Estate Richard Korherr Nachlass Richard Korherr

Dr. Richard Korherr (1903-1989) was born October 30, 1903. Editions of his dissertation on declining birth rates in Germany were published with forwards by Oswald Spengler, Heinrich Himmler, and Benito Mussolini. During the Weimar Republic, he worked as a professional statistician briefly for the Reich Statistical Office before becoming managing director of the "Reich and Heimat" working committee, which had been set up by the Bavarian Prime Minister Heinrich Held as a workplace for federalism.Under the Nazi regime, Korherr worked for the Bavarian Statistical Office, but in 1935 he moved to the city of Würzburg, where he was Director of the Statistical Office until 1940 and also had a teaching assignment at the University of Würzburg. In December 9, 1940, Korherr was appointed to head the statistical department in the SS main office. In 1943 Heinrich Himmler commissioned Korherr to write a comprehensive report entitled “The Final Solution of the European Jewish Question”, which today mostly trades under the name “Korherr Report”. This report is considered one of the most important documents on Nazi genocide. Korherr completed his report in January 1943 and delivered it to SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Dr. Rudolf Brandt in March. Himmler asked Korherr to replace the term “Sonderbehandlung” (special handling) with a different word, and Korherr chose “Durchgeschleust” to imply transit camps. Brandt delivered a summary of this report to Adolf Hitler. After World War II, Korherr claimed not to know about the exterminations. From 1945 to 1946 Korherr was interned in Darmstadt. In the proceedings before the Regensburg-Land tribunal, Korherr was included in the group of followers. From 1950 Korherr was taken over by the Federal Ministry of Finance and reinstated in 1952 as Ministerialrat. He was retired in 1958 after Gerald Reitlinger’s book on the Final Solution brought Korherr’s report into the public eye. He then lectured for a few years at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He died November 24 1989.

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired the Nachlass Rcihard Korherr from the Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (Bavarian Main State Archive) in December 2021.