Anton Graf von Arco on Valley

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Anton von Arco as a soldier during the First World War

Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley (born February 5, 1897 in St. Martin im Innkreis , † June 29, 1945 in Salzburg ) was a German-Austrian nobleman who was killed by the assassination attempt on Kurt Eisner on February 21, 1919 , the first Prime Minister of the Free State of Bavaria .

Origin and education

Anton Graf von Arco auf Valley was born as the son of the Bavarian officer Maximilian Graf Arco-Valley (1849–1911) and his wife Emmy Freiin von Oppenheim (1869–1957) from the Oppenheim banking family. After passing the Abitur exams at the Royal Humanistic Gymnasium in Passau during the war , he joined the Royal Bavarian Infantry Body Regiment and rose to lieutenant there. After the war he started at the University of Munich , the trade law to study.

Assassination attempt on Kurt Eisner

On 21 February 1919 shot of Arco the former with two revolver shots Prime Minister Kurt Eisner ( USPD ), who after the November Revolution of 1918 in Munich by the Assembly of Workers 'and Soldiers' Councils (November 8, 1918) for the first Premier of the Free State of Bavaria elected was. Eisner was on his way to the state parliament , where he wanted to offer his resignation after the state election was lost .

Arco was part of the anti-Semitic Thule society . He was excluded from this because of his mother's Jewish origins. The English historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke writes that he was "upset about this and wanted to show his national convictions through the murder [of Kurt Eisner]".

"Eisner is a Bolshevik, he is a Jew , he is not German, he does not feel German, undermines all patriotic thinking and feeling, is a traitor."

- Count Anton von Arco on Valley

Alternatively, connections to the monarchists were attributed to him, the King Ludwig III. wanted to start again. He was also a member of the KBSt.V. Rhaetia Munich , who represented Bavarian separatism and only accepts Catholic Bavarians.

Over the years there have been several indications that von Arco may have been part of a conspiracy. During the investigation, a witness stated that Arco was drawn as an assassin among soldiers loyal to the monarchy. In the 1960s, the nobleman Karl Leon Du Moulin-Eckart told a Munich lawyer that he was a participant in a meeting of noble World War II officers in Munich, during which Arco was selected as a shooter by lot. The historian Thomas Weber received identical information from a relative of the officer Michael Freiherr von Godin, who also took part in the First World War . Furthermore, it was previously unknown that at Christmas 1920 von Arco had given Eisner's widow the high sum of 60,000 marks through a Jewish lawyer from Munich.

Consequences and punishment

Immediately after the attack, Arco was critically injured by gunshots by Eisner's companions (a shot in the throat had caused bleeding, which made it impossible to breathe properly). Surgical treatment in the form of an immediate splitting of the neck muscles was carried out by Ferdinand Sauerbruch , who - because of his refusal to deliver the newly operated patient to the Revolutionary Committee - was subsequently arrested and almost sentenced to death. About an hour after the attack, the bar waiter Alois Lindner , a member of the workers 'and soldiers' council, fell into the Bavarian state parliament and shot Interior Minister Erhard Auer ( SPD ), whom he suspected of being the author of the murder; In the following exchange of fire, the Conservative MP Heinrich Osel and Major Paul Ritter von Jahreiß were also fatally hit. Almost two months after Eisner's death, the Soviet Republic was founded in Bavaria , which was violently suppressed by the Reichswehr and Freikorps units in early May 1919 .

According to Sauerbruch's autobiography, his senior physician Jehn succeeded - after the revolutionaries fetched Arco from the clinic while they were detaining Sauerbruch in Haidhausen - to transfer Arco to the psychiatric clinic with forged papers, where he was hidden until the Munich council government was broken up .

At the beginning of 1920, Arco was charged with murder before a people's court , i.e. a special court that had been introduced by the Eisner government in order to be able to try political offenders more quickly and was sentenced to death on January 16. However, the presiding judge Georg Neithardt , who was later to lead the Hitler trial , stated in his reasoning that he did not deprive the perpetrator of the civil rights and that “the behavior of the politically underage man does not favor low-mindedness, but ardent love his people and fatherland "sprang from. Just one day later, Justice Minister Ernst Müller-Meiningen ( DDP ) pardoned Arco because of the above-mentioned motives ; the death penalty was converted into an honorable life imprisonment .

The pardon was met with very controversial public opinion and led to a deepening of political differences in Bavaria. At the University of Munich in particular, there were violent unrest among the student body with riots, lecture disruptions (including anti-Semitic components) and evening demonstrations, in which the sociologist Max Weber, who teaches there, played a key role. The conflict was widely discussed in the local press.

