Albrecht von Graefe (politician)

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Albrecht von Graefe

Karl Albrecht von Graefe , also von Graefe-Goldebee (born January 1, 1868 in Berlin , † April 18, 1933 in Goldebee ) , with the addition of the name typical of the time , was a völkisch - anti-Semitic politician and large landowner. From 1912 to 1928 he was a member of the Reichstag for various parties ( DKP , DNVP , DVFP , NSFP ). In the meantime he was an ally of Hitler and Ludendorff . The DVFP party, of which he was the leader, is considered by historians to be an anti-republican party that was involved in coup attempts and fememicide and partly functioned as a substitute organization for the NSDAP in northern Germany, which has since been banned . Graefe took part in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch and marched here in the front row.

Political rise, alliance with the NSDAP and decline

Imperial times: youth, military and first political experiences

Albrecht von Graefe was born as the son of the ophthalmologist of the same name Albrecht von Graefe and his wife Anna von Graefe. von Knuth born in Berlin. His parents both died in the early years of his life. His aunt Ottilie then took over the upbringing of Albrecht and his siblings. In 1887 he passed his Abitur at Joachimsthaler Gymnasium , then studied law for two semesters in Berlin and then in September 1887 joined a hussar regiment in Kassel. Until he contracted diphtheria , he spent a few years in the military in Potsdam, Kassel and Wilhelmshöhe, after which he asked for annual leave. He spent this on a world tour that took him to various countries in Europe, India, Java, China, Japan, Korea and North America. After his return he joined the Life Guard Hussar Regiment in Potsdam, to which he belonged as a reservist from 1900 to 1912 even after his resignation. In 1894 he took over the command of the riding school in Hanover for two years.

In 1896 he was sent to Istanbul as a diplomat. It was here that he met his future wife, Sophie von Blomberg. After the couple married in Berlin in 1897, they moved to Potsdam. In 1899 Graefe quit his military service, resumed his law studies, bought the Goldebee estate in Mecklenburg and settled there. As the owner of the manor , he was a member of the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Convention from now until 1918 .

With the beginning of the First World War , Graefe re-entered the Life Guard Hussar Regiment, with which he took part in the war. Here he last held the rank of major as battalion chief of the Emperor Alexander Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 1 and of the Jäger Regiment No. 9 . During the World War Graefe joined the Pan-German Association , where he impressed the chairman Heinrich Claß with his oratory and political skills and where he soon became one of its leading members.

Political career: rise and fall

Imperial period: Member of the German Conservative Party

In addition to his work in the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Ständetag, Graefe was involved in the German Conservative Party , for which he was a member of the Güstrow - Ribnitz constituency in the Reichstag from 1912 to 1918 . In the press he was nicknamed " Talmijunker " because he behaved as if his families belonged to the established Junkers, although his family had only entered the hereditary nobility a generation earlier . As a member of the DKP, he belonged to the Pan-German wing and criticized the weakness of the DKP parliamentary group in the Reichstag. In the July crisis he also campaigned for rapid mobilization and thus Germany's entry into the First World War. In addition, he was an employee of the newspaper Mecklenburger Warte in Wismar . Here he published various articles, also to discredit political opponents.

First years of republic: Commitment to the DNVP, member of the National Assembly and the Reichstag

Graefe spent the days around the proclamation of the republic with Kuno von Westarp , the parliamentary leader of the German Conservative Party and his political ally, at his seat in Goldebee. Two weeks later both took part in the founding of the German National People's Party (DNVP). Graefe, along with Reinhold Wulle and Wilhelm Henning , became one of the leading figures in the party's ethnic wing. It was directed internally against the conservative wing and its efforts to establish the DNVP as part of the new republican system. He agitated against Matthias Erzberger , against the demands of the Triple Entente to extradite war criminals and for the restoration of the monarchy . Although Graefe belonged to the right wing of the DNVP, he was linked by a political friendship and cooperation with the more moderate Westarp, who repeatedly tried to mediate between Graefe and the conservative voices in the party. In 1919 he moved to the Weimar National Assembly for the DNVP , where he expressed himself according to the stab in the back legend . From 1920 he sat in the Reichstag. During the second legislative period of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic he was a member of the National Socialist Freedom Party and after the breakup of the union between the Völkisch and National Socialists until 1928 he was again a member of the Reichstag for the DVFP.

