Cajetan Count of Spreti

Cajetan Maria Theodor Graf von Spreti (born February 8, 1905 in Munich , † November 17, 1989 in Moosburg ) was a German paramilitary activist.

Life and activity

Early years

Spreti was the eldest of four children of Count Adolf von Spreti (1866–1945) and his second wife Anna Countess von Spreti, née Countess von Yrsch (1874–1944). His younger brothers were the CSU politicians Karl Graf von Spreti and Franz Graf von Spreti .

After attending elementary school and a secondary school, Spreti studied for two semesters at an agricultural university and then completed a four-year agricultural internship.

Nazi era

In 1930 Spreti joined the Nazi movement, which led to his (temporary) repudiation by his parents. He joined the NSDAP on June 1, 1930 (membership number 254.085) and also became a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the party's street combat organization, in which he achieved the rank of Sturmführer in October 1931.

Involvement in explosives attacks in Silesia in 1932

In 1932 Spreti was assigned to the Silesia SA group. On July 1, 1932, he was appointed adjutant of the Central Silesia-South subgroup and at the same time promoted to the rank of Sturmbannführer.

Spreti became known to a broader public in 1932 as a co-organizer of several explosive attacks carried out by members of the Silesian section of the SA in August 1932 in the Reichenbach district (district of Schweidnitz and neighboring areas) on politically different people or their homes or workplaces. Together with his superior Hanns Günther von Obernitz , Spreti had planned and had several explosive attacks carried out by SA commands at the beginning of August 1932. The purpose of these actions was to further exacerbate the prevailing climate of terror in Germany since 1931, but especially since the election campaign for the Reichstag elections of July 1932 - which was marked by numerous violent clashes between supporters of the various political camps - in order to respond to them Way of promoting the internal collapse of the existing system and thus increasing the chances of the NSDAP to take over government power. In particular, the attacks were directed against: 1) in Reichenbach on the editor of the journal Proletarian , Carl Paeschke ; 2) in Heidersdorf to the master baker Alexander Kaufmann; 3) in Gross-Kniegnitz on the worker Hermann Obst; 4) in Gollschau to the teacher and chief officer Kurt Szyszka; 5) in Langenbielau to the communist party office; 6) in Strehlen on the local kitchen.

Except for the attack in Langenbielau - here a person involved in the storage of the bomb planned for this attack refused to hand it over - all attacks were carried out. Although none of the targeted persons was killed, several of them suffered nervous shock. In addition, one of the assassins - the assassin in Reichenbach - died due to an early misfire of his explosives. There was also considerable damage to property.

The public prosecutor's office accused him of "having carried out several independent acts of resolving to kill various politically differently minded persons by intentional and deliberate acts that included a beginning of the execution of this intended but never completed crime of murder" and thereby at the same time to have agreed to carry out several criminal acts to be punished in accordance with Section 5 of the law of June 9, 1874 against the criminal and public dangerous use of explosives and to have caused danger to property, the health or life of others through the deliberate use of explosives.

Spreti and Obernitz escaped arrest by fleeing to Italy, where they lived in Merano until 1933, most of the time .

On December 20, 1932, the Reichstag issued an amnesty for political crimes . However, the chief public prosecutor in Schweidnitz took the view that the public prosecutor and the investigating judge at the Reichenbach district court still doubted on January 30, 1933 whether this amnesty could apply to Spreti and Obernitz.

On January 20, 1933, a new arrest warrant was issued by the Reichenbach District Court and efforts were initiated to extradite the two SA leaders from Italy to Germany. The changed political conditions after the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, however, meant that the investigations against Spreti and Obernitz were put down.

Activity in the early phase of the Nazi regime (1933–1934)

After his return to Germany, Spreti settled again in Munich: In March 1933, he headed an SA command which, on the instructions of Ernst Röhm , was to locate and probably send agent Georg Bell , a renegade former Röhm employee, in Krottenmühl on the Siemssee liquidate, which it did not come to because Bell had withdrawn from the command prematurely. On November 25, 1933 Spreti moved up to the position of 2nd adjutant of SA Upper Group VII (Bavaria) under August Schneidhuber . He was thus an assistant command of one of the largest SA formations in the country - at that time almost 200,000 men. On March 15, 1934, he was promoted to Obersturmbannführer in this position. He retained the post of adjutant for a while after Schneidhuber was forcibly removed from office and shot on June 30, 1934. In particular, he was involved in the liquidation of SA Upper Group VII (the upper groups as a structural level in the SA were abolished at this time). He then took a position in the SA brigade in Traunstein , and then moved to Rosenheim as the leader of SA Sturmbanns I / J3 .

In addition to his SA activities, Spreti received a position as deputy head of the employment office in Kempten at the end of the 1930s .

