Konrad Meyer

Konrad Meyer-Hetling (1901 to 1973) was a German agronomist and SS officer, best known for his part in drawing up Generalplan Ost. Born in Salzderhelden near Einbeck, he studied agronomy at the University of Göttingen, took his doctorate in 1926 with a thesis on crop production and qualified as a lecturer in 1930. He became a full professor at the University of Jena in 1934 and the same year a professor at the University of Berlin, and was one of the key agricultural scientists and spatial planners of the Nazi era and chief editor of the main journals of the field. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and the SS in 1933, headed the Planning Office under the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood from 1939 and collaborated on the early 1940 version of Generalplan Ost, a plan for the Germanization of Eastern Europe. Tried in the RuSHA Trial, he was found guilty of membership of a criminal organization, the SS, but not of war crimes, was released in 1948 and was professor of agriculture and regional planning at Leibniz University Hannover from 1956 to 1968.