German Association for Physical Exercise Olympia

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The German Association for Physical Exercise Olympia was a right-wing extremist military association disguised as a sports club , which was active in Berlin and the surrounding area between 1920 and 1926 . Most of its members switched to the SA in the summer and autumn of 1926 .

development

The association was founded in May 1920 by Freikorps members whose associations had not been accepted into the Reichswehr or dissolved after the Kapp Putsch . The staff came from the former Reinhard Volunteer Regiment and the Greater Berlin Regiment. The general goal of the organization was to keep cadres of voluntary corps and resident services together under changed framework conditions and to train them further. The Olympia consisted of a stable core active at any time, already militarily experienced (around 2000 men) and a pure training section (which initially traded as the Reinhard Youth and later as the Olympia Youth Association ) with limited membership and corresponding fluctuation (500 to 1000 men). The seat of the association was at Artilleriestraße 7 (today Tucholskystraße) in the Scheunenviertel . The first head of the Olympia was a court assessor Heyl, who was also a leading member of the Berliner Orgesch branch ( Berliner Heimatverband ). He settled in February 1921 after being blown into several arsenals.

According to the statutes, a sports club with the purpose of caring for various types of sport and other “sociable, artistic and scientific” interests, the Olympia was actually a “conspiratorial organization” led by former officers, whose 23 “sports groups “ Were distributed in company size over the territory of the capital. Upon joining the organization, the members committed themselves in writing to unconditionally obey every order of their superiors and to maintain complete secrecy from outside. The participants came almost exclusively from bourgeois milieus; in addition to former officers, high school students and students shaped the picture. The RKO noted that the Olympics are considered "quite exclusive", and that the members are mainly "young people from the educated circles". For example, Hans Maikowski , who later became the leader of SA Storm 33 , who was notorious as the “murderous storm” , came to the Olympics as a student at the Schiller High School in Charlottenburg . The female murderer Robert Grütte-Lehder , whose case had occupied the public since December 1923, had been won over as a student at the Oberrealschule in Pankow by a teacher working there for the youth section of the Olympia in Hermsdorf . In the area around Berlin, the Olympia repeatedly carried out shooting and field exercises for years, for which large landowners usually made their goods available. Target practice in the test facility for small arms in Halensee is also documented.

In the spring of 1921, the “Sportverein” took part in the founding of the Federation for Freedom and Order in Berlin and the surrounding area . Members of the DDP , DVP and the center were also represented on its governing body . Emil Julius Gumbel described this organization in 1924 as "a cartel of all [the] supposedly dissolved, but actually continued to exist under different names self-protection associations from Greater Berlin." The Olympics as such was viewed by the RKO as a "secret organization hostile to the state" at the latest since 1923. In March 1923 there was a leading member, the major a. D. Christoph von Krogh , arrested in connection with the ban on DvFP . The former Colonel Hans von Luck , who had taken over the leadership of the association in 1923, was arrested for the first time on October 12, 1923.

The extent of the involvement of the Olympics in legal and illegal structures of the Reichswehr has not been fully clarified. It is documented that recommendations of the Olympic leaders were taken into account when recruiting into the Reichswehr. Richard Scheringer , who had joined the Olympics as a high school student , was recruited for the Black Reichswehr by a captain of the Berlin military district command during the summer vacation of 1923 and was caught up in the Küstriner putsch . In May 1923, Grütte-Lehder attended a Black Reichswehr training course, which was led by Walther Stennes . Conversely, the Olympia “took over” people who had completed training courses for the Black Reichswehr, including Horst Wessel . Grütte-Lehder, who made extensive statements after his arrest, characterized the political content of this network as follows:

“The purpose has been stated to be the enemy of the country [...]; but in the inner circle one let it be known that one might also have to go out against the communists. "

In the course of 1925, the activities of the Wiking and Olympia associations were increasingly discussed in the Berlin press. In the summer it became known that their exercises had meanwhile taken on the extent of regular maneuvers . In October, members of the KPD and RFB surprised and disarmed an Olympic "sports group" that had organized target practice in the Tegel forest. In view of such incidents, it was widely suspected that another coup was being prepared in legal circles.

