Andrea Ellendt

Andrea Ellendt (born November 10, 1890 as Andrea Stallforth in Parral (Chihuahua) ; † probably May 7, 1931 in Mexico ), also known as "Miss Ellendt", was a German-Mexican, anti-Semitic agitator of the völkisch and National Socialist movement in Mittel - and Lower Franconia , especially in the Main Triangle , and was "one of the most active propagandists of the German Volkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund ".

Life

At the time of her appearance in Franconia, Ellendt was surrounded by a “dense network of rumors and speculations”: She is said to have been the Mexican wife of a German spy executed in America, the widow of a fallen naval officer or a German expatriate from Mexico who was born in Bremen. It is certain that Ellendt was born in Mexico as the daughter of a German couple - Bernhard Emil Stallforth (1842–1893) and Anita Bonaventura (née Stein, 1859–1936) . Her grandfather was the German consul general in Mexico. Her husband, the Prussian lieutenant captain Renatus Ellendt, died of pneumonia in October 1918.

Munich 1920–1922

After moving to the German Reich, Ellendt appeared as a speaker at many national and national socialist gatherings. Ellendt, also characterized as a German national “itinerant preacher”, was, according to Michael H. Kater, “probably the first [woman] who at that time was able to publicly and successfully advertise Hitler on a large scale”.

On October 29, 1920 Ellendt spoke at a NSDAP meeting with around 350 visitors in the Mathildensaal in Munich , where the first to speak was Adolf Hitler , who, according to a recorder from the Reichswehr , “ spoke about the foreign and hate speech propaganda of our enemies and [nd] Position on the League of Nations ”. According to a report by the Political Intelligence Service of the Munich Police Headquarters , she gave a speech on November 5, 1920 at an NSDAP meeting led by Anton Drexler with 2,500 visitors in the Kindl-Keller in Munich, at which Hitler spoke against the League of Nations.

On May 11, 1922, when Ellendt was living on Wotanstrasse in Munich at the time, she declared in a public event organized by the NSDAP in the Bürgerbräukeller :

“I appeal to you all: show courage, join forces more closely, time demands it! We demand the elimination and elimination of the Jews. We cannot fight the Jews with words, we must rather take action. But you are all called to this, all of you who are here. Be united when it comes to vengeance on the Jews! "

The historian Mathias Rösch cites Ellendt's utterances as an example of the “incessant flood of prejudices and distortions of facts, packed in extremely offensive and violent language, with which the Jews were threatened”, up to and including the “call for lynching”, as they were until 1923 for “ normal “everyday life in Munich.

Main triangle 1922–1923

In August 1922 Ellendt moved to Kitzingen ; there and in the surrounding towns she immediately developed a position as a speaker , initiated by the dentist and later NSDAP Gauleiter Otto Hellmuth . With several speeches a day, in some cases, she gave “the right-wing radical movement in Lower and Middle Franconia a decisive impetus,” according to historian Roland Flade.

During her speeches in the Main Triangle, Ellendt surrounded herself with armed "storm troops" of around 80 men who were responsible for protecting the hall and using force against dissenters and Jews. The storm troops were preceded by a standard-bearer with a swastika flag ; some of them were accompanied by cyclists with black, white and red armbands. Ellendt wore uniform-like clothing, consisting of a long black coat with a wide leather belt and a steel helmet-shaped hat. At the events with Ellendt, donations were collected and further "storm troops" were recruited.

Announcement of an Ellendt lecture in the Kitzinger Zeitung on September 6, 1922

In Kitzingen, between August and December 1922, Ellendt gave several speeches in the Colosseum , at that time one of the largest halls in the city. Topics were “The sin against the people”, “Are we Germans really that bad? Or do we not rather form a block of the moral and decent? ”And - exclusively for women over 18 years -“ High folk thoughts ”. At the end of October she appeared together with Alfred Roth as a speaker at the consecration of the swastika banner of the local group of the Schutz- und Trutzbund in Marktbreit . On November 7th, in the context of an Ellendt speech in Hohenfeld, there was a knife fight with several injured.

