Bruno Ernst Buchrucker

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Bruno Ernst Buchrucker (born January 5, 1878 in Sobernheim , † February 19, 1966 in Bad Godesberg ) was a German officer . He became known in 1923 as the leader of the Küstriner putsch .

Life

Military background

The son of a senior teacher, an officer since July 20, 1897, was assigned to the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army on April 1, 1909 . Promoted to captain on March 20, 1911 , he was chief of the 7th Company of the 2nd Upper Rhine Infantry Regiment No. 99 in Zabern , where he witnessed the Zabern affair in December 1913 , during which the military acted with disproportionate severity took action against the local population and the officers of the regiment assumed civilian power to rule. To defuse the conflict, Buchrucker's unit was withdrawn from Zabern and temporarily relocated to Bitsch . It did not return to its regular location until April 1914.

At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914, he was assigned as 3rd General Staff Officer under Chief of Staff Bernhard Bronsart von Schellendorff to the General Command of the XIV Reserve Corps , which initially operated in Alsace but was soon transferred to the Somme . In the further course of the war he was used in various other general staff positions and promoted to major on March 22, 1916 "after rigorous combat" . After the war, led Buchrucker 1919, the first battalion in the volunteer corps of Siegfried Graf zu Eulenburg-vetch in the fighting German Free Corps in the Baltics . Back in Germany he was accepted into the provisional Reichswehr .

Kapp Putsch in Cottbus

As a garrison elder in Cottbus, Buchrucker supported the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 . On March 13, mutinous troops occupied the Berlin government district ; the Reich government had fled to Stuttgart via Dresden. In Cottbus, Buchrucker banned demonstrations and rallies and took over the "executive power". He responded to the general strike called by the SPD and the trade unions with posters promising “Protection for those willing to work!”. When Reichswehr patrols encountered resistance, on March 15, initiated by Buchrucker, Reichswehr troops fired machine guns at a fleeing crowd at the Spremberger Tower in Cottbus; four people died; five others were seriously wounded. At the same time, the USPD newspaper "Freier Volkswille" (Free People's Will) printer building was broken into by Reichswehr troops and the rapid pressing there was destroyed by hand grenades.

From March 16, fighting developed on the outskirts of Cottbus with workers from Niederlausitz, who claimed further victims. “Large gatherings [...] brought a tremendously enthusiastic crowd to appear. It was decided to set up a Red Guard, the ruler of Cottbus then forbade any gathering of people with the advice to let every gathering be blown up by fire ” , so the social democratic“ Märkische Volksstimme ”on March 21st. On March 17, a Social Democratic delegation tried to negotiate with Buchrucker. According to later information from a member of parliament involved, Buchrucker uttered sentences like “My comparison is the murder weapon. The more I bang down by the rabble, the more I prefer it. ”“ This red army consists of criminals and bushmen, the shot is the radical agent. ”“ I have every picket shot dead. ” On March 18 and 19, they concentrated the fighting on the Sandow district. In view of the resistance and the failed coup on March 17 in Berlin, Buchrucker publicly declared the lifting of his measures and the resignation of the "executive power" in Cottbus; his unit was temporarily relocated to Vetschau .

Buchrucker was retired from the Reichswehr in September 1920 . He was one of the few Reichswehr officers who left the Reichswehr as a result of their behavior during the Kapp Putsch.

In May 1921 Buchrucker headed a supply center for the Freikorps fighting there in Cottbus during the uprising in Upper Silesia . He was also one of the leading functionaries of the Brandenburg Heimatbund, together with his long-time friend and lodging provider, the manor owner Wilhelm von Oppen. The Heimatbund was a successor organization to the resident guard, which was dissolved on April 8, 1920 under pressure from the Entente . This self-protection organization, which often emerged at the instigation of the land alliances as a professional organization of the large landowners, joined the organization Escherich (Orgesch), a right-wing reactionary, paramilitary organization. Buchrucker also maintained contacts with Gerhard Roßbach and his officially dissolved Freikorps , whose members were camouflaged on agricultural estates in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Pomerania.

