In the course of the ensuing investigations, it was possible to locate the suspected responsible parties in Germany. In 1992, Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden was placed in pretrial detention. In 1994, he was put on trial in both Koblenz and Santa Maria Capua Vetere.

The Koblenz court now commissioned two German historians, Gerhard Schreiber, and Lutz Klinkhammer, and an American expert in international law and legal history, Alfred de Zayas, to provide expert opinions: Their task was to determine if the Wehrmacht would have prosecuted the Caiazzo killings at the time under their jurisdiction, had the crimes been known. If no prosecution would have occurred despite awareness, the statute of limitations could potentially be interrupted. 

Schreiber and Klinkhammer concluded that no prosecution would have taken place since the deed was carried out in the context of an anti-partisan action. De Zayas was, to the contrary, of the opinion that even the Nazi authorities would have prosecuted the sort of excessive violence that unfolded in Caiazzo. Notably, at this point the circumstances of the crime were not being legally addressed; the sole question standing at the centre of the Koblenz court was that of the German statute of limitations.

In its judgement, the Koblenz court treated the killings at the command post and the killings of women and children at the farmhouse as two distinct events. The former was considered homicide (Totschlag) and since lapsed, the latter murder (Mord). In line with the principle of presumption of innocence, the court followed the opinion of de Zayas. Accordingly, the statute of limitations was considered as not interrupted in this case as well – and the murder of women and children as subject to the statute. The accused were therefore no longer prosecutable.

The Koblenz prosecutor’s office filed an appeal against this initial judgement, so in 1995 the German Federal Court of Justice took up the case. Here too, the court followed de Zayas’ assessment, thus confirming the Koblenz judgement in toto. Decisive in this respect was the statement of a retired Bundeswehr General who in the Second World War had served in the Wehrmacht’s 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, just like Lehnigk-Emden. He had joined the division as a staff officer a few weeks after the Caiazzo massacre. From his ‘own experience’, as he put it, he felt that had the division staff known then of the massacre, the accused would have been prosecuted under military law. Historically, however, there are no documented cases where this occurred. 

The court in Santa Maria Capua Vetere reached a contrary conclusion. On 25 Oct. 1994, Lehnigk-Emden and one of his former non-commissioned officers were sentenced in absentia to life in prison; a third accused person had meanwhile died. 

Wolfgang Lehnigk-Emden died on 20 June 2006 in Koblenz.