Bodo von Alvensleben

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Bodo Graf von Alvensleben

Hans Bodo Graf von Alvensleben , within the family also Alvensleben-Neugattersleben , (born October 18, 1882 in Neugattersleben ; † October 3, 1961 in Frankfurt am Main ) was the landowner and president of the German Men's Club .

Life

He came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was born as the fifth child of Werner Graf von Alvensleben (1840–1929) and Anna von Veltheim (1853–1897) on their father's estate Neugattersleben in the province of Saxony . He attended high school in Kassel and Dillenburg , studied law at the Universities of Bonn and Halle and served as a year old in the cuirassier regiment “von Driesen” (Westphalian) No. 4 in Münster . From 1908 to 1910 practical agricultural training followed in Winningen and Neugattersleben.

Due to a falling out with his father about the intended marriage to a Catholic, he emigrated to Victoria (British Columbia) in Canada in 1910 to become economically independent. His older brother Gustav Konstantin von Alvensleben had already gone to Canada six years earlier and had worked his way up to a successful entrepreneur in Vancouver . Bodo started out as a lumberjack, then was able to found a trading company and thus create the economic basis to marry his fiancée, Ada Countess von Korff gen. Schmising (1878-1924), and bring her to Canada in 1912. His two oldest daughters Anna Therese and Elisabeth were born there. When the First World War broke out , he managed to find his way to Germany in an adventurous way and to register as a volunteer. His wife was later able to follow suit with her children. In 1918 the third daughter Maria was born. During the war he was Rittmeister and was awarded EK I and II. In the course of the November Revolution in 1918 he was elected to the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council and in this capacity was responsible for protecting Empress Auguste Victoria in the New Palace in Potsdam.

After reconciliation with his father, he returned to Neugattersleben in 1919, initially as a tenant and, after his father's death, as his father's heir to take over the management. After the death of his first wife in 1924, he married Marie-Josephine von Blücher (1891–1970) for a second time in 1926. The son Alvo, born in 1932, came from this marriage.

In addition to managing the property, he soon had numerous other tasks in business, politics and society. He was a member of several supervisory boards in companies in the food industry, chairman of the Landbund in the Magdeburg district, leader of the steel helmet in the Gau Magdeburg, leader of the bourgeois parliamentary groups in the district council , chairman of the old gentlemen's association of the Corps Borussia Bonn , the Rot-Weiß tennis club in Berlin and last but not least President of the German Men's Club in Berlin, which he co-founded in 1924.

The gentlemen's club served as a discussion forum for the exchange of ideas for functional elites of different stripes from agriculture, industry, politics, administration, press and science. Around 500 prominent personalities took part in its annual annual dinner in Berlin in December. In total, the club had around 5,000 members across the country. It was divided into regional clubs or societies.

As president of such an important club, he tried to reduce the influence of the emerging Nazi movement. Alvensleben himself had been a member of the German National People's Party (DNVP) since 1922 . When these efforts failed in the Reichstag election in 1933 , however, he did not withdraw but tried to make the best of the new situation. When the steel helmet was transferred to the SA , it was given the title of "honorary brigade leader of the SA" as a farewell, without taking on a function.

On May 1, 1937, he joined the NSDAP. His motives were - as can be seen from the files of the court proceedings - in connection with a new arrest of his brother Werner . In order to obtain his release, Alvensleben had to vouch for his brother and accept him in Neugattersleben, where he was under a kind of house arrest, ie he was only allowed to leave Neugattersleben with the permission of the Secret State Police.

When the district administrator of the district of Calbe a./S. , Parisius, was drafted into the Wehrmacht during the war , he managed the district office on behalf of the district administration . His efforts to remain true to his ethical principles were highly recognized in his homeland, even beyond 1945. For example, the GDR magazine Der Bär - Heimathefte für Stadt und Land Bernburg in 1957 mentioned that Alvensleben campaigned after 1933 for socialist council members who were harassed by the National Socialists, as well as a letter to Hermann Göring , in the Alvensleben 1944 the bad treatment of Russians Criticized prisoners of war in Germany. He was increasingly discredited by the party and the state. An expert opinion for Gauleiter Jordan from September 9, 1944 not only criticized his church attitude, he was also "to be completely rejected from a political point of view", his removal an "urgent necessity".

Nevertheless, from April 19, 1945 to August 5, 1947, he was automatically arrested by the Americans, because he was classified "due to the high formal burden as an SA Brigade Leader in the group of the main culprits". It was not until May 25, 1948 that he was acquitted by the Ludwigsburg Chamber of Judges. He had previously converted to Catholicism . The Neugattersleben estate was expropriated by the land reform in 1945. His health was in poor health and he died on October 3, 1961 in Frankfurt am Main and was buried in Kronberg im Taunus . After the reunification of Germany , his descendants transferred him and his wife, who died in 1970, to the family cemetery in Neugattersleben.

literature

  • Hellmut Kretzschmar : Historical news of the Alvensleben family since 1800 . Castle b. M. 1930, pp. 77-78.
  • Ernst Krause: Memories of Neugattersleben . Unpublished manuscript (219 pages). Hall 1935.
  • Hubert Fiedler: Hohndorf - Neugattersleben . Der Bär - Heimathefte für Stadt und Land Bernburg , 2nd year 1957, pp. 250–252.
  • Stephan Malinowski : From King to Leader. German nobility under National Socialism . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-16365-X , p. 427 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Archives, file SA 4000 000 27
  2. ↑ state archive Ludwigsburg EL 902/15
  3. ^ Protocol on the occasion of Werner von Alvensleben's release from prison on August 19, 1937
  4. ↑ state archive Ludwigsburg EL 902/15
  5. ↑ state archive Ludwigsburg EL 902/15
personal data
SURNAME Alvensleben, Bodo from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alvensleben, Hans Bodo Graf von; Alvensleben-Neugattersleben, Hans Bodo Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German landowner, president of the German gentlemen's club
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Neugattersleben
DATE OF DEATH 3rd October 1961
Place of death Frankfurt am Main