Black Reichswehr

In the summer of 1921 Buchrucker was hired by the military district command III (Berlin / Brandenburg) of the Reichswehr under a private service contract . The officer Fedor von Bock assumed Buchrucker were subordinate to so-called labor commandos, whose official job of Defense Minister Otto Gessler than the 1926 "reaming, discarding and destruction of countless scattered especially in the area of Berlin, in the Ostmark and in Silesia and hidden war material" defined has been. In addition, according to Geßler, "a kind of catchment basin for the forces that had become rootless through the dissolution of the Freikorps and the self-protection of Upper Silesia" should be created. By the summer of 1923 - contrary to the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty - a Black Reichswehr was established with a permanent base of 2,000 men and a further 18,000 men in alarm units. The latter came predominantly from nationalist associations and had received military training in four to six-week courses.

Within the secret Black Reichswehr, Buchrucker was responsible for the organization and management of the formation. Buchrucker's most important employee was Paul Schulz . Schulz and Buchrucker had been in the same Freikorps in 1919, and they had also worked together in 1921 to support the Freikorps in Upper Silesia. Buchrucker dealt with political issues; Schulz was considered the real "doer of the whole store." Because of the crimes committed within the Black Reichswehr political assassinations was Schulz in 1927 sentenced to death, and like almost all Fememörder routinely only pardoned and released by an amnesty for political offenders before 1930.

In an atmosphere which, according to Buchrucker later, was marked by internal consent but a rejection of official responsibility on the part of the responsible Reichswehr officers, the size of the work details was expanded beyond the intended extent and unnecessary military exercises were held for the original purpose of the work details. At the end of September 1923, higher-ranking offices of the Reichswehr noticed the size of the work details. Buchrucker was challenged and "admitted that he had made adjustments to the troops' budget on his own initiative out of the idea of ​​providing the Reichswehr with help for a communist uprising that he was expecting immediately." He said the reinforcements would be reduced to, but for Reichswehr Minister Gessler the "belief in the reliability of the major a. D. Buchrucker [...] shaken ” , so that he ordered the arrest of Buchrucker and Schulz.

Küstriner putsch

According to his own account, Buchrucker learned of the arrest warrant issued against him on September 30th and ordered that the work details housed in the outer fort of the Küstrin Fortress should move into the fortress in the old town of Küstrin on the morning of October 1st, 1923 . The Küstriner putsch began with a speech by Buchrucker in front of the work details, which, according to later statements, was barely understandable by several listeners:

“He started to speak, produced sounds, lined up the words senselessly, emphasized incorrectly and gestured. Nobody knew from the people what the defendant [Buchrucker] wanted to say. "

Buchrucker then went to the fortress commander, pointed out the superiority of his units and asked the commander, “He shouldn't stand in his way, the great national moment has now come. He also declared that he would not only strike here in Cüstrin, but everywhere at the same time. ” The commandant did not want to join Buchrucker, not even when several non-commissioned officers devoted to Buchrucker, including the later NSDAP member of the Reichstag, Hans Hayn , forced their way into the commandant's office. When asked to give instructions by his subordinates, Buchrucker was not in a position to give them. This was the reason for some of the NCOs to submit to the fortress commander again. Later, regular Reich defense units used weapons against a command of the Black Reichswehr in Küstrin , in which one person died and seven others were wounded.

Between October 22 and 27, 1923, the trial of 14 people arrested in Küstrin took place before an extraordinary court in Cottbus. Buchrucker was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a fine of ten gold marks for high treason . Buchrucker had stated in court that he only wanted to put pressure on the Reichswehr Minister to have the arrest warrant withdrawn. This was in the interests of the state, because there were "daredevils" in the ranks of the work details, who were to be feared of violence if he was arrested. The court did not follow this account: After the reasons for the judgment, there were sufficient indications that “the events in Cüstrin actually only meant part of a large-scale company.” This was supported by the effort made by Buchrucker and the one-hour indecision by Buchrucker; an indication that he should have made more serious decisions. Buchrucker apparently assumed that the Reichswehr would join him or remain neutral. Buchrucker was given amnesty in October 1927 on the occasion of Hindenburg's 80th birthday .

