Freikorps Oberland

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Erlangen students in the Bund Oberland (Nuremberg 1923)

The Freikorps Oberland was a voluntary military association (Freiwilligenkorps), which existed in the initial phase of the Weimar Republic alongside other voluntary military associations and the Black Reichswehr . This resulted in the Bund Oberland , from whose members the core of the Sturmabteilung (SA) in Bavaria was recruited from 1921 .

history

Foundation as a volunteer corps

The Freikorps was founded in April 1919 by Albert von Beckh in Ingolstadt and Eichstätt and was close to the right-wing extremist Thule Society . The government of Social Democratic Prime Minister Johannes Hoffmann , who fled to Bamberg from the Munich Soviet Republic , had previously approved advertising for temporary volunteer associations. Major Albert Ritter von Beckh also took over military leadership. Since most of the volunteers for the first units came from the Bavarian Oberland , the name and symbol of Edelweiss were chosen. The direct forerunner was the “Kampfbund”, which existed within the Thule Society and was founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf , and which was also directed against the council government .

The Freikorps was deployed in May 1919 in the fighting against the Munich Soviet Republic. Parts of the Freikorps were then taken over with parts of the Freikorps Epp in the Reichswehr Brigade 21 and used as a closed unit during the Ruhr uprising in 1920 . The Freikorps itself was formally dissolved on October 21, 1919. However, their relatives joined the Escherich organization as a temporary volunteer battalion . When the uprisings in Upper Silesia were put down in 1921, the Freikorps was therefore quickly operational and significantly involved in the storming of St. Annaberg in Upper Silesia . In Upper Silesia, the Freikorps maintained a message center that formed a murder squad and presumably commissioned murders and kidnappings. There were close connections between the various organizations of the right-wing extremist milieu in Bavaria. The murderers of the politician Matthias Erzberger , Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz , belonged not only to the Consul organization , but also to the “Oberland Working Group”. There are indications that members of Oberland connect with the murder of USPD politician Karl Gareis .

Reorganization into a registered association and ban

When the Freikorps were dissolved in November 1921, the organization called itself Bund Oberland e. V. and was entered in the register of associations in December 1921. The official program postulated the struggle against the Versailles Treaty , unconditional loyalty to the Reich and the reconciliation of all classes and strata as the basic idea . In fact, however, the federal government concentrated on its secret military work. In the summer of 1922 the question of whether the Bund Oberland should be integrated into the Bund Bayern and Reich led to the division of the federal government. The bourgeois, more federalist wing formed the Bund Treu Oberland , later the Blücherbund . The military wing was reconstituted under the leadership of the veterinarian Friedrich Weber .

While the Bund Oberland officially only had a few hundred members in 1922, by November 1923 there were around 2000 in Bavaria alone. This included many students, members of the liberal professions and employees, but also some workers. The military leaders were mostly young former officers who were meanwhile studying. Most of the members were between 20 and 30 years old and experienced in the war, either as participants in World War II or as participants in the fighting in Bavaria, the Ruhr area and Upper Silesia. The federal government had ample weaponry, allegedly heavy weapons as well. However, many federal weapons were stored and cared for by the Reichswehr . The Bund was probably sponsored by Weber's father-in-law, the ethnic publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann . The magazine of the Bundes Oberland Das Third Reich was printed in the Neustädter printing house Ph.CW Schmidt .

Under Weber's leadership, the Bund Oberland increasingly approached the radical forces under Adolf Hitler and Ernst Röhm . Together with the Wehrverband Reichsflagge and the SA , the federal government formed the working group of patriotic combat units in January 1923 . In September 1923 they joined forces with the NSDAP and various other nationalist organizations in the German Combat League , which on September 25, 1923 placed itself under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.

On November 8, 1923 the Bund mobilized numerous members and took an active part in the Hitler putsch . Members of the Bund under Ludwig Oestreicher took Jewish hostages. Weber took part in the march to the Feldherrnhalle.

Because of its participation in the coup attempt, the Bund Oberland e. V. initially banned in Bavaria and later also in Germany at the end of 1923. By order of the Bavarian State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr , the Bund Oberland e. V. dissolved on November 9, 1923. Weber was arrested on the same day, later in Hitler process accused and five years imprisonment convicted. Disguised rescue organizations should bypass the official dissolution. However, the extremist forces of the former association were still covertly networked enough to assassinate the separatist leader Franz Josef Heinz on January 9, 1924 in the French-occupied Palatinate in association with the right-wing extremist terrorist organization Organization Consul .

Re-establishment in 1925

After the nationwide ban was lifted, the federal government was re-established in February 1925. As early as 1930 there were differences within the federal government, as the relatively strong Austrian faction elected the Austrofascist Heimwehr leader Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg as federal leader. This caused over three-quarters of the Reich German groups to leave the Bund Oberland. The National Revolutionaries under the leadership of Gustav Sondermann , Drexel and Tröger also resigned as a group, submitted to the National Bolshevik Ernst Niekisch as "Oberlandkameradschaft" and turned against the Nazi group around Friedrich Weber .

