Günther Tamaschke (26 February 1896 – 14 October 1959) was a Nazi German SS-Standartenführer and commandant of the Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück concentration camps.
Tamaschke passed his Notabitur, a wartime emergency high school diploma that allowed one to graduate early provided that he then serve in the military.
[citation needed] Through the actions of Kurt Daluege, Tamaschke was made Schutzhaftlagerführer in the Dachau concentration camp and remained in this position until the beginning of 1935.
Through Eicke, with whom he had a special relationship of trust, Tamaschke was employed as the director (Lagerdirektor) of the newly established women's camp (Frauenkonzentrationslager) Lichtenburg starting on 1 December 1937.
[3] By August 1939 Tamaschke was relieved of his duties as director of Ravensbrück concentration camp and released in early September 1939 from the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
[1] Tamaschke had been reprimanded for attempting to buy the Jewish-owned Czech company Nalus and Mansfeld, something which Himmler described in his official reprimand as Tamaschke taking "advantage of your position as an SS officer in order to lay your hands on a commercial enterprise you could not gain possession of in any other way".
The marriage had initially been delayed when an investigation uncovered that Hirschberg's grandfather had committed suicide and that two of her uncles were involved in left-wing politics.