An investigation into the actual goals of the Black Reichswehr was omitted in the Cottbus criminal proceedings. Witness statements in the femicide trials and before parliamentary committees of inquiry contain numerous indications that a "March on Berlin" was planned and prepared in detail within the Black Reichswehr according to the " March on Rome ". The planned establishment of a right-wing military dictatorship failed when a state of emergency was declared in September 1923 and executive power was taken over by the Reichswehr. As far as we know today, the Küstriner putsch is a sequel to these plans, the actual purpose of which is not known for certain. Buchrucker commented on the Black Reichswehr in 1928 in the publication Im Schatten Seeckt’s :

“The troops wanted to free Germany from pressure from abroad. She wanted to fight the external enemy. As far as she thought about the political situation, she meant that the struggle could only be fought under a military dictatorship, and some thought that when the military dictatorship was established there could be a brief struggle inside the Reich. Most of the time, no one thought about whether the military dictatorship was constitutional or not. "

In May 1928, the Reichswehr Ministry filed a criminal complaint against Buchrucker for perjury . Buchrucker had stated in a trial because of the femicide in the Black Reichswehr that the conscription to the Black Reichswehr in September 1923 had been made with the consent of the regular Reichswehr. The process was accompanied by a high level of public interest and was carried out with great effort by both parties. In September 1929 the case against Buchrucker was discontinued. Buchrucker's statement was objectively incorrect, but it could not be proven that he was objectively aware of the incorrectness of his statement, according to the Berlin public prosecutor.

In the course of the perjury proceedings, the chief of staff in Wehrkreiskommando III, Kurt von Hammerstein , requested an examination of Buchrucker's mental state. In the Cottbus trial, Buchrucker's defense lawyer had requested that his client be acquitted of partial insanity ; Buchrucker had refused this application. According to the defense attorney's records, Buchrucker had developed remarkably slowly as a child; In the spring of 1917 he was noticed during the First World War for "language confusion, senseless juxtaposition of words and sentences, incorrect emphasis, eccentricity in tone and expression" . One interviewee described Buchrucker as a " kind of Nietzsche-Zarathustra figure " ; extraordinary abilities as a general staff officer faced moments of depression and immobility. In addition, reference was made to Buchrucker's speech during the Küstriner putsch and his arrest there, during which he gave the impression of deep depression and lack of will.

The magazine Weltbühne , which played a key role in the uncovering of the femicide within the Black Reichswehr and therefore itself affected by criminal proceedings, expressed its respect to Buchrucker in 1930:

“We got to know her in our distance process as a straight, truth-loving person. We had expected a warrior in the man from Küstrin and found a fine, intelligent head - an opponent as one would like him to be. Dear Mr. Buchrucker, [...] you have been involved in many activities and you have always been the one who was cheated, the one locked in, while the higher-ranking people shirked [...]. "

Follower of Otto Strasser

Buchrucker joined the NSDAP in 1926 and at the end of 1928 came across the group around Otto Strasser, who belonged to the "left" wing of the NSDAP : According to his own statements, Strasser, unlike other publishers, was ready to publish Buchrucker's book on the Black Reichswehr. The “Buchrucker who thinks along the lines of the Wilhelminian officer's authoritarian state” took a special position in the Strasser group, considered program issues to be insignificant and saw the monarchy as the most powerful form of government. He wrote regularly in newspapers published by Strasser on military-political issues: "The modern state should be run by men who understand war," said Buchrucker in one of the texts.

In July 1930 Buchrucker left the NSDAP in the wake of Strasser. There had previously been disputes between Strasser and Hitler over the legality policy pursued by Hitler. Buchrucker - whom Strasser referred to as his "best friend" - was one of the 26 signatories of the appeal "The socialists are leaving the NSDAP" on July 4th and then joined the Revolutionary National Socialists' Combat Group (KGRNS) around Otto Strasser. Until the KGRNS was banned shortly after the National Socialist seizure of power , Buchrucker was a member of the group's governing bodies, which existed under the names "Political Office", "Execution Committee" and "Execution Council".

