Eberhard von Wechmar
Eberhard Carl Alfred Freiherr von Wechmar (born July 12, 1897 in Frankfurt am Main , † June 30, 1934 in Deutsch-Lissa or July 1, 1934 in or near Breslau ) was a German landowner and SA leader.
Live and act
Origin and youth
Wechmar came from the noble family von Wechmar . His parents were the writer and captain Eberhard Friedrich Wilhelm von Wechmar (born August 23, 1866 in Köslitz; † December 18, 1929 in Berlin) and his wife Friederike (Frieda) Stephanie Charlotte Marie (born August 15, 1876 in Mannheim), one of them born Freiin von Wechmar of the II. line. Wechmar's brothers were the journalist Irnfried von Wechmar (1899-1959) and the officer Carl Friedrich Otto von Wechmar (born April 1, 1900 in Bad Soden im Taunus, † November 19, 1940 in Savigny near Beauvais). His sisters were Stephanie Cyane Elisabeth Friederike (born May 26, 1904 in Marburg an der Lahn) and Liselotte (born September 12, 1906 in Wilhelmshaven) von Wechmar.
After participating in the First World War , in which he reached the rank of first lieutenant , von Wechmar settled down as a landowner in Silesia. On May 28, 1921 he married Annemarie von Binzer (born September 23, 1893 in Golun). After this marriage was divorced on May 6, 1925, he married Annemarie Euen in Korschlitz on March 20, 1928 (born October 13, 1904 in Ludwigsdorf). The son Eberhard Hans-Joachim (born September 23, 1929) emerged from the marriage.
Career in the Nazi movement
At the end of the 1920s, Wechmar joined the NSDAP . In 1931 he officially became a member of the party (membership number 429.656). In the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary arm of the Nazi movement, he had been SA sub-group leader in western Berlin since 1932 at the latest. At that time he lived at Opitzstrasse 8 in Berlin-Steglitz.
As leader of the SA sub-group Berlin-West, Wechmar caused a public sensation in mid-March 1932 when the authorities found a ten-page deployment plan of the SA that he had written, which set out in detail how the SA would withdraw from Berlin and the capital in the event of an impending civil war then encircle and cordon off.
In 1933 Wechmar was appointed SA brigade leader and transferred to Lower Silesia. In March 1933 he took over the leadership of the SA Brigade 21 (Lower Silesia), based in Liegnitz, as the successor to Hans Karl Koch .
Arrest and death
On June 30 or July 1, 1934, Wechmar was arrested and shot by the SS in the course of the Röhm affair . The exact circumstances of his death have not yet been conclusively researched: Magnus von Braun , a neighbor of Wechmar, later noted in his memoirs that Wechmar had been picked up on June 30th in Liegnitz and "shot in the forest near Breslau without any judgment". The historian Friedman, on the other hand, believes that Wechmar was arrested by the Silesian SS on June 30th in the office of the Upper President of Silesia and then shot on July 1st, 1934, although the allegations made against him were previously compared with Maar, the chief of staff of the Silesian SS commander Udo von Woyrsch , would have proved unfounded.
Today it can be taken as proven that the shooting of Wechmar was not commissioned by the Nazi leadership clique around Hitler. In the Osnabrück trial against Udo von Woyrsch and Ernst Müller-Altenau in 1957, for example, it was established that shortly after the shooting of Wechmar, the coordinators of the Silesian arrest and shooting measures received an order from Berlin ordering the release of Wechmar. Woyrsch is said to have commented on this - with reference to an order previously passed on from Berlin to Breslau to shoot Wechmar, which was expressly confirmed in response to a request from him - with the remark that one in Berlin apparently believed that the Breslau SS with " Rubber balls "shoot.
In any case, Joseph Goebbels comments on the shooting of Wechmar in a diary entry from the beginning of July 1934 as follows:
“Wechmar shot. Awful! Some things happened there that did not quite correspond to the will of the Führer. Fate! Victims of the Revolution ”.
In a similar way, the Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels Wechmar counted among the small circle of "righteous SA leaders" who perished in the murder.
In his memoirs, Wechmar's nephew Rüdiger von Wechmar , who later became the UN ambassador to the Federal Republic, reported that the Nazis had "immediately" declared the shooting to be a "regrettable oversight" and that Hermann Göring had contacted the family and contacted them for them Execution excused, which was the result of a mix-up. The Silesian President Helmuth Brückner finally submitted a memorandum to Göring and Rudolf Heß on October 10, 1934, in which he criticized the conditions that had prevailed there under the regime of the SS leader of Silesia, Udo von Woyrsch: he justified his criticism of Woyrsch Among other things, he was responsible for the unjustified shooting of Wechmar - which he dated July 1, 1934.
Wechmar's killing was probably either an accident or an arbitrary act by subordinate organs. The former would either have taken the form that Berlin authorities (especially the Secret State Police Office) erroneously ordered Wechmar to be shot, or that the Breslau SS leadership erroneously arranged for Wechmar to be shot without such an order from Berlin. As a second possibility, the Berlin SS authorities or the Breslau SS leadership could have deliberately brought about the killing of Wechmar on their own initiative and later passed this off as an error resulting from a communication breakdown or a misunderstanding.
According to Braun, Wechmar's ashes and cufflinks were mailed to his young wife eight days after the murder. He also states that as a reason for the killing of Wechmar, he heard that he was involved in the alleged SA conspiracy against Hitler and that he was in contact with the Silesian SA Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines .
Udo von Woyrsch was finally sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a jury court for sixfold manslaughter, including complicity in the murder of Wechmar. Wechmar's widow took part in this trial as a witness.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Rüdiger von Wechmar: Akteur in der Loge , 2000, p. 25.
- ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility.
- ↑ The father came from the 3rd branch of the 1st line.
- ↑ Schuster: SA in Berlin-Brandenburg , p. 222f.
- ↑ Magnus Freiherr von Braun: Path through four time epochs , 1965, p. 298.
- ↑ Towiah Friedman: The three oldest SS Generaele Himmler. SS-Obergruppenfuehrer August Heyssmayer, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Wilhelm Reinhard, SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Udo von Woyrsch. A documentary collection , 1998.
- ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels , Part 1, Vol. 3-I, 2005, p. 76.
- ^ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer ante portas. Between Severing and Heydrich , 1950, p. 301.
- ^ Helmut Heiber (editor): files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP. Reconstruction of a false inventory , 1983, p. 63.
- ↑ See Braun, as above. It seems possible that the Nazi leadership viewed the shooting of Wechmar as a mistake and apologized to the relatives for this act, but that they stuck to the allegation of Wechmar's involvement in the plans, not about the erroneous shooting to officially admit.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wechmar, Eberhard von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wechmar, Eberhard Carl Alfred Freiherr von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German landowners and SA leaders murdered in the “Röhm Putsch” |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 12, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 30, 1934 or July 1, 1934 |
| Place of death | uncertain: German Lissa or Breslau |