Andreas Schmidt (ethnic group leader)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Andreas Schmidt, around 1941

Andreas Schmidt (born May 24, 1912 in Donnersmarkt , Transylvania , Austria-Hungary ; † in Spring 1948 in Vorkuta , Soviet Union ) was a Transylvanian-Saxon politician, member of the SS . As " ethnic group leader " from November 1940 he was in front of the German ethnic group in Romania (DViR). He was largely responsible for bringing the Romanian German organizations into line and for recruiting ethnic German men into units of the Waffen SS .

Life

Schmidt was born in 1912 in Donnersmarkt ( Rum . : Mănărade , Hungarian : Monora , Monorád ) in today's Alba district. According to the Donnersmarkt monograph, he attended the "Stefan Ludwig Roth" high school in Mediasch from 1923 to 1929 . He then went to Cluj and started a law degree , which he, however, did not finish. He then volunteered for the Romanian army . During this time there was a power struggle in the organizations of the Transylvanian Saxons in Transylvania. The church-conservative forces around Hans Otto Roth initially faced the Nazi-minded group around Fritz Fabritius . In 1935 an even more radical group around Alfred Bonfert and Waldemar Gust split off from this . Due to political pressure and bans on the part of the Romanian state against these groups, especially the young sympathizers of the Nazi ideology gathered in a newly founded organization, the National Labor Front (NAF). Andreas Schmidt was one of them.

In 1938 he went to Berlin to attend the agricultural college . There he got to know leading National Socialists and his steep career began. He married Christa Berger, the daughter of Gottlob Berger , the head of the SS main office . Heinrich Himmler was the best man. He was then appointed SS-Untersturmführer and sent back to Romania in October 1939, where King Karl II had taken power. Schmidt was deployed from Berlin as a representative of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi), in opposition to the then "ethnic group leader" Wolfram Bruckner . In the spring of 1940, following a call from his father-in-law in Berlin, he succeeded in recruiting 1,000 volunteers from among the Romanian Germans for the SS, while the NS ethnic group leader in Hungary, Franz Anton Basch, refused to do this in his area. In April 1940, he intervened in a dispute between two rival ethnic group organizations in the Banat by helping the radical faction to get through.

In August 1940, Transylvania was divided in the Second Vienna Arbitration , and the NSDAP of the German ethnic group in Romania took over the sole representation of the ethnic Germans living in the Romanian part. On September 27, 1940, Schmidt was appointed “ethnic group leader” in Romania by the VoMi leader, SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz , and was now the most powerful man among the Romanian Germans. It soon became apparent that he was purely a careerist and was ready to carry out any orders from the higher authorities in the German Reich , even if these were associated with risks and disadvantages for his compatriots. When the Iron Guard rebelled against the Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu in January 1941 , he was able to further distinguish himself and present himself in Berlin as the most important contact person in the country. Despite the cooperation with the fascist Antonescu regime, Andreas Schmidt subsequently pleaded for a strong Hungary, which should control the region under the leadership of the south- east European ethnic Germans. In internal documents he described the chaos and power struggles within the Romanians as racially determined.

Schmidt with party comrades when saying goodbye to 1,300 "SS volunteers", 1943.

However, further plans in this direction were prevented by the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union in June 1941, when Hitler had to rely on Antonescu's help. Andreas Schmidt gained importance again when he spoke out in favor of further recruiting into the SS among the Romanian Germans. On May 12, 1943, when the German troops were already on the retreat on the Eastern Front, an agreement was finally reached between Hitler and Antonescu. The Romanian German soldiers who had been serving in the Romanian army up to then were given short-term leave to give them the opportunity to volunteer for the German troops. The local representatives of the NS ethnic group supported this with appropriate propaganda . After all, around 50,000 Romanian Germans, mainly from Transylvania and the Banat, took advantage of this option, which corresponded to around 80 percent. The rest were then called up again into the Romanian army (see Foreign Volunteers of the Waffen SS ).

In the meantime, however, Schmidt had lost important supporters in the German Reich due to his repeated criticism of Antonescu and his own autocratic leadership style. The SD even accused him of having destroyed all comradeship and of having introduced a Byzantine system of intrigue. In the summer of 1944 the Red Army finally advanced into the Carpathian region, and Antonescu was overthrown in Romania on August 23, 1944 . Immediately afterwards, King Michael I declared war on the German Empire. In this situation, Andreas Schmidt tried to organize an armed resistance, which was prevented by the rapid advance of the Soviet army. As part of Operation Regulus , Schmidt was shot down on February 9, 1945 with the legionnaire Constantin Stoicănescu on a flight from Oradea . He was captured and taken to the Soviet Union . There he died in the spring of 1948 in the Soviet camp " 1 Kapitalnaia " in Vorkuta in the north of the Komi Republic . The historian Paul Milata suspects that some prisoners, on the instructions of the camp administration, killed Schmidt with axes.

In the Soviet occupation zone , Schmidts' writings, published by Krafft & Drotleff in Sibiu , National Socialist Volkstumskampf (1942 and 1943), We educate the new sex! (1943) and The victory of socialism in Europe (1944) added to the list of literature to be discarded.

literature

Web links

Commons : Andreas Schmidt (Volksgruppenführer)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Schmidt: Thunder market in Transylvania. Family book with the pedigree , publishing house of the Transylvanian Foundation, Munich, 2001.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Spiegel-Schmidt, Lóránt Tilkovszky, Gerhard Seewann , Norbert Spannenberger : files of the people's court process against Franz A. Basch, ethnic group leader. Oldenbourg 1999, ISBN 3-486-56485-4 , p. 211.
  3. ↑ Dieter Schlesak: Capesius, the Auschwitz pharmacist ; Dietz, Bonn 2006, ISBN 3-8012-0369-7 .
  4. ^ Norbert Spannenberger: The People's League of Germans in Hungary 1938–1945 under Horthy and Hitler . Oldenburg 2005, ISBN 3-486-57728-X (page 309).
  5. ^ Mariana Hausleitner : The Romanization of Bukowina , Oldenbourg 2001, ISBN 3-486-56585-0 , doi: 10.1086 / ahr / 107.3.969 , p. 326.
  6. ↑ a b Klaus Popa : The attempts to rule by the “ethnic group leader” and power man Andreas Schmidt and the German ethnic group in Romania (1940-1944) as a prime example of Nazi fanatization and instrumentalization .
  7. ↑ Florian Roth: Dr. Hans Otto Roth (1890–1953) - His grandson's reflections on the most important Romanian German politician of the 20th century. (Hans-Otto Roth MS.pdf, 415.4 kB)
  8. ^ William Totok , Elena-Irina Macovei: De la SD la Securitate. Biografia secretă a lui Fritz Cloos. In: Caietele CNSAS No. 14, 2/2014, pp. 201-219.
  9. ^ Paul Milata : The curriculum vitae of the "ethnic group leader" Andreas Schmidt . Journal for Transylvanian Cultural Studies, 1/2005.
  10. ^ Paul Milata: Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu: Romanian Germans in the Waffen-SS. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar 2007. ISBN 3-41213-806-1 , p. 342.
  11. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. Zentralverlag, East Berlin 1946, letter S, pages 347-414.
  12. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of literature to be sorted out. First addendum. Zentralverlag, East Berlin 1947, letter S, pages 127–148.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Transylvanian-Saxon politician, member of the SS and head of the German ethnic group in Romania
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Thunder Market , Transylvania , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH between March 1948 and June 1948
Place of death Vorkuta , Soviet Union