Carl Mertens
Carl Mertens (* 1902 in Kassel ; † October 17, 1932 near Paris ) was a German officer , journalist and radical pacifist . In 1925 he uncovered the so-called Fememorde within the Black Reichswehr in the magazine Die Weltbühne .
Origin and military career
Mertens was born in 1902 as the son of a police commissioner in Kassel. Since his father died early, Mertens was forced to contribute to the livelihood of his mother and younger brother from an early age. There are different details about his school and professional career after 1918. According to a letter that Mertens wrote to the pacifist Ludwig Quidde in March 1926 , he interrupted his school education towards the end of the First World War in order to join the so-called resident army. He also became a member of the Young German Order .
In Saxony he took part in the "suppression of internal unrest". He then returned to Kassel, where he began an apprenticeship with a bookseller in 1919. There are different responses to the question of whether he did the Abitur before starting his apprenticeship or whether he left the Realgymnasium early. According to Mertens, however, the monarchist -minded bookseller urged his apprentice to take part in the suppression of the Upper Silesian uprisings in May 1921. In this way Mertens first came to the federal Oberland . Then he returned to the bookstore in Kassel. In 1922 he wandered through Germany and Italy for a while before, following family tradition, he went to Brandenburg to attend the police school. During the battle against the Ruhr , he was ordered to perform acts of sabotage in the Ruhr area by the Oberland federal government. He also got into the Black Reichswehr via the federal government . In 1924 he returned to his hometown again and resolved not to return to the illegal military organizations. He stayed true to this decision when the Consul organization tried to force him to join the association in October 1924. In order to avoid possible acts of revenge, he traveled to Switzerland and Italy, where he worked as a journalist. In April 1925 he returned to Germany. The election of Paul von Hindenburg as Reich President prompted Mertens to publish his experiences with the patriotic associations at his new residence in Darmstadt , supported by SPD circles, and thus to fight the reactionary forces.
The way to the public
In the summer of 1925, the publisher of the Weltbühne , Siegfried Jacobsohn , was offered an anonymous manuscript about the female murders within the Black Reichswehr through the intermediary Carlo Mierendorff . The author of these notes, entitled “Behind the Scenes of the Patriotic Associations”, was Carl Mertens. Although Jacobsohn knew that he was exposing himself to great personal danger by publishing this material, he published the explosive, initially anonymous records on a weekly basis from August 18, 1925. According to Mertens' descriptions, an attitude prevailed within these associations that was to become characteristic of National Socialist terror :
“Then you probably dreamed of the future. The 'cursed proletarians ' should be hanged, yes, new torture systems were developed with sadistic lust. Those who hated her most were often, almost daily, tortured to death in the spirit. But they weren't French; but their 'hereditary enemies' were: rich Jews , fat peasants , socialist workers - and which worker is not a socialist for you? - Union secretaries and men in the government, [...] "
Mertens, too, continued to fear the dangers he wanted to draw attention to with his publications. He avoided staying in the same place for long periods of time. Public pressure finally led to the police investigating the murderers he had named and, from 1926, publicly looking for the perpetrators. The Reichstag also debated the activities within the Black Reichswehr. In the subsequent trials, the Reichsgericht decided in favor of the Fememörster, “that there is also a right of individual citizens to defend themselves against illegal attacks on the vital interests of the state” ( RGSt 63, 215 (220)). How little public interest in the topic was was shown by the failure of the 1926 book Conspirators and Fememorders . Since Siegfried Jacobsohn assumed that republican and pacifist circles would be in great demand for the material, he had summarized Mertens' essays and had them printed in large numbers. Interest was unexpectedly low, so that Jacobsohn's publishing house got into financial difficulties.
The radical pacifist publicist
It had taken only a few months before Mertens' incognito had been aired and he began to publish under his own name. From 1926 on, he fought, like the journalists Berthold Jacob , Fritz Küster and Walter Kreiser, against the secret arming of the Reichswehr and, because of his good contacts, embarrassed the Reichswehr leadership with well-founded reports on hidden armaments programs. This earned him several treason charges . Finally, on December 30, 1926, an arrest warrant was issued against him, but he evaded it by traveling to Paris via Austria and Switzerland . The proceedings were discontinued in 1928 and the arrest warrant lifted.
Unlike moderate pacifists like Ludwig Quidde, Mertens was rightly of the opinion that German militarism had not been broken after the defeat in World War I, but continued to have an effect in the Weimar Republic . Together with Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster , Mertens therefore tried to draw attention to these secret activities in numerous publications both in Germany and abroad. Foerster financed the correspondence 'Geneva' - For Peace and Understanding , which was published by Mertens. Other publications for him were Das Andere Deutschland , Die Menschheit , Die Zeit , Das Tage-Buch and the Chronik der Menschheit .
Because of his pacifist activities, Mertens was very hated within nationalist circles, which he felt on a last visit to Germany. When he traveled to Leipzig in January 1928 with the promise of safe escort to testify before the Reichsgericht in a trial against Julius Schreck , he was attacked at the train station by several National Socialists and put down.
Mertens died on October 17, 1932 between Fontainebleau and Paris as a result of a car accident.
Fonts
- Conspirators and murderers . Weltbühne publishing house, Charlottenburg 1926
- Carl Mertens, Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt , Konrad Widerhold (eds.): German military policy since 1918 . Berlin 1926
- Reichswehr or national defense? Contribution to the Wehrmacht problems in Germany . Wiesbaden 1927
- A document on the Reichswehr and Stahlhelm policy. With explanatory essays by Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster . Wiesbaden 1927
- The coming war . Geneva 1927
- Memorandum on German disarmament policy . Geneva 1930
literature
- Helmut Donat : armaments expert and pacifist - the Reichswehr officer Carl Mertens (1902–1932) . In: Wolfram Wette (Ed.): Pacifist officers in Germany 1871–1933 , Bremen 1999, pp. 247–271.
- Helmut Donat, Karl Holl (ed.): The peace movement. Organized pacifism in Germany, Austria and Switzerland . Hermes Handlexikon., Econ Taschenbuchverlag, Düsseldorf 1983, ISBN 3-612-10024-6 .
- Ursula Madrasch-Groschopp: The world stage. Portrait of a magazine. Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1983. (Reprint: Bechtermünz Verlag im Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1999, ISBN 3-8289-0337-1 )
- Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememicide. A milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 . Series of documents, texts, materials , volume 50. (At the same time: TU Berlin, Diss., 2003).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Patriotic Associations . In: Die Weltbühne , August 18, 1925, pp. 239–258, here p. 244.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mertens, Carl |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German journalist and pacifist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1902 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | kassel |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 17, 1932 |
| Place of death | near Paris |