The former chief of staff of the Freikorps and planner of the storm on Annaberg Josef Römer joined the communist "Scheringerkreis" and became the leader of a secret organization founded in 1920 called "Bund Oberland" with dictatorial powers. In 1939/40 Römer built up resistance groups in Munich and Berlin with old free corps comrades and former employees of the “Aufbruch-Arbeits-Kreis”. With his people he distributed leaflets calling on the people to revolt against Adolf Hitler until he was arrested in 1942 and executed in 1944.

today

The old Freikorps fighters gathered around Ernst Horadam after 1945 and in 1951 founded the traditional community of comradeship Freikorps and Bund Oberland, which still exists today . Some authors see it as a far-right association. In Schliersee up to and including 2006, a service was held annually to commemorate the dead of the volunteer corps of 1921. According to the board of directors of the Oberschlesier Landsmannschaft , the event has been regularly observed by the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the past . However, it was neither included in the federal nor in the state protection of the constitution report because, according to statements made by the press spokesman of the Bavarian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution to the BR magazine “Der Zeitspiegel” on May 16, 2007 neither the event nor the traditional association “Kameradschaft Freikorps und Bund Oberland “are an object of observation. The organizations that regularly take part in the event included the Landsmannschaft Schlesien , the Landsmannschaft der Oberschlesier and the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland . Furthermore, individuals from various extreme right-wing organizations such as the NPD , the JN and the Danubia fraternity took part . Since 2007 the commemoration has taken place on a very small scale. In 2008, various right-wing extremist youth and youth organizations tried unsuccessfully to continue the tradition of Annaberg commemorations.

Known members

literature

To the Freikorps and Bund Oberland

  • Hans Fenske: Conservatism and right-wing radicalism in Bavaria after 1918. Verlag Gehlen, 1969
  • Comradeship Freikorps and Bund Oberland: Pictorial chronicle on the history of the Freikorps and Federal Oberland . Munich 1974
  • Comradeship Freikorps and Bund Oberland (ed.): For the proud edelweiss . Photo and text volume on the history of the Freikorps and Bund Oberland. Compiled and edited by Peter Schuster. Brienna Verlag, Aschau 1996. ISBN 3-9803875-1-8 .

To the comradeship Freikorps and Bund Oberland

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 700 years ago progressive , Eichstätter Kurier dated December 30, 2018; Accessed December 31, 2018
  2. ^ Freikorps Oberland, 1919-1921 , Historisches Lexikon Bayerns; Accessed December 31, 2018
  3. ↑ Ulrike Claudia Hofmann: Traitors fall for the distance! Femicide in Bavaria in the twenties . Böhlau, Cologne 2000, p. 125.
  4. ↑ Horst Möller: The Weimar Republic. An unfinished democracy . dtv, Munich 2004, p. 152.
  5. ↑ Ulrike Claudia Hofmann: Traitors fall for the distance! Femicide in Bavaria in the twenties . Böhlau, Cologne 2000, p. 118 f.
  6. ↑ Christoph Hübner: Bund Oberland, 1921–1923 / 1925–1930 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  7. ↑ Harold J. Gordon Jr.: Hitler putsch 1923. Power struggle in Bavaria 1923–1924. Bernard & Graefe, Frankfurt / M. 1971, pp. 94-96.
  8. ↑ Max Döllner: History of the development of the city of Neustadt an der Aisch until 1933. Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 1950. (New edition 1978 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Ph. CW Schmidt Neustadt an der Aisch publishing house 1828-1978. ) P. 687.
  9. ↑ Christoph Hübner: Bund Oberland, 1921–1923 / 1925–1930 . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria
  10. ↑ Erwin Könnemann: Freikorps Oberland 1921–1930 (1921–1930 Bund Oberland) [BO] , in: Fricke, Dieter (ed.): Lexicon of the history of parties: the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945) , volume 1, Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1984, p. 678 f.
  11. ^ Ulrich Herbert: Best. Biographical Studies on Radicalism, Weltanschauung and Reason, 1903-1989 . Bonn: Dietz, 1996, p. 83. ISBN 3-8012-5019-9
  12. ↑ Peter Schuster: For the proud edelweiss , Brienna, Achau 1995. ISBN 3-9803875-1-8 .
  13. ↑ a b Oliver Schröm, Andrea Röpke: Silent help for brown comrades , p. 180f; Andreas Angerstorf: Right structures in Bavaria 2005
  14. ↑ SPD district chairman calls for distancing himself from the Third Reich . In: Münchner Merkur , May 21, 2005
  15. ↑ Bundestag printed matter 14/6729 (PDF; 57 kB)