Christian Nussbaum

Christian Daniel Nussbaum

Christian Daniel Nussbaum (also Nussbaum , born July 9, 1888 in Strasbourg , † June 25, 1939 in Wiesloch ) was a German politician ( SPD ) and member of the Baden state parliament . During the National Socialist " seizure of power " in March 1933, Nussbaum shot two police officers in Freiburg im Breisgau who wanted to take him into " protective custody ". Nussbaum was later declared incompetent ; The death of the two policemen was used by the National Socialists in Baden as a pretext for stepping up action against the labor movement .

Life

Walnut attended elementary and middle school and graduated in 1902 at the Strasbourg School of Applied Arts training as a craftsman . In 1907 he passed the final examination in modeling and wood carving and acquired the right to train apprentices. He later studied law, art history and philosophy in Berlin. Nussbaum was a soldier in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 . He took part in the Battle of the Somme and was deployed in Romania . Nussbaum, according to his information in the Landtag Handbuch, had no denomination , was married to a Jew.

In 1911 Nussbaum joined the SPD. After the November Revolution he was a member of the Upper Committee for War Damage in Berlin from 1919 to 1922 and was a member of the advisory board of the Reich Ministry of the Interior until 1926 . Between 1922 and 1926 he was an expert assessor in the Reich Economic Court . In 1927 he moved to Freiburg, where he worked as a businessman. In October 1929 he was elected to the Baden state parliament. In parliament he was secretary in the committee of the rules of procedure. Nussbaum was also a city councilor in Freiburg.

During the National Socialist "seizure of power", the Baden NSDAP Gauleiter and Reich Commissioner Robert Wagner ordered a police action against social democratic and communist functionaries who were supposed to be arrested "to ensure public peace and order". Among those scheduled for arrest was Nussbaum, who was still entitled to parliamentary immunity until the Baden Landtag was re-established by a law passed on March 31, 1933 . At 4:15 am on March 17th, police broke into Nussbaum's apartment in Freiburg to execute a "protective custody warrant". Nussbaum had not opened the apartment door and was in the locked bedroom. Since a locksmith called in could not open the door to the room, the police pushed the door in. At that moment, Nussbaum fired several shots, which hit two police officers. One policeman died instantly; a second died several days later from his injuries. When Nussbaum was assured that it was "the uniformed, blue police", he voluntarily came to the police station.

In non-National Socialist press organs it was immediately suspected that Nussbaum had acted “in a fit of mental derangement ”. Nussbaum had been in psychiatric treatment since the summer of 1932. The National Socialist press, however, saw the death of the police officers as evidence of “Marxist criminality”. The Karlsruher NSDAP-Gauzeitung Der Führer claimed that Nussbaum had prepared the act with "unparalleled coldness" and had no doubt that Reich Commissioner Wagner "will atone for the murder with all the brutal severity of the law". On March 17, Wagner ordered the arrest of all Baden MPs from the SPD and KPD and the ban on all newspapers and all military and youth organizations from both parties. The lawyer Horst Rehberger compares Wagner's approach with the Reichstag Fire Ordinance passed after the Reichstag fire : Wagner used the death of the two police officers as a “welcome pretext” to “intensify his 'fight against Marxism' considerably”.

In Freiburg the NSDAP called for a mass rally at which district leader Franz Kerber demanded "that the murderer should be punished with the utmost punishment that there is for such a crime." The National Socialists are ready to "hang every murderer and every enemy of the people on the highest tree". Kerber also called for the mayor Karl Bender (center) to be removed from office because he allegedly described the police officers' death as a "serious accident". In fact, the formulation came from the director of the Freiburg City Theater , which, at Bender's request, canceled a performance because of the death of the police officers.

Karl Schelshorn, the police sergeant major who died at the scene of the crime, was buried in a state funeral attended by the entire Baden state government . Schelshorn lived in the same house as Nussbaum and had taken part in the operation after he became aware of the noise. The detective Johann Baptist Weber died a few days after Schelshorn's funeral; he received a very restricted state funeral. The Barbara Street , in the Nussbaum last lived, was in street Schelshorn Weaver renamed. On January 30, 1936, a memorial was unveiled at the crime scene. After the liberation from National Socialism , the renaming of the street was reversed and the memorial was removed.

Stumbling block for Nussbaum in Karlsruhe, 2017 removed

Nussbaum was initially detained in the Freiburg prison and taken to the Wiesloch sanatorium on March 20, 1933 . An expert opinion that was initially kept secret saw Nussbaum as incompetent. In November 1933, the Freiburg Regional Court ruled on the basis of several concurring reports that Nussbaum could not be held criminally responsible. A received expert opinion diagnoses progressive paralysis and describes Nussbaum as "inveterate socialist [s]"; he is assumed to be "activity and talkativeness, flight of ideas, weak thinking, weak judgment, megalomania". Nussbaum told doctors at the Wiesloch facility that he was infected with syphilis during the First World War . During his time in the state parliament, his revision made him feel weak, whereupon his doctor forbade him to work as a member of parliament. After he received several threatening letters, he had a gun license issued. Nussbaum declared his act as self-defense ; he was convinced that the people who broke into his apartment were politically motivated criminals. The lawyer Rupert Hourand refers to the death of the Kiel social democrat Wilhelm Spiegel , who was murdered on March 12, 1933 by National Socialists posing as police officers.

