Jakob Schmid

Schmid worked from 1926 as a janitor at the university. On November 1st, 1933 he joined the SA and, on May 1st 1937, the NSDAP.[1]

On February 18, 1943 at around 11:15 am, he noticed the Scholl siblings giving out pamphlets in the atrium of the university. He confronted them as they were leaving the building and turned them over to the secretary, Albert Scheithammer. Since the principal Walther Wüst was absent, Schmid and Scheithammer took the Scholl siblings to the consul of the university, Ernst Haeffner, who turned them over to the Gestapo.

As a result of the arrest of the Scholl siblings, they and other members of the White Rose were sentenced to death in a show trial on February 22, 1943. Three of them–Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl and Hans Scholl–were executed that very day by guillotine in Stadelheim Prison.

For arresting the Scholl siblings, Schmid received a reward of 3,000 Reichsmarks and was promoted from worker to employee.[2] Hundreds of students cheered Jakob Schmid at a thank-you ceremony organized by the University of Munich to successfully crush student resistance; Schmid responded with a Nazi salute.[3]

Three days after the end of the Second World War, on 11 May 1945, Schmid was arrested by American occupation forces.[1] A trial under the chairmanship of Karl Mayer classified him as a "Major Offender" according to the categorisation established by the American denazification process and sentenced him to five years in a labor camp. Furthermore, he lost his claim of public earnings and his right to hold public office. He appealed the sentence twice without success, once with the justification he had simply "done his duty". He was released in 1951 and his pension was renewed.[2]