Carl Röver

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Carl Röver

Carl Georg Röver (born February 12, 1889 in Lemwerder , † May 15, 1942 in Berlin ) was NSDAP - head of the Gaus Weser-Ems , which essentially comprised the city of Bremen and the Free State of Oldenburg . In personal union he was " Reichsstatthalter " for Oldenburg and Bremen. In the SA he had the rank of Obergruppenführer .

biography

Röver was the son of a salesman and businessman. He attended elementary and middle school in Oldenburg and completed a commercial apprenticeship at a coffee company in Bremen. From 1911 to 1913 he worked in a factory in the German colony of Cameroon , where he fell ill with malaria , the consequences of which he suffered all his life. In 1915 he married Marie Hermine Tebben, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. One son died in childbirth, the second son at the age of two and a half years of meningitis . His wife died of tuberculosis in 1920 . A year after her death, he married his second wife, Irma Kemmler, with whom he had no children.

When the First World War broke out , he volunteered for the infantry . In 1916 he was transferred to the Propaganda Department of the Supreme Army Command . After the end of the war he became a member of the NSDAP in 1923. When this was banned after the Hitler putsch by decree of November 23, 1923, he was active in the " Völkisch-Soziale Block ". After the re-admission of the NSDAP he became local group leader in Oldenburg and three years later Gauleiter for Weser-Ems. From 1928 to 1932 he was a member of the Oldenburg State Parliament .

After the NSDAP had received 18.3 percent of the vote in the 1930 Reichstag election (September 14), Röver moved into the Reichstag as a NSDAP member .

In the Oldenburg state elections on May 29, 1932, the NSDAP received an absolute majority (24 of 46) in parliament with 48.5% of the votes. On June 16, Röver was elected Prime Minister of the Free State of Oldenburg . The Röver cabinet held office until 5th / 6th May 1933. On May 5 or 6, 1933, Hitler appointed Röver Reich Governor for Bremen and Oldenburg.

Röver was a staunch anti-Semite , a racist and an anti-democrat. He called the visit of the African pastor Robert Kwami on September 20, 1932 in the Oldenburg Lambertikirche a "shame for the white race" - the beginning of the Kwami affair . When in 1936 the Oldenburg Minister for Churches and Schools, Julius Pauly , issued a decree stating that the crosses should be removed from all state buildings and thus also from the Catholic denominational schools, several angry delegations from the Catholic Oldenburger Münsterland forced the Gauleiter to withdraw this decree.

Röver was considered an admirer of the local writer August Hinrichs . A particular concern was Röver, himself a native of Stedinger , the heroization and ideological exploitation of the Stedinger freedom struggle . He arranged for an open-air theater to be built in the municipality of Ganderkesee in the district of Bookholzberg , which was nicknamed Stedingsehre and was performed on the 1935 and 1937 Hinrichs play De Stedinge . Röver then liked to refer to the theater as the " Oberammergau of the North".

Rover's policy was not very successful. Some of his projects failed and he gradually fell behind within the party.

In December 1937, Rövers car came off an icy Reichsautobahn and crashed into a ditch. He was slow to recover from the injuries (including a concussion); his malaria disease also weakened him. He never recovered from it and was later diagnosed with progressive paralysis ("softening of the brain").

Shortly before his death, with the help of his secretary Heinrich Walkenhorst, he wrote a memorandum that can be regarded as his political testament . In this he outlined the situation of the NSDAP and made suggestions for resolving internal party conflicts. He also made suggestions for restructuring the Third Reich after the Second World War .

Two weeks before his death, coming directly from Berlin, he told his wife, daughter and their girlfriend that he had fallen out with Himmler and Goebbels .

"Berlin is a mess, we will lose the war."