Ellendt's appearance in Würzburg on December 17, 1922 was secured by a large police presence. There were tumults for which the BVP newspaper Volksblatt and the bourgeois-conservative General-Anzeiger held the Social Democrats present responsible. The Volksblatt called Ellendt a "fiery and convincing, extremely serious speaker". The SPD newspaper Volksfreund saw a deliberately designed "clumsy provocation" by the social democratic workers and accused the Bavarian State Police , under the command of Heinrich Gareis , of carrying out the orders of the "swastika people". The Würzburg trade unionist Maria Huth was an eyewitness to the Ellendt appearance:

“Ellendt told her sums that we are just so badly bonded and that we must be free. And then she said: 'I am proud to say that I am a Bremen merchant's daughter from Mexico.' A worker was near me who shouted: 'I want to know how many diapers she washed!' That is what men always said back then when a woman excelled like that. "

For Altenschönbach , Ellendt's appearance in a church is documented, where she spoke at the inauguration of a memorial plaque for those who died in the World War . A meeting in Stadelschwarzach was opened by the Protestant pastor of Bimbach , who announced to any troublemakers that there were “enough fists to calm down”.

On behalf of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, Ellendt gave a speech in early May 1923 at the funeral of Daniel Sauer, a Völkisch who had been shot in disputes with Social Democrats during the May celebrations in Sickershausen . Sauer later advanced to become the “ martyr ” of the National Socialists. According to contemporary witness reports, he was probably accidentally killed by a shot from within his own ranks. On September 9 and 10, 1923, Ellendt took part in the Patriotic Day in Kitzingen, an early demonstration of power by the Völkisch and NSDAP, during which "outbreaks of hatred" occurred during a move in front of a house inhabited by Jews.

Ellendt's appearances are also known from Aschaffenburg , from Coburg on the German Day on October 14th and 15th, 1922 and from the area around Lichtenfels around the turn of the year 1922/1923.

Reactions from the state

Very quickly - mostly without success - bans on speaking against Ellendt and bans on assembly against her appearances were imposed, and criminal proceedings were initiated. On October 11, 1922, the district president of Lower Franconia stated in a letter to the districts that Ellendt's lectures had a “strongly anti-Jewish character” and were likely to “cause lively concern in part of the population”. In addition, there are increasing indications that Ellendt uses idioms that are calls for criminal acts and violate the Republic Protection Act. In Würzburg, the city council banned events with Ellendt twice. The second ban was lifted by District President Julius von Henle , against which the Würzburg branch of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (CV) protested. In a letter to the CV, Henle advised disregarding Ellendt appearances and avoiding anything that could “feed the current anti-Semitic movement [...] further”. In Kitzingen, after Julius Streicher appeared , the local Jewish community applied for a ban on events in which “inflammatory racial hatred” was to be expected. A ban issued by the city council in May 1922 was not applied by the mayor against Ellendt. In order to be able to evade impending bans, Otto Hellmuth founded the “Hörer-Verband-Ellandt”, whose membership cards were available free of charge at the ticket office for events that were declared as “closed”.

A trial against Ellendt for violating the Republic Protection Act ended with an acquittal in March 1923: the subject of the proceedings was a speech by Ellendt in Dettelbach in October 1922. In court, Ellendt denied having reviled the murdered German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau . Since the exact wording of the Dettelbach speech was not known, the public prosecutor applied for an acquittal. Several witnesses appeared in court; the pastor from Bimbach explained that Ellendt's events achieved “great success in the moral renewal of the people”. A magistrate from Scheinfeld described Ellendt as "a German woman as one could only wish for anywhere".

Whereabouts

Even before the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch , Ellendt disappeared from the political stage again. The later NSDAP Gauleiter Albert Krebs said in his memoirs after the Second World War that he had been told that Ellendt had been an "agent". Krebs calls Ellendt "one of the strangest phenomena" of the early National Socialist movement. She had a "ravishing eloquence" that affected farmers, citizens of small towns and educated listeners alike, relying on "the invocation of emotions and the radiance of her feminine aura". Financially, Ellendt was completely independent, said Krebs.