Party trial for prisoner abuse

In the summer of 1934 Spreti again attracted attention for involvement in violent acts:

On the night of 13./14. In August 1934, Spreti and another SA member (Sturmführer Menhart) were involved in a physical argument with two other SA members in Munich: Spreti and Menhart were approached by a prostitute after leaving a Munich café, who turned them away. When the woman then complained to three men she was close to (the civilian SA patrol officers Reutter and Eckert, who were assigned to the "robber civilian" system to monitor the area, and the lawyer Ammann) and said that she had been harassed by the two men, these three approached Spreti and Menhart and confronted them. The subsequent verbal confrontation between the two groups quickly escalated into fistfights, with both parties later claiming that the other had struck first. Spreti and Menhart finally prevailed and caused Reutter and Eckert to accompany them to the police headquarters in Ettstrasse (Ammann had left). They ignored assurances from Reutter and Eckert that they were members of the SA, which they later justified with the fact that they thought they were pimps and did not take their statements seriously as excuses. When he arrived in Ettstrasse, Spreti identified himself as a high party official and had Reutter and Eckert taken into custody by the person on duty. Eckert later claimed that Spreti had prevented Eckert's attempts to identify himself as a member of the SA patrol service by taking away his patrol ID card - which he wanted to show the guard on duty - and tearing it up. Instead, Spreti had him and Reutter taken to the basement of the building and forced them there to endure severe abuse (blows to the bare buttocks with an ox bull), so that they sustained bloody welts and could not work for a few days.

Once again released, Menhart and Eckert complained to the party about Spreti and Menhart and their behavior and initiated a party court case against them before the party court: The main hearing against Spreti before the district court in Munich-Upper Bavaria was finally after Spreti's whereabouts in May 1935 could be determined, on October 11, 1935. The proceedings were suspended on the day of the opening for the purpose of connection with the proceedings pending against Menhart at the Braunes Haus district court. The new main hearing before the Munich Gaugericht - which now dealt with the consolidated proceedings against both men - was scheduled for December 18, 1935. The charge was against Article 4, paragraph 2b of the statutes of the NSDAP. The proceedings dragged on for a long time and were finally discontinued by a decision of the district court of September 23, 1938 in accordance with the amnesty of April 27, 1938.

Confrontation with the newspaper Der Stürmer (1935)

In 1935 there was a dispute between Spreti and the propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer after this newspaper published an article in its issue No. 18/1935 with the headline “Graf Spreti. Spreti's Judged Family Tree, ”which spread the claim that there were Jews among his ancestors.

So it said in the article u. a .:

“Some of the history of nobility: history teaches us that we have to divide the German nobility into 2 groups. The first group includes those noble families who, true to the traditions of their ancestors, kept the blood pure. Noble families who hated foreigners like the devil. The second group, however, shows us those genders who did not have a spark of racial pride. Noble families who were so twisted that every means seemed good enough to them to be able to lead a life in luxury. And when the manorial fortune was represented, the way to renovation was sought and found in the form of a marriage to a wealthy Jewish woman. All ancestral pride was forgotten. Jewish money gilded the count's coats of arms. Jewish women bought the count's marriage bed with their millions. Jewish blood decomposed and spoiled the pedigree, which was once so cultivated.

Spreti, who saw an insult and defamation in the article, then sent a complaint telegram to Rudolf Hess, with which he asked for the distribution of the relevant issue of the "Striker" to be stopped, and also initiated proceedings before the Supreme Party Court against the "Striker" a. The editors finally apologized on the grounds that they did not want to attack the Kapfinger line of the Spretis, to which Cajetan von Spreti belonged, with the article and subsequently published a correction in which they stated that they were in the article " in no way wanted to deal with the Spreti-Kapfing line ”in order to remove the basis for“ misinterpretations ”and to ensure that every reader would be aware that the attacks of the“ striker ”were aimed at another Spreti line and not in his The intention was to affect Spreti's line of Cajetans with the article.

Use in World War II

In 1941 Spreti, who until then had headed the employment offices in Kempten and Freising, was ordered to the Ukraine. There he was responsible for the forcible dumping and kidnapping of 44,000 men, women and children for forced labor in Germany. In 1945 he was taken prisoner. From 1947 he made a career in a machine factory. He was never held responsible for his crimes.

family

Spreti's first marriage was with Emilie Anna Eugenie Sara Maria, Countess von Bylandt (born December 30, 1904 in Cologne, † January 11, 1987 in Oberaudorf). Then in second marriage with Kunigunde Nüsslein (born February 26, 1912 in Traunstein, † September 6, 1983 in Freising).

The daughters Anna Countess von Spreti (1929–1966) and Elisabeth Maria Countess von Spreti (1931–1951) emerged from the first marriage.

From the second marriage, the sons Rolf Theodor Graf von Spreti (1935-1946), Karl Günter Graf von Spreti (* May 10, 1938) and Wilhelm Graf von Spreti (March 15, 1940) as well as the daughters Helga Maria Countess von Spreti (* October 15, 1935) and Klothilde Countess von Spreti (* September 20, 1936).

literature

• Richard Bessel : Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism. The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925–1934 , Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1984.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Dimitrios: Weimar and the fight against «right». A political biography, vol. 3 (documents), Ulm 2009, pp. 278f.
2. ↑ Leader Order of the Supreme SA Leadership No. 21 of January 1, 1934, p. 5.
3. ↑ Spretis family tree at Geneall.