The assassin served his sentence from January 1920 in the fortress Landsberg am Lech , of which he was the first and for a long time the only prisoner. He was allowed to go out and receive visits at will; During the day he worked as an intern on a neighboring estate. It is not known whether there was a meeting with Adolf Hitler , who was imprisoned there from April 1, 1924, but it is unlikely due to the short overlap period and the lack of other information. On April 13, 1924, he was released because of “ punishment interruption” without, as is usually the case, given a probation period . In 1925 he published his book From five years of fortress custody in Regensburg . In 1927, on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, his final amnesty followed .

Next life

Arco no longer played a major role in the public perception of the Weimar Republic. First he worked as an editor for the newspaper Bayerisches Vaterland ; later as director of the South German Lufthansa, which was financed from Reich funds, from which he left in early 1930. Politically, Arco has been one of the most radical members of the monarchist- federalist wing of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) since his imprisonment . He was awarded honorary membership by the Straubing branch of the Bavarian Homeland and Royal Association.

Under the National Socialist regime , Arco was viewed as a staunch federalist and rather suspicious because of his Jewish grandparents, although his anti-leftist act of 1919 was still viewed positively. On March 13, 1933, he was taken into protective custody because, referring to Hitler's centralized domestic policy, he had remarked that he could shoot someone else just as well as Eisner. The National Socialist party press then embarked on hateful tirades: "If our Führer had even been twisted a hair in the attempted murder of the Jew Count Arco-Oppenheimer - no Jew in Germany would have survived the other day." Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria , released in the same year against the assurance not to do anything against Hitler, remained under observation.

Family grave Arco on the Kalvarienberg in Sankt Martin im Innkreis

On July 10, 1934, Arco-Valley married Maria-Gabrielle von Arco-Zinneberg (1910–1987) in Munich. The couple had five children between 1935 and 1943.

After the failed Stauffenberg assassination attempt , Arco was taken prisoner again. After he had been imprisoned for most of the time in a large labor education camp in Schörgenhub near Linz , he was transferred to Munich for an operation before the end of the war. Shortly after the end of the war, Arco died at the age of 48: On June 29, 1945, while overtaking a horse-drawn vehicle near Salzburg , his car collided with an oncoming vehicle of the American army. While two passengers survived the accident injured, he died at the scene of the accident due to a chest bruise. He was buried in Sankt Martin im Innkreis in the burial place of the Counts of Arco on the Calvary .

Publications

  • From five years of imprisonment. Historical-political considerations about Central Europe of the German nation. GJManz, Regensburg 1925; 157 pages

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Munzinger archive - entry
  2. Hermann Gilbhard: The Thule Society. From the occult mummery to the swastika. Kiessling Verlag, Munich 1994. ISBN 3-930423-00-6
  3. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: The Occult Roots of National Socialism . 3. Edition. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, p. 131
  4. Quoted from Volker Ullrich : Mord in München. In: Die Zeit , No. 9/2009, p. 92.
  5. Münchner Merkur , number 40, weekend 16./17. February 2019, pages 12 and 13
  6. ^ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff: That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; cited: Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, pp. 245-253.
  7. ^ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff: That was my life. Pp. 249-252.
  8. See in detail Max Weber: Briefe 1918-120. Ed. By Gerd Krumeich and M. Rainer Lepsius . 2nd half volume ( Max Weber Complete Edition . Volume II / 10, 2, Tübingen 2012, 893-912 with the editorial explanations and references to Weber's multiple explanations of the incidents and his attitude to the conflict. From this see in particular: Sachliche (allegedly : “Political”) Comments on January 19, 1920 on the Arco case, in: MWG I / 16, Tübingen 1988, 268-273 and: Declaration on the Arco case of January 23, 1920, in: Ibid., 274-276). Weber criticized both Arco's pardon and the attitude of nationalist students. Internally he raised allegations against the university management and declared that he himself “as a minister” had the assassin shot “with all sympathy [!]” (MWG II / 10, 2, 895; see also 900, where he said of Arcos “excellent behavior “Speaks, as well as 911). On January 29, Weber had to justify himself to the academic senate of the university for his criticism of the nationalist students; for this he was blamed indirectly.
  9. ^ Max Hirschberg : Jew and Democrat: Memoirs of a Munich lawyer 1883 to 1939 . ISBN 3-486-56367-X , p. 123
  10. Erhard R. Wiehn, Werner Simsohn: Jew hostility in the newspaper. Life, suffering in the Nazi state, consequences (1933–1945) . Konstanz 2000. p. 15
  11. Martin Broszat u. a .: Bavaria in the Nazi era , volume 6. Oldenbourg-Verlag, 1983, p. 73
  12. Münchner Merkur , number 40, weekend 16./17. February 2019, pp. 12 and 13
  13. Ralf Höller: The beginning that was an end. The revolution in Bayern 1918-19 (=  build paperbacks . No. 8043 ). Structure, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-7466-8043-3 , p. 158 .