The central theme of Graefe's political engagement was anti-Semitism . At the first DNVP party congress on July 6, 1919, he tried to set the new party on an anti-Semitic course, receiving support from many sides, but resistance came from the party's top bodies. In the summer of 1919, the party's 40-member executive committee was elected, and only two representatives of the Volkish wing belonged to it. Graefes political views were hardly represented in the party leadership, even if the conservative nationalists themselves increasingly approached anti-Semitism. In October, the Nationalists within the party reached that the main board passed a resolution which stated that the party is "against the domination of the particularly Judaism would turn emerges always fatal, the [...]". This went almost literally into the party program of 1920.

Conflict of the Pan-German Association with Wulle and Graefes contribution

In 1920 Graefe loudly participated in a conflict between Wulle and Heinrich Claß , the head of the Pan-German Association , which was to become the basis for splits within the national movement. Graefe accused Claß and his colleagues of being members of a Masonic lodge and said that the anti-Semitic Pan-German Association had come under “ Zionist ” control. These allegations gave the conflict between Wulle and Claß a new dimension and led to the fact that Graefe was able to gather almost the entire membership of the Pan-German Association in Mecklenburg behind him until 1922. This now had to be organized.

When Graefe, Wulle and Erich Ludendorff founded the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP) in 1922 after a conflict with the DNVP party leadership (see below) , the Deutsche Zeitung , the organ of the Pan-German Association, criticized this step as a split in the nationalist MPs. During this time Ludendorff tried several times to mediate between Claß, von Graefe and Wulle, but failed because of Graefe's uncompromising point of view, which was shaped by a paranoid, conspiracy-ideological view of the world. The Alldeutsche Verband and the Deutsche Zeitung identified the DVFP as a divider of the nationalist movement and from then on continuously criticized it.

Split of the DNVP: The Henning case and the Völkische Arbeitsgemeinschaft

In 1922, parallel to the conflict with the Pan-German Association, the differences between the conservative and the völkisch wing of the DNVP grew noticeably. These developments ultimately lead to Graefes leaving the DNVP and the establishment of the DVFP to the right of her.

The trigger for these developments was an anti-Semitic, inflammatory article by DNVP member Wilhelm Henning against Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau . Henning had attacked him in an anti-Semitic way and said that he would be "held accountable by the German people". Soon afterwards Rathenau was murdered by members of the right-wing extremist terror group Organization Consul . This prompted the DNVP leadership to want to exclude Henning from the party and parliamentary group. Graefe saw this as an attack on the volkish wing of the party as a whole and left the DNVP parliamentary group together with Wulle and Henning, albeit without turning their backs on the party.

At the same time, Graefe, Henning and Wulle founded the Völkische Arbeitsgemeinschaft , an organization within the party that was intended as a pool for people, organizations and funds for the Völkisch movement. The party leadership classified this organization as incompatible with the DNVP, whereupon Graefe proposed to lead the working group as an organization outside the party. With this offer he laid the foundation for the separation of the Völkische from the structures of the DNVP and for the split of the party.

The party leadership, in turn, asked Graefe to discontinue the working group , whereupon Graefe said he recognized the power of the " Alljudas ", who "carried the fissile bacillus, unrecognized by those who were infected by it, into this great future-oriented national development" would.

Kuno von Westarp was supposed to mediate between the völkisch-anti-Semitic wing and the party leadership. As Graefes friend and former party leader well connected with the party leadership, the party leadership saw him as suitable for mediation. However, it failed, and at the party conference held in Görlitz in October 1922 , Graefe, Wulle and Henning were expelled from the party. This sealed the split between the ethnic groups in Germany.

Foundation of the DVFP: Graefe becomes leader of a right-wing extremist and militant party

The three MPs excluded from the DNVP founded the German National Freedom Party (DVFP) on December 16, 1922 . Graefe was elected leader of this party and remained so until 1928 when Wulle succeeded him.

In contrast to the DNVP DVFP also had a so-called " Aryan paragraph ", as well as the party was working on an inner and outer revolution out of the Reichstag was by a corporative replace full-time parliament, the executive a "nationalist dictator " are left. The emancipation of the Jews should be reversed. Medium-sized companies should be given preference over corporations and speculative capital should be regulated by new stock exchange legislation. With this program, the party placed itself in the tradition of the anti-Semite parties of the imperial era. At the same time Jews were to be expropriated, exceptional courts to prevent socialist attempts, the people and the Versailles treaty to be annulled.

