Adolf von Thadden

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Adolf von Thadden (disambiguation) .

Adolf von Thadden (1969)

Adolf von Thadden (born July 7, 1921 at Gut Trieglaff near Greifenberg in Pomerania ; † July 16, 1996 in Bad Oeynhausen ) was a German politician from various right-wing extremist parties and a long-time undercover agent for the British foreign secret service MI6 .

family

He came from an old Pomeranian noble family and was a son of the multiple landowner Adolf von Thadden (1858-1932), royal Prussian district administrator of the district of Greifenberg , member of the provincial parliament of the Prussian province of Pomerania and chairman of the Association of Pomeranian districts . His mother, Adolf von Thaddens' second wife, Barbara Blank (1895–1972), was the daughter of Ludwig Blank and Mary Hume.

Thadden married the doctor Edith Lange (born September 28, 1921 in Hanover) on November 10, 1957 in Hanover , the daughter of the senior government councilor and building officer Otto Lange and Marie-Luise Hett.

Many public figures came from the von Thadden family. The best-known of Thadden's sister, the writer Maria Wellershoff (married to the writer Dieter Wellershoff ), the half-sister Elisabeth von Thadden , who was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee in 1944 for rejecting the Nazi regime , his half-brother Reinold von Thadden , the founder of the German Evangelical Church Congress , as well as his nephew, the historian Rudolf von Thadden .

Life and work

After elementary school, von Thadden first attended the Greifenberger Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium. Later he was a student at the Baltic School in Misdroy , where he graduated from high school . Then he completed an agricultural apprenticeship. After completing the Reich Labor Service , he became a soldier. At the beginning of the war, on September 1, 1939, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 7.155.873).

He took part in numerous campaigns during the Second World War , most recently as first lieutenant and adjutant of an assault gun brigade, and suffered serious wounds several times (golden badge for wounded , iron cross, 1st and 2nd class). In 1945 he was arrested in Poland while trying to bring his mother from Pomerania to the Western Zones . In November 1946 he managed to escape from Poland. In 1946/47 he was an agricultural trustee for the British military government . He moved to Göttingen in 1947. In the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, von Thadden was the editor of the NPD party organ Deutsche Nachrichten . From 1974 he was a representative of property developers, from 1975 editor-in-chief of the German weekly newspaper .

After Thaddens' death it became known that he was an informant for the British secret service MI6 , also during his entire time as national chairman of the NPD.

Political party

Since 1947 von Thadden was a member of the (conservative) German Right Party ( DKP-DRP ), to whose leadership he soon belonged. At the negotiations of the DKP-DRP with the German Party and the Hessian National Democratic Party on July 1, 1949 about a joint election for the 1949 Bundestag election , von Thadden participated for his party together with Wilhelm Jaeger , Eldor Borck , Ludwig Schwecht , Lothar Steuer and Leonhard Schlueter part. Although the plans had advanced quite far, they eventually failed. The reason was the declaration by the British military government that a merger party would not receive a license and would therefore not be able to run for election.

He was instrumental in the merger of the Lower Saxony DKP-DRP regional association with the National Democratic Party to form the German Reich Party (1950). In March 1952, together with Heinz Frommhold , he applied for membership in the FDP . However, under pressure from the left wing of the party, the FDP federal executive postponed the decision on the application for membership on March 26, 1952. Von Thadden - like Frommhold - then withdrew the application. In 1961 he succeeded Heinrich Kunstmann as chairman of the German Reich Party (DRP).

In 1964 von Thadden founded the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) together with Fritz Thielen (German Party), Wilhelm Gutmann ( GDP ), Heinrich Fassbender ( DNVP ) and others as a party for national and right-wing extremist politicians. On November 11, 1967, he was elected federal chairman of the NPD. In 1969 he narrowly failed with the NPD when he entered the German Bundestag . In 1971 he resigned as chairman of the NPD, but supported the election of his successor Martin Mußgnug . In 1975 von Thadden left the NPD out of annoyance over the election of Gerhard Frey to the national board of the NPD. In 1994 he said in an interview with the weekly newspaper Junge Freiheit : "Today's NPD has nothing to do with the NPD of the sixties, that is, the time when I was party leader."

MP

In 1948 von Thadden won 10.8% of the votes for the DKP-DRP in the local elections in Göttingen and was councilor (until 1958). In 1949 , at the age of 28, he became the second youngest member of the first German Bundestag (until 1953). In allusion to his young age, he was addressed by an SPD deputy as "Bubi", which resulted in his later nickname for his entire political life.

From May 6, 1955 to May 5, 1959 (3rd electoral period) he was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament of the DRP. From June 6, 1967 to June 20, 1970 (6th electoral term) von Thadden was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament of the NPD. From June 6, 1967 to June 30, 1968 he took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group of the NPD, from January 21, 1970 to June 20, 1970 he was deputy chairman.

Public offices

In 1952/53 von Thadden was Deputy Mayor of Göttingen, until 1958 Senator of the city.

literature

• Genealogical manual of the nobility , noble houses A volume XXV, volume 117 of the complete series. CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1998, ISSN  0435-2408 , p. 525.
• Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, p. 379.
• Werner Tress: Adolf von Thadden. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 2.2 (people). De Gruyter / Saur, Berlin 2009, pp. 822-824.

Web links

Commons : Adolf von Thadden  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Adolf von Thadden in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Adolf von Thadden  in the German Digital Library

supporting documents

1. ^ John Hooper: Neo-Nazi leader 'was MI6 agent' . In: The Guardian . August 13, 2002, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed March 27, 2019]).
2. ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger: The brown slouch hat ; The Guardian: Neo-Nazi leader 'was MI6 agent' , Aug 13, 2002; German Bundestag, 17th electoral term: Printed matter 17/13394 - Written questions with the answers of the federal government received in the week of May 6, 2013 , p. 24 (more cautious).
3. ^ Horst W. Schmollinger: German Conservative Party - German Right Party . In: Richard Stöss : Party Handbook , Vol. 4: NDP to WAV , Westdeutscher Verlag , Opladen 1986, p. 1002 f.
4. ↑ Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953, p. 556 ff.