At the time of his work in the KGRNS, Buchrucker is described as a nationalist and passionate militarist who continued to deal with contemporary strategic military considerations such as the use of the air force. In contrast to the official line of the KGRNS, he was sharply opposed to cooperation with communist groups and gave preference to alliances with conservative, reactionary paramilitary groups such as the Stahlhelm . In view of his biography, Buchrucker's hostility to Prussia is surprising, which was probably caused by experiences of the First World War.

For the first Reich Congress of the KGRNS at the end of October 1930, Buchrucker formulated "Programmatic principles of the revolutionary National Socialists - the New Order", which largely corresponded to earlier publications by Strasser. Buchrucker's ideas of “German socialism” included a nationalization program , the promotion of craft businesses and the return of the urban population to agriculture. Decision-making powers should be given to a small group of executives in order to overcome the imbalances of a state weakened by bureaucracy. An "organic leader state" that emerged in this way should then promote the völkisch transformation of society, the goal being - on the basis of the unity of Germanic nationality - a "Germany liberated from the imperialist chains of Versailles".

The KGRNS remained a splinter group; in May 1931 it had around 6,000 members, which this month after the Stennes revolt were joined by around 2,000 SA members, mainly from Berlin and Pomerania. Buchrucker was also affected by regular physical attacks by the SA: In July 1930 he was injured in Albersdorf in Dithmarschen in an attack by SA units on an event led by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse . In October 1932, the Third Reich Congress of the KGRNS decided to set up its own paramilitary formation, the "Black Guard". Buchrucker became one of the two group leaders of the Black Guard, which had a maximum of 200 to 300 members.

After the National Socialist seizure of power , the KGRNS and its subsidiary organizations were banned in February 1933, and Buchrucker was temporarily in custody. The information on Buchrucker's further path in life is fragmentary: Buchrucker became involved in connection with the Röhm murders , a political cleansing operation in the course of which Adolf Hitler and other National Socialist leaders had their actual or alleged rivals in their own ranks as well as other unpleasant people sometimes violently eliminated arrested, but later released at Hermann Göring's instigation and reactivated for the Wehrmacht . Shortly after the outbreak of World War II , Buchrucker is said to have been retired from the Wehrmacht with the rank of lieutenant colonel . In his 1953 publication The Honor of the Soldier. German soldiers in the European armed forces? Buchrucker claims to have rejected Hitler as a criminal but, according to Emil Julius Gumbel , does not take a clear position on the officers' conflicts of conscience of July 20, 1944 .