The DVFP was set up as a collective organization of right-wing extremist, partly militant organizations, which, in addition to individual members, should also include entire associations in order to achieve the broadest possible combination of all ethnic groups. In its basic structure it was related to the Völkische Arbeitsgemeinschaft , but in contrast to this it was designed as a party. After the Greater German Workers' Party , a North German substitute organization of the NSDAP , was banned, it joined the DVFP under the leadership of the influential Freikorpsführer Gerhard Roßbach . In addition to the Freikorps troops that Roßbach brought in, various paramilitary organizations joined in, so that DVFP had developed into an umbrella organization for anti-republican, militant forces. You were subordinate to so many troops that Colonel General von Seeckt , the then head of the Reichswehr Army Command , mentioned in a letter in February 1923 that he had talks with Graefe, Adolf Hitler and Ludendorff in the event of an armed conflict over the occupation of the Ruhr with France led to clarify whether their respective troops would submit to the army command in an emergency.

The DVFP had now become a mixture of an independent right-wing extremist party, NSDAP cover organization and umbrella organization for various militant and ethnic groups and as such - and with them Graefe and Wulle - was involved in coup attempts and femoral murders.

Prohibition of the DVFP and coup attempts with Graefes participation

In the spring of 1923, the DVFP was banned on suspicion of preparing a violent coup. The Reich Commissioner for the Supervision of Public Order also came to the conclusion that there were groups within the DVFP which, following the example of the Italian fascists, formed a soldiers' party.

On October 1, 1923, there was a coup in the garrison town of Küstrin near Berlin after a local Freikorps unit was about to be disbanded. The Küstriner putsch was put down; in the subsequent process it should be clarified, among other things, whether Graefe had traveled to Munich with Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker , the leader of the putsch, to coordinate the putsch plans with Hitler and Ludendorff. Graefe did not appear for the trial, however. According to a witness before the Prussian State Parliament's Feminist Committee, Graefe is said to have agreed with Buchrucker that the DVFP would take part in the putsch and then informed Hitler, which made the secret information so widespread that the putsch was postponed by Buchrucker for a few weeks . Buchrucker had previously tried not to include von Graefe, since he feared his "chatty".

Just a month later, Graefe and other leading figures of the DVFP took part in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch in Munich , in which he marched in the front row. According to a Freikorps member, there was the putsch slogan "For Graefe-Hitler-Ludendorff" in the DVFP, which underlines that the DVFP under Graefe was involved in plans for violent overthrow and Graefe played a prominent role for the right-wing extremists in Germany at the time.

Brief climax of power: alliance with the NSDAP, leadership of the faction in the Reichstag, break with the NSDAP

Albrecht von Graefe with Ludendorff in front of his house

After the party had been admitted again in Prussia since February 1924, it ran for several state elections in an alliance with parts of the NSDAP around Alfred Rosenberg and Gregor Straßer and joined the National Socialists as a Völkisch-Sozialer Block or Völkischer Block. This alliance divided up the constituencies, with some National Socialists later accusing them of being systematically disadvantaged by Graefe. After Ludendorff, who saw himself as the leader of the völkisch movement, had appointed Graefe as his representative in northern Germany and he had spoken on behalf of Hitler several times, Hitler declared that no one could refer to him any more. With this he wanted to prevent becoming part of a Volkisch-National Socialist triumvirate , with Graefe and Ludendorff at the head (and Hitler in custody).

This alliance received many votes in the elections, also because of the unpopularity of the recently adopted Dawes Plan . In Mecklenburg-Schwerin it reached 19.3 percent, in Bavaria it drew level with the SPD (17.1 percent). In the Reichstag elections in May 1924 it reached 6.5 percent and 32 seats.

Members of the NSFP at the opening session of the Reichstag on May 27, 1924, from left to right: Konrad Schliephacke , Albrecht von Graefe, unknown, Ernst Röhm , Heinrich Blume

At the suggestion of Ludendorff's National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP), the joint parliamentary group called itself a concession to the National Socialists, even though they only provided ten of the 32 MPs. Ludendorff appointed Graefe "as his confidant" to the faction leader.

