Peter Lütsches

Peter Lütsches (born November 7, 1898 in Oedt , Kempen-Krefeld district , † October 31, 1959 in Düsseldorf ) was a German politician ( center / CDU ), Nazi victim, journalist and association official.

Peter Lütsches was a trained businessman. He was the owner of Lütsche's marble works in Süchteln , a company that mainly produced gravestones. Until the transfer of power to the NSDAP and its allies in 1933, he was chairman of the German Center Party in Süchteln and a city councilor. In 1934 the members of the center faction there joined the NSDAP faction as interns , including Lütsches as its chairman. In 1935 he fled to the Netherlands before an arrest warrant . He was threatened with arrest not for political reasons, but for fraud, breach of trust and making false affidavits. He had kept his employees' insurance and health insurance contributions from their wages, but not paid them. In 1952 he declared that he had “tried to evade Nazi persecution”.

In Utrecht he was secretary of the International Catholic Refugee Aid ( Katholiek Comité Voor Slachtoffers van Geloofsvervolging ), which “made a special contribution to helping non-Aryan Catholics to flee to South America”. Lütsches also appeared under the pseudonym P. van Meegen . After the occupation of the Netherlands by German troops, he was arrested by the Gestapo and, after spending time in various police prisons, deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp at the end of 1940 . There he was employed as a report writer for the Lieberose sub-camp and the SS building yard. In February 1945 he was liberated by Red Army soldiers on an "evacuation march" .

In the second electoral term of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia , Lütsches belonged to the state parliament from December 19, 1946 to April 19, 1947. In 1948, as a CDU license holder, he was head of the Düsseldorfer Wochenblatt Free Europe . From 1945 to 1950 he was a member and functionary of the Association of Victims of the Nazi Regime (VVN) and also head of the VVN's association newspaper, which he left in 1950 in order to establish a counter-foundation "with the approval" of Adenauer , which was to achieve the importance of the VVN. Lütsches was a main initiator of the CDU-oriented and strictly anti-communist Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (BVN). The editor-in-chief Karl Marx of the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung für die Juden in Deutschland criticized the split. One objection was that Lütsches had not sought contact with the Jewish persecuted before the establishment. After the founding was completed, Lütsches justified his behavior by saying that he wanted to prevent "being betrayed, since most Jews are communists."

From 1950 to 1953, Lütsches was federal chairman of the BVN, which was financed by the CDU and US secret services. His controversial commitment to first the VVN, then the BVN was linked to “tangible, own economic interests” (Spernol). Before switching pages, he had embezzled money and inventory from the VVN newspaper he was in charge of. After the change, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the secret services not only financed the BVN, but also it. At the same time he succeeded “through an intervention at Adenauer” in withdrawing the financial support from the VVN that it received from public funds.

Because of his unauthorized and unauthorized association management, he had to resign in 1953. His application for compensation sparked an investigation by the North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Ministry in 1953 after the reparation authority had rejected the application. In addition to the internship status with the NSDAP from 1934 and the arrest warrant from 1935, both of which were undisputed, the accusation that Lütsches tried to become a member of the NSDAP in 1933 played a role . A verbal attack on the mayor after the transfer of power clearly turned out to be a denunciation.

Although Lütsches was personally deeply involved in a corruption affair, under his leadership the BVN ran “hate campaigns” (Lissner) against the VVN and a dismissal campaign against the ministerial director of Jewish origin in the reparation office Marcel Frenkel , a well-known member of the KPD . Lütsches accused Frenkel of a clientele economy of communists, social democrats and Jews who would mutually benefit. For the historian Boris Spernol, he referred to the figure of the "Jewish Bolshevik" of Nazi propaganda. The accusations against Frenkel, as the State Audit Office and the Ministry of the Interior jointly determined in 1950 after a thorough investigation, "expressly" found that they were "completely eliminated". Lütsches was not without success, however, since Frenkel, as the same statement noted, "was on leave in a different context because of his KPD membership". Against the background of his affairs, Spernol evaluates Lütsches as "an at least dodgy figure."

Web link

Peter Lütsches at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heimatbuch des Kreis Viersen, 44 (1993), p. 206.
2. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 221.
3. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 221.
4. ^ Ministry of the Interior checks Lütsches, in: Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, May 16, 1953.
5. ^ Günter Beaugrand, contemporary witness at the editorial desk. The association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) and the Federation of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (BVN) in the mirror of their press organs, undated, undated, on the website of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, see: [1] , p. 266.
6. ↑ Bruno Jahn (editor): Die deutschsprachige Presse: Ein biographisch-bibliographisches Handbuch , Volume 1 A − L , Saur, Munich 2005, p. 662
7. ↑ Lutz Eugen Reutter: The auxiliary activity of Catholic organizations and church agencies for those persecuted in National Socialist Germany , Hamburg 1969, p. 178.
8. ^ Rainer Moltmann: Reinhold Heinen (1894-1969). A Christian politician, journalist and publisher , Düsseldorf 2005, pp. 157, 327.
9. ↑ Gunther R. Lys : Secret suffering, secret struggle. A report on the Lieberose subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , Berlin 2007, p. 215.
10. ^ Günter Morsch / Agnes Ohm / Sylvia De Pasquale / Brandenburgische Gedenkstätte Foundation (ed.): "All Europe was here": survivors of the concentration camps of Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen in post-war European politics , Berlin 2004, p. 196.
11. ↑ In: What does not belong to us, Der Spiegel , April 30, 1949.
12. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 221.
13. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff., P. 224.
14. ↑ The last citations from: Cordula Lissner, Den Fluchtweg backward: Remigration to North Rhine and Westphalia 1945-1955 , Essen 2006, p. 280.
15. ↑ The last two citations: Minutes of the 200th cabinet meeting on September 25, 1950, in: Landesarchiv NRW, Edition Protocols, see: [2] .
16. ↑ Unless otherwise stated: Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: pp. 220ff.
17. ↑ Boris Spernol: In the crossfire of the cold war. The Marcel Frenkel case and the repression of the communists , in: Norbert Frei / José Brunner / Constantin Goschler (eds.): The practice of reparation. History, experience and impact in Germany and Israel (series of publications by the Minerva Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University, vol. 28), Göttingen 2009, pp. 203–236, here: p. 221.