In 1925/26 Luck was together with his colleague, Colonel a. D. Hans von Knauer , actually occupied with the military aspects of a putsch plan in which several personalities of the "national camp", including Heinrich Claß , were involved. The scenario envisaged that after the resignation of the Luther government , which was expected in the course of the dispute over the expropriation of the princes , President Hindenburg would appoint a head of government far to the right. After the expected vote of no confidence by the Reichstag, it was planned to dissolve it and at the same time to carry out a general mobilization of the “patriotic associations”, with the support of which the Reich Chancellor - the mayor of Lübeck , Neumann , was planned for the office - initially based on Article 48 and the Reichswehr , finally to enforce a dictatorship aimed at the complete elimination of the Weimar Constitution . This project did not really get off the ground because the decisive “patriotic associations” - primarily the steel helmets - refused from the outset, after the experience of the Kapp Putsch, to take action without a clear promise of cooperation from the Reichswehr leadership. After Ferdinand Friedensburg, the deputy chief of police in Berlin , had received specific information, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, at his insistence, had several house searches carried out on May 11 and 12, 1926 (including Heinrich Claß, Emil Kirdorf , Eugen Wiskott and Albert Vögler ) Brought documents to light. The Prussian Interior Minister Severing then banned the Wiking and Olympia groups on May 16 on the basis of the Republic Protection Act . Both organizations lodged complaints against this, which the State Court for the Protection of the Republic granted on October 13, 1926. Since the Prussian government had apparently expected this and had motivated the prohibitions in the meantime with an implementation law of the Versailles Treaty (prohibition of military activity), against which no legal remedy was possible, these however remained effective. The proceedings initiated against Heinrich Claß in May 1926 for preparation for high treason were discontinued at the request of Oberreichsanwalt Werner in October 1927 by the IV Criminal Senate of the Reich Court “for lack of evidence”. No preliminary investigation had been initiated against other parties involved.

The “national” press tried to downplay the events, denied that a coup was planned and used the opportunity to campaign against the “suppression of national forces” carried out with the help of the Versailles “shameful treaty”. As a result, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior published a collection of meaningful documents in November 1926. Many left-wing commentators did not take the revelations of May 1926 very seriously either. Carl von Ossietzky wrote in the Weltbühne :

“All props known from 1920 and 1923 in it; The gallows rope as a unifying bond of the new national community is not missing either. Everything is undisputably foolish. Spook of a ghost that Bavarian bullets scared away from Odeonsplatz almost three years ago. When ever would the atmosphere for the legal coup have been more unfavorable than it is now! On the left is the train of the hour. [...] And then some Uncle Neumann from Lübeck was supposed to get up right where Ludendorff fell over? The bourgeois left nurses the hocus-pocus in order to cover up how shamefully they have backed away on the flag issue. "

When the bans on Olympia and Wiking were lifted in October 1926, Ossietzky dealt with the case again on the Weltbühne . He coined his well-known dictum "Preparations for the right-wing coup are not punishable in Germany."

The group around Luck joined the Stahlhelm after the Olympic Games were banned , while numerous other former members went to the Berlin SA, which had emerged in March 1926 with initially around 450 members from the remains of the ban on the front that had been banned the previous year and by converting the Olympic Games -Cadre has been "heavily filled". Bernd Kruppa speaks of a "mass transfer" to the SA in the summer of 1926 and emphasizes that since 1925 "double membership in the Olympics and in Nazi organizations has almost been the rule among young people".

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernd Kruppa: Right-wing radicalism in Berlin 1918–1928. Berlin / New York 1988, ISBN 3-925961-00-3 , p. 164.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Kurt Finker: Olympia. German association for physical exercise. In: Dieter Fricke (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945). Volume 3, Leipzig 1985, ISBN 3-7609-0878-0 , p. 548.
  3. ^ Finker: Olympia. 1985, p. 548.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 178.
  5. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 179.
  6. ↑ Last Bernhard Sauer: The German National Freedom Party (DvFP) and the Grütte case. In: Berlin in the past and present. Yearbook of the Berlin State Archives 1994, Berlin 1994, pp. 179–205. See also Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, pp. 245-257.
  7. ↑ a b Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 251.
  8. ^ Emil Julius Gumbel: Conspirators. On the history and sociology of the German nationalist secret societies 1918–1924. Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-24338-6 , p. 101.
  9. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 317f.
  10. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 233.
  11. ↑ Gumbel: Conspirators. 1984, p. 101.
  12. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 326.
  13. ^ Annemarie Lange: Berlin in the Weimar Republic. Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-320-00833-1 , pp. 456f.
  14. ↑ Quoted from Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 251.
  15. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 317.
  16. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 310f.
  17. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 320.
  18. ↑ Carl von Ossietzky: Interludes. In: The world stage. Vol. 22, number 20 (May 18, 1926), pp. 755-759, p. 755.
  19. ^ Carl von Ossietzky: Saxony, Prussia, Empire and Kaiser. In: The world stage. Vol. 22, number 43 (October 26, 1926), pp. 639-642, p. 639.
  20. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: Goebbels "Rabauken". On the history of the SA in Berlin-Brandenburg. In: Uwe Schaper (Ed.): Berlin in past and present. Yearbook of the Landesarchiv Berlin 2006. Berlin 2006, p. 107–164, p. 112. The example of Köpenick with André König: Köpenick under the swastika. The history of National Socialism in Berlin-Köpenick. Mahlow 2004, ISBN 3-936607-05-2 , p. 27.
  21. ^ Kruppa: right-wing radicalism. 1988, p. 318f.