From various letters that were sent by leaders of the NSDAP, it emerges that Graefe often tried to systematically disadvantage the NSDAP in the distribution of constituencies. Furthermore, he allegedly alleged, misleadingly, that NSDAP associations should join the DVFP and that the NSDAP members had to submit to him on Ludendorff's orders. In a letter from June 1924, Hitler wrote that he had been negotiating with Graefe about the merger of the DVFP and the NSDAP, which, however, had not yet come to a positive result.

In May 1924, Ludendorff announced the merger of the parties to form the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP). However, the plan failed. In a short time, more and more National Socialists left the NSFP, Rosenberg accused the DVFP of only representing a small upper class. In the subsequent elections, the DVFP lost more and more votes, so that in February 1925 the “Reich leadership” - and with it Graefe - resigned.

DVFB: reservoir without success, conflict with National Socialists and decline

Only two days later this former “Reich leadership” signed an appeal for the foundation of the German National Freedom Movement . This constituted itself on February 25, 1925 in Berlin and gave itself a Reichsleitung in which, next to other nationalist Reichstag deputies like Wulle, Henning and Reventlow also Graefe sits again. By the end of 1925, this new DVFB gradually joined all of the larger nationalist associations with the exception of the NSDAP, so that at the end of 1925 the DVFB was almost as strong as the DVFP in 1922 with 27,500 members.

On March 11, 1926, Graefe published an open letter to Hitler in which he criticized Hitler for the split in the Völkisch movement. The occasion was an attack by the NSDAP on Graefe in the Hofbräuhaus on February 24 and the hostility of Hitler declared in the Völkischer Beobachter on the same day . Graefe made it clear in the letter that he only recognized Hitler's aberrations in these events and that he continued to hope for a future common political approach.

Meanwhile, the large membership of the DVFB was not translated into votes at the polls: After the new DVFB had not achieved a single mandate in the elections from late 1926 to early 1927, Ernst Graf zu Reventlow criticized the workforce for having received too little attention in the election campaign so far . Graefe agreed that he was ostensibly right, but said that the party should not advertise for the workers directly, but through the other classes and professions. After this rejection of Reventlow, he switched to the NSDAP, since his “social revolutionary endeavors within the DVFP have no prospect of success”, as the old class arena prevailed there. He further accused the DVFP of representing a "conservative large landowner" direction. Shortly thereafter, Graefe published an article in which he viewed the nationalist movement as a means of restoring the monarchy. Another goal he mentioned was the creation of a professional organization. Shortly afterwards he called the NSDAP a " national Bolshevik current, whose main exponents are Goebbels , Strasser and Reventlow". Graefe finally broke with the Nazis, who were previously closely allied. After Reventlow, Stöhr and Fritsch resigned, Wilhelm Kube was expelled, and the parliamentary group broke up. Overall, almost half of the members resigned from the DVFP, and entire regional associations switched to the NSDAP. The DVFB was Smudge and Graefe then still the "People's Movement of rome redefined free Germans," was thus tried an anti-Catholic and from the Protestant northern Germany antiultramontanistischen to lead the election campaign.

Despite Graefe's recent hostile statements to the NSDAP, he applied to the Reichstag in 1927 to lift the ban on speaking that had been imposed on Hitler. The motion was reformulated in a committee and accepted by the Reichstag on March 27, 1927. The Bavarian government responded by granting Hitler full freedom of speech under certain conditions, such as the promise not to pursue any illegal goals. Graefes initiative therefore led to Hitler being able to engage in full political agitation again.

In May 1928, however, the DVFB again did not win a single mandate with this strategy as a Völkisch-national bloc, while the NSDAP, which was still defeated in 1924, achieved twelve seats. Wulle took over the management of the DVFB from Graefe and Graefe sank into insignificance. As a result, he retired to his manor in Goldebee. There he died on April 17, 1933, a few months after Hindenburg had handed over power to Hitler.

family

In August 1897 he married Sophie, b. Freiin von Blomberg (born October 6, 1874, Detmold; † January 11, 1938) in Berlin. The couple had several children including:

  • Knut (March 22, 1899 - December 25, 1955)
  • Axel (born July 25, 1900; † 1946)
  • Hans (February 12, 1903 - April 27, 1954)
  • Blida (born December 18, 1905 - † May 16, 1999)

