Jeno from Egan warriors

Egan warriors as head of the German military mission in Tbilisi, 1918

Edward Jenö von Egan-Krieger (born July 17, 1886 Bernstein Castle , Burgenland, Austria , † February 22, 1965 in Cologne ) was a German officer and politician (DNVP). He was married to Anna Marie Josephine Ulrike von Heydebreck (born March 25, 1892 in Gnesen ) since October 27, 1913 .

Live and act

After attending school, Jenö von Egan-Krieger embarked on a military career. In 1915 he was promoted to captain in the general staff. He later took over command of Field Aviation Department 27 . After the end of the war he was retired from the army in 1919 with the rank of major.

Egan-Krieger found a new political field of activity in the Stahlhelm- Kampfbund. After 1919 he worked there as an editor in the Stahlhelm-Bundesamt. In the time of the Weimar Republic, Egan-Krieger was particularly regarded as the confidante of the 2nd federal leader of the steel helmet Theodor Duesterberg . From 1929 to 1933 he was the general manager of the German People's Party (DNVP) led by Alfred Hugenberg .

In 1929 Egan-Krieger also took on the duties of managing director of the "Reich Committee for the German Referendum", which was jointly established by DNVP, NSDAP and Stahlhelm and other right-wing political forces. Through a concerted propaganda campaign, the Reich Committee tried to bring about a referendum on the acceptance or rejection of the Young Plan - an agreement between the Reich government and the victorious powers of the First World War on the reorganization of German reparations payments to the war winners. The committee's efforts were initially successful insofar as it managed to bring about the desired referendum, but ultimately failed when the majority of the population voted in favor of the plan.

Immediately after the National Socialist seizure of power , Egan-Krieger was entrusted with the management of the main office for the Black-White-Red Battle Front in Berlin (Mittelstrasse 15), which was responsible for coordinating the election campaign efforts of the newly formed joint bloc of DNVP and Stahlhelm for the Reichstag elections of March 1933 .

On the morning of June 30, 1934, Egan-Krieger was arrested in Babelsberg together with the former center politician Konrad Adenauer and held in the Potsdam prison for a few days . The arrest of both men, which took place in the context of the Röhm affair , is probably related to the blow of the Nazi leadership against potential conservative opponents of the regime, analogous to the blow against the left wing of the Nazi movement, which was concentrated in the SA Egan-Krieger's former Stahlhelm superior Düsterberg or the former head of the Stahlhelm Intelligence Service in Silesia, Fritz Günther von Tschirschky, were arrested these days, while DNVP politicians such as Gottfried Treviranus or Otto Schmidt-Hannover were supposed to be arrested, but escaped .

Later in 1934, Egan-Krieger was reactivated as an officer and assigned to the newly formed Air Force. In the years up to the outbreak of war in 1939 he was employed as a department head in the Reich Ministry of War. On the military career ladder he rose one after the other to Colonel (1939), Major General (1940) and Lieutenant General (1942).

In the years 1939 to 1941 Egan-Krieger served as quartermaster at Luftgau Command III, then at Luftwaffe Commander Center. From 1942 to 1943 he served as a replacement inspector for the military in Magdeburg . In 1944 he was retired.

After the war, Egan-Krieger was in American captivity from 1945 to 1947. Since 1948 he was captain of the Order of St. John .

Fonts

• The German cavalry in War and Peace , 1928.

Web links

• Jenö von Egan-Krieger in the files of the Reich Chancellery
• Overview of Egan-Krieger's military career ( memento from March 6, 2010 on WebCite ) on Axis Biographical Research (in the WebCite archive)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jenö of Egan Warriors
2. ↑ Erich Matthias , Rudolf Morsey : The End of the Parties , 1960, p. 639.