The geneticist and science historian Benno Müller-Hill recorded his evaluation of Nussbaum's medical files in a private print in 1998 . Contemporary witnesses interviewed by Müller-Hill describe Nussbaum as a normal, very intelligent, culturally interested person and an outstanding personality. In the Freiburg districts of Wiehre and Stühlinger , two stumbling blocks have been reminiscent of Nussbaum since 2004 and 2005 respectively . In November 2013, another stumbling block for Nussbaum was laid in front of the former seat of the Baden state parliament in the Karlsruhe Ständehaus .

Nussbaum died on June 25, 1939 in the Wiesloch institution; The circumstances of his death are controversial: According to the Heidelberg historian Frank Engehausen , according to the medical records , Nussbaum was “cared for according to the rules of the art”; There are no indications of a murder in the files. The head of the Karlsruhe City Archives, Otto Bräunche, does not see Nussbaum as a victim of National Socialism. The city archives and the Karlsruhe coordination group for the laying of stumbling blocks sought to change the inscription on the Karlsruhe stumbling block, on which Nussbaum was described as "murdered". In May 2017, the stumbling block was removed after Gunter Demnig refused to change the inscription. Andreas Meckel, co-initiator of the Freiburg Stolpersteine, refers to a letter dated June 12, 1939, in which the Freiburg Mayor Franz Kerber draws the attention of Gauleiter Wagner to the fact that a nurse had campaigned for Nussbaum's dismissal and assumes that the Gauleiter “maybe even the appropriate measures are reserved ”. This suggests that Kerber recommended the murder of Nussbaum.

literature

• Heiko Haumann (Hrsg.): History of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. From the rule of Baden to the present . Volume 3, Theiss, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-8062-0857-3 , p. 304.

Web links

• Christian (Daniel) Nussbaum in the memorial book of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg
• Christian Daniel Nussbaum at stolpersteine-in-freiburg.de
• Christian Nussbaum's biography . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Heinz Siebold: An atmosphere of terror. How the Nazis used Daniel Nussbaum's self-defense. In: Badische Zeitung , January 25, 2010.
• Reports from the Freiburger Zeitung :
  • March 17, 1933 , evening edition.
  • March 18, 1933 , morning edition.
• Speeches by Christian Nussbaum in the Baden state parliament in the digital collections of the Badische Landesbibliothek

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For Nussbaum's biography, see:
   Karl Groß (arr.): Handbook for the Badischer Landtag. Volume 4 (1929/33) Badenia AG, Karlsruhe 1929, p. 160 f.
   Marlis Meckel (Ed.): Giving the victims their names back. Stumbling blocks in Freiburg. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 3-7930-5018-1 , p. 29.
2. ↑ Horst Rehberger: The synchronization of the state of Baden 1932/33. (= Heidelberg jurisprudential treatises. New series, Volume 19) C. Winter, Heidelberg 1966, pp. 122, 124.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Rehberger, Gleichschaltung , p. 123.
4. ^ Heiko Haumann (ed.): History of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. From the rule of Baden to the present. Volume 3, Theiss, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-8062-0857-3 , p. 304.
5. ↑ Der Führer of March 18, 1933. Quoted in Rehberger, Gleichschalt , p. 123.
6. ↑ Rehberger, Gleichschaltung , p. 122.
7. ↑ Quoted in Middendorff, Schelshorn and Weber , p. 56.
8. ↑ Kathrin Clausing: Life on demand. On the history of the Freiburg Jews under National Socialism. City Archives Freiburg im Breisgau, Freiburg im Breisgau 2005, ISBN 3-923272-33-2 , p. 66 f.
9. ↑ Middendorff, Schelshorn and Weber , p. 56 f.
10. ↑ Middendorff, Schelshorn and Weber , pp. 56 f, 58.
11. ↑ Rehberger, Gleichschaltung , p. 124. See also: Nussbaum put out of pursuit. Freiburger Zeitung, November 17, 1933, evening edition.
12. ↑ Quoted in Meckel, Give back their names to the victims , p. 29.
13. ↑ Meckel, To give back their names to the victims , p. 29.
14. ↑ Rupert Hourand: The DC circuit of the Baden communes 1933/34. Freiburg im Breisgau, University, Dissertation 1985, p. 245.
15. ↑ Meckel, To give back their names to the victims , p. 28.
16. ↑ Meckel, Give back their names to the victims , p. 30.
    Stolpersteine ​​- documentation at www.freiburg-im-netz.de (accessed on December 5, 2013).
17. ↑ Stolperstein laying in 2013 at www.stolpersteine-karlsruhe.de (accessed on December 5, 2013).
18. ↑ Klaus Gaßner: Murdered? Or sleep gently? A stumbling block for Christian Nussbaum illuminates a questionable understanding of history in Karlsruhe. In: Badische Latest News , August 10, 2016 (accessed on June 17, 2017)
    Marcel Winter: But no murder? Stumbling block for Christian Nussbaum is to be replaced. In: Baden Latest News, November 21, 2016 (accessed on June 17, 2017)
    Tina Kampf: Controversy about stumbling blocks In: Latest News from Badische, May 9, 2017 (Retrieved on August 11, 2017)
    Lecture by Andreas Meckel on November 9 2016 in the synagogue in Freiburg: “The exhibition 'National Socialism in Freiburg' - The attempt to get closer to the Nazi era”. (Accessed on June 17, 2017)
    Andreas Meckel: Letter from Nazi Mayor Kerber to the Gauleiter appeared: Request to murder the SPD MP Nussbaum. Badische Zeitung , print edition, March 17, 2017 (accessed on June 17, 2017)
    Andreas Meckel: Freiburg's Nazi Mayor Kerber recommended the murder of SPD members. Badische Zeitung, online edition, March 17, 2017 (accessed June 17, 2017)