- Carl Röver, 1942

Shortly before his death he was picked up by Hitler's personal doctor Theo Morell and taken to Berlin. On May 13, 1942, after his admission to the Berlin Charité, an assessment was carried out by Karl Brandt and Max de Crinis , the director of the Charité's psychiatric and mental hospital. After treatment with scopolamine and morphine , Röver died two days later, according to official information, of " pneumonia "; there were also rumors of a euthanasia murder or suicide .

A big funeral service took place in Oldenburg. In Berlin, on May 22, 1942, the Nazi leadership organized a state act in the Reich Chancellery in the presence of Hitler , which was broadcast nationwide on the radio. His successor in the office of Gauleiter was Paul Wegener (1908–1993); Victor von Podbielski took over Rövers' Reichstag mandate .

Röver became an honorary citizen of the cities of Bremerhaven , Oldenburg and Melle in 1937 and of the city of Jever in 1938 . In 1942 the Heiligengeiststrasse in Oldenburg was renamed Carl-Röver-Strasse . After the capitulation of Germany and the end of the British zone of occupation , honorary citizenships were revoked and the renaming of the street in Oldenburg was reversed.

literature

  • Albrecht Eckhardt: From the bourgeois revolution to the National Socialist takeover of power - the Oldenburg state parliament and its representatives 1848-1933 . 1996, ISBN 3-89598-327-6 , p. 105.
  • Hans Friedl:  Röver, Carl Georg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , pp. 754 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Wolfgang Günther: Röver, Carl Georg . In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 611-613 ( digitized version , PDF; 8.2 MB).
  • Ingo Harms: The sudden death of the Oldenburg Gauleiter Carl Röver. In: Das Land Oldenburg 102, 1999, pp. 1–8. ISSN 0175-7512, ISSN 1434-5005.
  • Was a nervous Nazi a victim of euthanasia?
  • Gerhard Kaldewei: “Stedingsehre” should become a place of pilgrimage for all of Germany. Documentation and history of a Nazi cult site on Bookholzberg 1934–2005. Aschenbeck and Holstein, Delmenhorst and Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-939401-07-2 .
  • Inge Marßolek , René Ott: Bremen in the Third Reich - Adaptation, Resistance, Persecution . With the collaboration of Peter Brandt. Schünemann, 1986, ISBN 3-7961-1765-1 .
  • Michael Rademacher: Carl Röver: The report of the Reich Governor of Oldenburg and Bremen and Gauleiter of the Gau Weser-Ems on the situation of the NSDAP: a memorandum from 1942. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2000, ISBN 3-8311-0298-8 .
  • Michael Rademacher: Gauleiter Carl Röver and his internal party personnel policy using the example of the Emsland district leaders. In: Emsland history. Vol. 9, published by the Study Society for Emsland Regional History, self-published by the Study Society for Emsland Regional History, Haselünne 2001, pp. 152–169, ISBN 3-88319-211-2 .
  • Michael Rademacher: The district leaders of the NSDAP in the Gau Weser-Ems. Tectum Verlag, Marburg 2005, plus Osnabrück, Univ. Diss. 2005, ISBN 3-8288-8848-8 (pp. 147-161 biography of Carl Röver).
  • Carl Röver - Death of a Gauleiter (2006)
  • Franz Stapelfeldt : My relationship with the NSDAP . Bremen 1946.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second, updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 504.
  2. ↑ List of all members of the 5th Reichstag here
  3. ↑ Results
  4. ↑ a b http://www.radiobremen.de ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (2013)
  5. ↑ footnote 43
  6. ↑ footnote 46
  7. ^ Thomas Husmann, Hans Begerow: funeral procession for Gauleiter Carl Röver. In: NWZonline. Nordwest-Zeitung , June 5, 2019, accessed on June 5, 2019 .
  8. ^ Commemorative speech by Reichsminister Rosenberg on the death of Carl Röver during a state act in the Berlin Reich Chancellery (2:22 min)
personal data
SURNAME Roever, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Röver, Carl Georg (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, Reichsstatthalter in Bremen and Oldenburg
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Lemwerder , Stedingen
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1942
Place of death Berlin