Arno Franke

Arno Franke (born September 27, 1876 in Reichenau , Erzgebirge , † after 1933) was a German journalist and politician ( NSDAP , DSP).

Life and activity

Early career

Franke, a trained printer , began to work as an editor for the SPD press at the turn of the century. He had acquired the knowledge necessary for his work through self-study. He gained his first editorial experience in Austria.

From July 18, 1905 to October 1, 1907 Franke worked as an editor at the Arbeiter-Zeitung in Dortmund , the organ of the Social Democratic Party for the Rheinisch-Westfälische industrial area. During this time he was elected on December 17, 1905 as the second secretary of the social democratic district electoral association Dortmund-Hörde, a position he held until August 18, 1907. From 1907/1908 to 1911 he was part of the editorial team of the Mecklenburg People's Newspaper , before moving to the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. Shortly before the First World War he wrote for the Bergische Arbeiterstimme in Solingen (from 1913), where he was responsible for the “Local” department, as well as for Die Neue Zeit .

When Franke was supposed to join the military in September 1915, his colleague in the Bergische Arbeiterstimme , Wilhelm Dittmann , who was known for his leftist attitude , was forcibly recruited because the authorities preferred to let the right-wing Franke continue to work in the press and instead that to deprive left-wing Dittmann the opportunity to influence the public.

From February 1, 1918, Franke was employed by the Social Democratic Press Office in Berlin . At that time he lived in Berlin-Tempelhof Mariendorfer Str. 1 and was listed as a "right-wing social democrat" in the lists of the political police.

Weimar Republic

As a representative of the right wing SPD, Franke was the senior editor of the magazine Firn in the early 1920s . Politically, he developed further and further to the right in the following years: On January 24, 1924, Vorwärts reported in an article about Franke ("Nationalistic-anti-Semitic socialism - Arno Franke, a new Lebius ") that Franke had written an election brochure that even surpass the worst products of the Reich Association for combating social democracy. Concerning the situation in the social democratic press, Franke - who, according to Vorwärts still “attached great importance to being considered a party member” - as editor of the Firn had claimed that it was closed to the “nationally feeling part of the party comrades” and that the socialist magazines which arose as a result, were “tacitly boycotted” and “suspected and slandered” by the party press. A “dark black spirit of intolerance and oppression” is around in the SPD. The suspicion of “thinking German” and “speaking German” suffices to “completely ignore the suspects”. A very large group of prominent party members was affected by this type of ostracism, while, conversely, independent social democrats and communists, who had faithlessly abandoned the party and the fatherland from 1917 to 1919, have now moved to the top of the party and its central organ (the forward) had been included. Kurt Koszyk rates these attacks in his study of the social democratic press in the interwar period as “simplifications and distortions”.

In March 1924 Franke left the SPD. Friedrich Ebert junior took over his position as editor of the Firn . Politically, Franke found connection with the NSDAP in the second half of the 1920s. For this he finally took over the function of the main editor (editor-in-chief) of the Saxon NSDAP party newspaper Der Freiheitskampf .

In the spring of 1932, after bitter internal party quarrels, Franke also resigned from the NSDAP due to disappointment with the autocratic leadership style of the Saxon Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann as well as the opaque financial conduct and the boncentre of the Gauleitung.

On the occasion of the Reichstag election in July 1932, Franke published a brochure for the SPD in which he polemically settled the “almost unbelievable grievances” in the NSDAP. The SPD hoped that the involvement of the former Nazi editor, whom they saw internally as an “inferior subject”, as the author of an educational pamphlet about the NSDAP, would effectively expose their political opponent.

In the late summer of 1932 Franke and Wilhelm Klute initiated the founding of the German Socialist Workers' Party (DSP), a split from the NSDAP. Franke and Klute took this step because of their dissatisfaction - as well as the dissatisfaction of the wing of the Berlin and Saxon NSDAP they represented - with the course of the party leadership of the NSDAP in Munich around Adolf Hitler and in particular because they rejected the political line of the Gauleiter in Berlin ( Joseph Goebbels ) and Saxony (Mutschmann). By the time it was forcibly dissolved in the spring of 1933, the new party had a membership of 1,500 to 2,000 people. Kurt Koszyk characterized the party profile of the DSP as “strongly nationalistic” and “ anti-Semitic ”. In a press release on the occasion of the founding of the DSP, Franke's partner Klute explained to the assembled journalists that the founding of the new party had become “necessary” because the “old-style National Socialists” believed “that the NSDAP was fighting to create a community of all Germans ”(ie the goal of realizing a true socialism). Due to his turning away from the ideal of socialism, Hitler will not achieve the goal “what he initially set for himself”. The men of the newly founded party would have turned away from Hitler not only for tactical, but also for programmatic reasons. Since the program of the NSDAP was contradicting itself in many points, the German Socialist Party had, in contrast, “now worked out a clear program” that “made no concessions to any person or profession”.

The left-liberal magazine Die Weltbühne classified the party magazine Der deutsche Weg as an organ that represents “absolutely fascist [sic!] Thoughts”. According to the Weltbühne, the group around Franke and Klute “separated from the Hitler party because it lost faith in its revolutionary power”. The leaders of the DSP, however, are "long-time functionaries of the NSDAP and SA people" who have "some" followers in Berlin and Saxony.

Uncertain fate after 1933

Franke's fate after 1933 has not been fully clarified: in the 1950s, Klute explained to Kurt Koszyk that Franke had been sent to Buchenwald concentration camp (which did not exist at the time) after he had illegally delivered propaganda material to Czechoslovakia , " from which he did not return ”. It is obvious, but not certain, that he perished in another concentration camp.

Fonts

• State within the state: the essence of the Jewish secret society, based on Brafmann's Kahal files , 1930.
• The double face of the NSDAP: The Workers' Party d. Aristocratic association; A necessary confrontation with the National Socialism of the capitalists, princes, counts and barons , 1932.

literature

• Matthias John: The Dortmund Social Democracy around 1900. Memories of Konrad Haenisch . In: Contributions to the history of workers' path, vol. 47 (2005), issue 3, pp. 3-70, here p. 36 f. (biographical information on the time in Dortmund)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurt Koszyk: Between Empire and Dictatorship. The social democratic press between 1914 and 1933 . 1958, p. 164.
2. ^ Clemens Vollnhals : Saxony in the Nazi era , 2002, p. 39; Wolfram Pyta : Against Hitler and for the Republic , 1989, p. 45.
3. ^ Marjatta Hietala: The new nationalism in journalism by Ernst Jünger and the circle around him , 1975, p. 100.
4. ↑ Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann : Cooperation and demarcation. Bourgeois groups, Protestant parishes and the Catholic social milieu in dealing with National Socialism in Hanover , 1999, p. 93.
5. ↑ The world stage. Complete reprint of the years 1918–1933, volume 28 (1932) 2nd half year , (reprint 1978), p. 866.
6. ↑ Kurt Koszyk: Between Empire and Dictatorship. The social democratic press between 1914 and 1933 . 1958, p. 240.