family

His son Hasso Buchrucker (* 1935) became a diplomat in the Foreign Office . A relative was the Lutheran theologian Karl Buchrucker .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on Buchrucker's military career with Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememorde. A milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic. Metropol-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 , p. 48.
  2. ^ Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914. Ed .: War Ministry , ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 272.
  3. ↑ Janet & Joe Robinson: Handbook of Imperial Germany. Bloomington (Indiana) 2009, p. 288.
  4. ↑ a b Short biography of Ernst Buchrucker , in: Lausitzer Rundschau , January 3, 2008, accessed on April 15, 2017.
  5. ↑ On the Kapp Putsch in Cottbus, see Erwin Könnemann's (ed.): Der Kapp-Lüttwitz-Ludendorff-Putsch. Documents. Olzog, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7892-9355-5 , printed newspaper reports:
    • No. 517: The “Märkische Volksstimme” (SPD) on blood sacrifices in Cottbus on March 15, 1920. Cottbus, March 16, 1920.
    • No. 521: Announcement of the Cottbus garrison elder, March 17, 1920. Printed in the Cottbuser Anzeiger on March 19, 1920, signed by Buchrucker.
    • No. 527: Extract from the "Märkische Volksstimme" (SPD) on the struggles of the Niederlausitz workers' fighters. Cottbus, March 21, 1920
  6. ↑ Könnemann, Putsch , footnote to Document 517, p. 795.
  7. ^ Märkische Volksstimme of March 21, 1920, quoted from Könnemann, Putsch , Document 527, p. 803.
  8. ^ Contemporary expression for bush thief, see Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 3. Leipzig 1905, p. 651 at www.zeno.org
  9. ↑ Könnemann, Putsch , footnote to Document 527, p. 803.
  10. ↑ Könnemann, Putsch , footnote to Document 527, p. 805.
  11. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 48. See also: Emil Julius Gumbel : Conspirators. Contributions to the history and sociology of the German nationalist secret societies since 1918. Malik-Verlag, Vienna, 1924, p. 41. (Reprint in Verlag Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-88423-003-4 )
  12. ↑ Irmela Nagel: Fememorde und Fememord Trials in the Weimar Republic. Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-412-06290-1 , p. 35
  13. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 32.
  14. ^ Bernd Kruppa: Right-wing radicalism in Berlin 1918–1928. Overall, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-925961-00-3 , p. 177.
  15. ↑ Nagel, Fememorde , p. 39f.
  16. ^ Memorandum of the Reichswehr Minister of March 2, 1926 at the Federal Archives . See also Nagel, Fememorde , p. 39
  17. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 50.
  18. ↑ according to later statements in the fememicide trials, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 48.
  19. ↑ Buchrucker's information in perjury proceedings in 1928, see Sauer, Reichswehr , pp. 70f.
  20. ↑ a b Memorandum of the Reichswehr Minister from March 2, 1926 at the Federal Archives.
  21. ↑ On the course of the putsch, see Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 57ff.
  22. ^ From documents of the defense in the Cottbus trial, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 58.
  23. ↑ Later findings of the Cottbus court, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 58.
  24. ↑ On the Cottbus trial, see Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 61ff.
  25. ↑ Reasons for the judgment , p. 98, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 62.
  26. ^ Nagel, Fememorde , p. 326.
  27. ^ Sauer, Reichswehr , pp. 64, 328ff.
  28. ↑ these assessments in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 330.
  29. ↑ Bruno Ernst Buchrucker: Im Schatten Seeckt’s Kampf-Verlag, Berlin 1928, p. 28; quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 72.
  30. ↑ For perjury proceedings, see Sauer, Reichswehr , pp. 65ff.
  31. ^ Report of the Berlin Chief Public Prosecutor at Regional Court II of September 2, 1929, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 77.
  32. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 68.
  33. ↑ Answers: Major Buchrucker. In: Weltbühne No. 30 / II (July 22, 1930), p. 146, quoted in Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 279.
  34. ^ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 426.
  35. ↑ Oral information from Buchrucker of April 21, 1963, see Reinhard Kühnl : Die Nationalozialistische Linke 1925–1930. (= Marburg treatises on political science. Volume 6) Verlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1966, p. 92.
  36. ↑ This assessment in Kühnl, Linke , p. 92.
  37. ^ Nazi letters of December 1, 1928, quoted in Kühnl, p. 92.
  38. ^ In Strasser's book: Hitler and I from 1940, pp. 148f; quoted from Patrick Moreau : National Socialism from the Left. The "Combat Community of Revolutionary National Socialists" and the "Black Front" Otto Strasser 1930-1935. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-421-06192-0 , p. 40.
  39. ↑ these assessments in Moreau, National Socialism , p. 43f.
  40. ↑ a b Moreau, National Socialism , p. 57.
  41. ↑ Figures in Moreau, National Socialism , p. 87.
  42. ↑ on Albersdorf see Moreau, Nationalsozialismus , pp. 46, 128, 228.
  43. ↑ Figures in Moreau, National Socialism , p. 155.
  44. ↑ Moreau, National Socialism , p. 196.
  45. ^ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler. The national revolutionary opposition around Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. Siedler, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-613-8 , pp. 205, 214.
  46. ^ Emil Julius Gumbel: From Fememord to the Reich Chancellery. Lambert Schneider Verlag, Heidelberg 1962, p. 62.
  47. ^ Title page of the book
personal data
SURNAME Buchrucker, Bruno Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German major, leader of the Küstriner putsch
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Sobernheim
DATE OF DEATH 19th February 1966
Place of death bad Godesberg