The historian Roland Flade believes it likely that internal disputes contributed to Ellendt's disappearance: Gustav Vierkötter, the chairman of the Würzburg event, testified to the Kitzingen police in February 1923 that Ellendt had asked him to eliminate two of her personal enemies. Ellendt joined the military association "Frankenland" founded by Otto Hellmuth in April 1923, which was apparently supposed to organize the "storm troops" in the Main Triangle more tightly. According to Flade, Hellmuth wanted to turn away from the NSDAP and the Schutz- und Trutzbund and join the Free Corps Leader Hermann Ehrhardt with his Bund Wiking . Flade refers to statements made by Wilhelm Holzwarth , who was head of the NSDAP local group in Scheinfeld in 1923 and was one of the two people who were supposed to murder Vierkötter on behalf of Ellendt. Holzwarth resigned from the party in 1928 and from then on used the Uffenheimer Tageblatt in his possession to reveal internal information about the NSDAP. In 1930, Holzwarth accused Hellmuth and Ellendt of having "aborted Hitler from the Nazi local groups in the Kitzinger district" and of having covertly linked up with Ehrhardt. From the point of view of the Nazi Party, loyal to Hitler, Ellendt was “actually a kind of 'spy'”, according to Flade.

Ellendt probably died in 1931, after having remarried shortly before, from complications of a miscarriage.

literature

• Roland Flade: "It may be that we need a dictatorship". Right-wing radicalism and anti-democracy in the Weimar Republic using the example of Würzburg . Pupille, Würzburg 1983, ISBN 3-924303-00-2 , pp. 36-49.

Web links

• " 'Bavarian Mussolini's' cause in Franconia is Led by Woman said to be American ", New York Times December 14, 1922 (quoted in the Nizkor Project )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Andrea Stallforth at FamilySearch; Monika Yost: Hans Merklin ∞ Andrea Stallforth / Ellendt ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com (Retrieved August 27, 2013). 
2. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X , p. 427, note 39.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Flade, dictatorship , p. 36.
4. ^ Rainer Hambrecht: The rise of the NSDAP in Middle and Upper Franconia (1925–1933) . Nuremberg City Archives, Nuremberg 1976, ISBN 3-87432-039-1 , p. 35.
5. ↑ Michael H. Kater: Women in the Nazi Movement. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 31 (1983), Issue 2 (PDF; 9.0 MB), p. 211.
6. ↑ Reichswehr report hs., HStA Munich, Section IV, Groups Kdo. 4, Vol. 46/8; quoted from Eberhard Jäckel (ed.): Hitler, all records 1905-1924. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-421-01997-5 , p. 255, note 3; Text printed by Ernst Deuerlein: Hitler's entry into politics and the Reichswehr. in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , Volume 7 (1959), Issue 2 (PDF; 2.3 MB), Doc. 30, pp. 224f.
7. ↑ PND report masch., StA Munich, Pol. Dir. Mü 6698, Bl. 249ff., Formerly HStA Munich, Section I, Special Tax I 1478; s. Jäckel Hitler , p. 257, note 3.
8. ^ Police report for the assembly PND 363. HStA Munich, Dept. I, Sonderabgabe I, 1480; quoted in Lohalm, Radikalismus , p. 225.
9. ^ Mathias Rösch: The Munich NSDAP 1925-1933: An investigation into the internal structure of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic . Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-486-56670-9 , p. 410 f.
10. ^ Elmar Schwinger: From Kitzingen to Izbica. Rise and catastrophe of the Main Franconian Israelite Community of Kitzingen. (= Writings of the Kitzingen City Archives , Volume 9; Ma'ayān , Volume 6) Sauerbrey, Kitzingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-924694-21-0 , pp. 125–127.
11. ^ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 135.
12. ↑ Flade, dictatorship , p. 41.
13. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 135; Flade, dictatorship , p. 41.
14. ↑ ^{a b} Quoted in Flade, Diktatur , p. 44.
15. ↑ Quoted in Flade, Diktatur , p. 43.
16. ^ Report of the Gerolzhofen district office , quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 128.
17. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 138 f.
18. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 135, 147.
19. ^ Flade, dictatorship , p. 37
20. ↑ Hambrecht, Aufstieg , p. 33.
21. ↑ Joachim Albrecht: The avant-garde of the “Third Reich”. The Coburg NSDAP during the Weimar Republic 1922–1933. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-631-53751-4 , p. 89.
22. ^ Letter from the District President dated October 11, 1922, quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 126.
23. ↑ Quoted in Flade, Diktatur , p. 41 f.
24. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 202 f.
25. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 136.
26. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 205 f .; Flade, dictatorship , p. 45 f.
27. ^ Albert Krebs: Tendencies and shapes of the NSDAP. Memories of the early days of the party . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1959, pp. 202f.
28. ↑ Flade, Diktatur , pp. 49, 54–57.