Publications

  • The indictment against the revolutionary government . Speech by the Member of Parliament Albrecht von Graefe in the National Assembly on July 25, 1919. In: “ Daily Rundschau ”, July 1919
  • The settlement with Erzberger . Speeches by the German national delegate Albrecht von Graefe in the national assembly in Weimar on July 25, 1919 and the German national delegate Georg Schultz in the national assembly in Weimar on 28 July. German National Font Distribution Agency, Berlin 1919
  • The gravedigger of the German Imperial Army . German National Font Distribution Agency, Berlin 1919
  • The revision of Versailles . German National Font Distribution Agency, Berlin 1920
  • Back then in Weimar in 1919. A look behind the scenes. The betrayal of the German people. Memories from the National Assembly - an appeal to all Germans . German letterpress u. Verlag AG, Berlin 1929
  • In harmony with German pride and humility before God . Reply of a German Christian to Ms. Mathilde Ludendorff 's "Redemption of Jesus Christ". Rethra-Verlag, Rostock 1931

literature

Web links

Commons : Albrecht von Graefe (politician)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joachim Bohlmann: The German Conservative Party at the end of the Empire: Standstill and change in a declining organization . Greifswald 2011, p. 125 ( d-nb.info ).
  2. ↑ a b c d Jutta Herde: The descendants of the von Graefe and Graefe families . In: Deutsche Ophthalmologische Gesellschaft (Ed.): Visus and Vision 150 years of DOG . Biermann Verlag, Munich 2007, p. 327-330 ( dog.org [PDF]).
  3. ^ Jackisch, Barry .: The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham 2012, ISBN 978-1-4094-2762-9 , pp. 94 .
  4. ↑ Tim B. Müller: Völkisch and anti-democratic thinking before 1933. (PDF) Retrieved on August 14, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Imperial Statistical Office (Ed.): The Reichstag elections of 1912 . Issue 2. Berlin: Verlag von Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1913, p. 101 (Statistics of the German Reich, Vol. 250).
  6. ↑ a b c d Daniela Gasteiger: From Friends to Foes - Count Kuno von Westap and the Transformation of the German Right . In: Jackisch, Barry (Ed.): The Pan-German League and Radical Nationalist Politics in Interwar Germany, 1918–39. Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Farnham 2012, ISBN 978-1-4094-2762-9 , pp. 56-59 .
  7. ↑ a b c Werner Jochmann: National Socialism and Revolution: Origin and History of the NSDAP in Hamburg 1922-1933. Documents (=  publications by the Research Center for the History of National Socialism in Hamburg ). European publishing company.
  8. ↑ Anneliese Thimme: Escape into the myth. The German National People's Party and the defeat of 1918 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969, p. 76 .
  9. ↑ a b c Werner Liebe: The German National People's Party 1918–1924 . Ed .: Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties in Bonn. tape 8 . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1956, p. 62-71 .
  10. ^ A b Stefan Breuer: The radical right in Germany 1871-1945: A political history of ideas . Reclam, Philipp, Ditzingen 2010, ISBN 3-15-018776-1 , p. 248-256 .
  11. ↑ a b c d e f Stefan Breuer : The people in Germany: Empire and Weimar Republic . Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 3-534-21354-8 , pp. 185-206 .
  12. ↑ Irmela Nagel: Fememorde und Fememord Trials in the Weimar Republic . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-412-06290-1 , p. 45 .
  13. ^ Emil Julius Gumbel : Conspirators: on the history and sociology of the German nationalist secret societies 1918-1924 . 2nd Edition. Verlag Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-88423-003-4 , p. 110 .
  14. ↑ a b Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememorde: a milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic . Metropol, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 , pp. 309-310, 332 .
  15. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: The German National Freedom Party (DvFP) and the Grütte case. (PDF) Retrieved on August 14, 2020 .
  16. ^ Ernst Piper: History of National Socialism: From the beginnings to today . bpb, Bonn July 24, 2018, p. 64-65 .
  17. ^ Albrecht von Graefe: Open letter to Adolf Hitler . No. 68 . München-Augsburger Abendzeitung, Munich March 12, 1926, p. 1-2 .
  18. ↑ Harold J. Gordon: Hitler putsch 1923: Power struggle in Bavaria 1923-1924. Bernard and Graefe, Frankfurt (am Main) 1971, ISBN 3-7637-5108-4 , pp. 517 .
personal data
SURNAME Graefe, Albrecht von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Graefe, Karl Albrecht von (full name); Graefe-Goldebee, Albrecht von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DVFP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1933
Place of death Goldebee