Viktor Lutze

Viktor Lutze (1938)

Viktor Lutze (born December 28, 1890 in Bevergern ; † May 2, 1943 near Potsdam ) was a German National Socialist politician and SA leader. After Ernst Röhm's murder in 1934, Lutze succeeded him as Chief of Staff of the SA.

Political biography

After attending the rectorate school in Ibbenbüren and the grammar school in Rheine , Lutze completed an internship at the Reichspost . In 1912 he became a professional soldier and took over as platoon and company leaders at the First World War in the Infantry Regiment. 369 as well as the Res.-Inf.-Reg. 15 part. He lost an eye due to a serious wound. In 1919 he retired from the army as an officer ; then he became a member of the German Völkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and the Young German Order . Lutze was based in Elberfeld and ran a metal foundry from 1921 to 1925, which went bankrupt. In 1922 Lutze became a member of the NSDAP in Elberfeld , where he met Joseph Goebbels , Erich Koch and Karl Kaufmann . In 1923 he joined the Sturmabteilung . As a member of the “ Hauenstein ” group, he participated in acts of sabotage in the context of the fight against the occupation of the Ruhr .

From 1926 onwards, Lutze headed the SA's “Gausturm Ruhr” from Elberfeld, whose structures became the organizational model for the establishment of the SA in other regions. Gauleiter was the later Supreme SA leader Franz von Pfeffer . In 1928, Lutze was promoted to SA Oberführer Ruhr and thus achieved a rank within the paramilitary organized SA that roughly corresponds to that of a colonel . From 1930 he was the leader of the SA in the Hanover district and represented his party as a member of the Reichstag . He became supreme SA leader north and in 1931 SA group leader north; In 1933 he advanced to SA-Obergruppenführer and organized the terror against politically dissenters in Hanover .

Passport issued in Hanover in 1935 and ID card signed by Police President Lutze in 1941 for the racial theorist “ Prof. Dr. Rossner "

After the National Socialists came to power in March 1933, Lutze first took on the post of Police President of the Hanover Police Department before he became President of the Prussian Province of Hanover on March 25, 1933 after the Social Democrat Gustav Noske was removed . This was followed by the appointment to the Prussian State Council. The Austrian Legion was also subordinate to him.

In the course of the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934, Lutze succeeded Ernst Röhm, who was murdered on July 1, 1934, as Chief of Staff of the SA, which, deprived of a few key heads, developed little political effectiveness under his leadership within the National Socialist organizations and especially after the spin-off of SS quickly lost its importance, used.

After a significant decline in membership caused by purges, the focus was on pre- and post-military training. The SA was thus degraded to an auxiliary force of the Wehrmacht. In November 1938, Lutze activated the terrorist potential of the SA for the last time, which was used throughout the Reich as a carrier of the organized pogroms against the Jewish population of Germany. In 1939, Lutze received a grant of 154,000 Reichsmarks . In April 1941, as Reichsleiter of the NSDAP, he was released from his position as Oberpräsident at his own request. His successor was Hartmann Lauterbacher .

On May 1, 1943, Lutze and his eldest daughter Inge (* 1925) had an accident in the car driven by his son Viktor Jr. near Potsdam . The daughter died shortly after the accident of an untreatable skull base fracture . Despite intensive treatment by the doctor Werner Forßmann , who was supported by the family doctor of the Lutze family, Otto Nordmann , and by Ferdinand Sauerbruch , an expert in breast surgery, Lutze himself died of an accident-related pneumothorax in the municipal hospital in Potsdam on the evening of the next day. Hitler posthumously awarded him the German Order of the NSDAP . After Lutze's death, his previous deputy, Max Jüttner , took over the post of SA chief of staff in early May 1943, until he was replaced by Wilhelm Schepmann in early August 1943 .

In his native Bevergern - a district of Hörstel since 1975 - Lutze had the Saltenhof estate built for himself in 1938 directly on the Bevergerner Aa . Today it is used as a hotel.

Archival tradition

Lutze personnel records are kept in the holdings of the former Berlin Document Center in the Berlin Federal Archives.

A three hundred and twelve page diary of Lutzes, which he kept from 1934 to 1943, came into the hands of the US journalist William Chester in November 1945 after the Second World War . Some excerpts from this were published in the Frankfurter Rundschau on May 14 and 16, 1957. In 1959, Chesterton, who was living in Togo at the time, gave Lutze's diary to George Spénale, the French special commissioner in that country. He finally left the manuscript to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Bonn, whose archive it is today.

literature

• Peter Longerich : The brown battalions. History of the SA. CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-33624-8 .
• Gerhard Taddey (ed.): Lexicon of German history . Events, institutions, people. From the beginning to the surrender in 1945. 3rd, revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-81303-3 .

Web links

Commons : Viktor Lutze  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Viktor Lutze in the catalog of the German National Library
• Viktor Lutze in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Lutze, Viktor (1890-1943): Chief of Staff of the SA 1934 to 1943 , biography of Hubert Beckers in the future needs memory , March 25, 2006.
• The historical place of the "Reichskristallnacht" - November pogrom 1938 . In: The night when the synagogues burned. Texts and materials for November 9, 1938. State Center for Civic Education Baden-Württemberg , Stuttgart 1998 (on Lutzes participation in the organization of the pogroms of November 1938)
• Lutze, Victor . In: Marcus Weidner: The street naming practice in Westphalia and Lippe during National Socialism. Database of street names 1933–1945 .
• Newspaper article about Viktor Lutze in the press kit for the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Mlynek : Lutze, Viktor. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche , Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 418.
2. ^ Obituary in: Saarbrücker Zeitung. May 4, 1943.
3. ↑ The newspaper . May 7, 1943.
4. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus. The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923. Leibniz, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X , p. 321.
5. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites. Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
6. ↑ Werner Forßmann : Self-experiment. Memories of a surgeon. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1972, pp. 290-291.
7. ^ Max Jüttner in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible).
8. ^ Daniel Siemens: Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts , 2017, p. 164 u. P. 397f.