Edit by Coler

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Edit von Coler, photo in her NSDAP party book (1931)

Edit von Coler (also Edith von Coler ; * July 9, 1895 in Berlin - Charlottenburg as Edit Heinemann ; † May 14, 1949 in Pyrmont ) was a German propagandist , industrial spy, dramaturge and foreign press chief in the Reichsnährstand . As Gestapo -Agentin and Special Representative in Romania they prompted the DC circuit of the Romanian-German Nazi organizations.

Life

youth

The three Manzel children around 1910, from right: Edit Manzel-Heinemann, Gerhard Ludwig (Gerlu) Manzel and Alix Manzel-Heinemann
Ulrich von Coler (1917)

Von Coler came from a conservative, wealthy family of artists. Her father was Fritz Heinemann , a successful German sculptor. Edit's mother, Alice Heinemann nee Tonn, was the daughter of a wealthy Rittmeister from Nakel ( Polish: Nakło nad Notecią ) province of Posen . Edit spent her childhood with her sister Alix, who was three years her junior, in the midst of educated artists. Both girls were instructed in the French language by the French governess Antoinette . In 1902, Edit's parents separated. Edit's mother then married the sculptor, painter and graphic artist Karl Ludwig Manzel , whose circle of acquaintances included Kaiser Wilhelm II and leading circles of the Wilhelmine era .

In 1917 Edit entered into a marriage of convenience with Oberleutnant Ulrich von Coler , later a colonel in the Wehrmacht and the Finnish army . This relationship earned her a title of nobility. Three years after the birth of their only daughter Jutta, the couple separated in 1922.

Rise in National Socialist circles

Edit instructed her cousin Margarete Himmler , the wife of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , in finer manners, and used her relationships as a springboard for advancement into National Socialist leadership circles.

The wealthy businessman Paul Lohmann made a luxurious life possible from Coler until 1930, which she used to found a yacht school and - as the only woman of her time - to obtain a captain's license. With her fortune she supported right-wing conservative associations, as she saw Germany as a humiliated victim of the Versailles Peace Treaty . In May 1931 she joined the NSDAP and made a career there. As a dramaturge at the State Theater, presumably a camouflage function, she operated "salon espionage". In March 1935, on the recommendation of Himmler, she became head of the foreign press in the Reichsnähramt under Richard Darré , Reichsbauernführer and head of the Race and Settlement Main Office .

Co-ordination of the Romanian-German Nazi organizations

Edit by Coler (1938)

Her fondness for Romanian " gypsy music " sparked her interest in Romania. Francophile Romania, as a member of the Little Entente , had risen to become a regional power in southeastern Europe in the 1920s . Because of the oil reserves and the geographical location of Romania , the Axis powers sought proximity to the country. At the request of the Foreign Office , Darré sent her to Romania as a journalist to allegedly distribute Germany-friendly articles. In addition to this press activity, it was "used by the legation to convey sensitive information". In Romania, too, Coler found a generous patron , this time the 54-year-old industrialist Nicolae Malaxa , who, as Romania's richest man, had a great influence on the press and belonged to the camarilla of the Romanian King Charles II . Malaxa arranged a lavish one-year contract with the Curentul newspaper for Edit von Coler . She lived in a complete apartment in the Bucharest Hotel Athenée Palace .

The “extremely attractive blonde lady” had her first spectacular success in October 1938 when she broke the “brotherly dispute” between the Romanian-German radical and moderate Nazi parties rivaling since 1935 with the leaders Alfred Bonfert ( German People's Party of Romania ) and Fritz Fabritius ( German Volksgemeinschaft in Romania ) within 48 hours.

On October 26, 1938, she met Fabritius and Helmut Wolff , chairman of the German People's Council for Transylvania, in the Bucharest apartment of the German Legation Councilor Stelzer. Also in Bucharest, in the apartment of the representative of the NSDAP / AO regional group leader of the foreign organization of the NSDAP in Romania, Artur Adolf Konradi , she spoke the next morning with Bonfert, the regional farmer leader Hans Kaufmes and the district leader for Transylvania East Waldemar Gust . On the evening of October 27, both parties came to an agreement in which Fabritius was confirmed as national chairman of the national community. The DVR organizations were dissolved and incorporated into the national community. On November 6th, the "reconciliation" was celebrated with a mass rally in Timișoara .

It is not clear how Coler was able to do this so quickly. Due to a lack of sources, only circumstantial evidence can provide conclusions about the content of the conversations. Even well-informed authors describe them as "mysterious". Her letterhead bore the title "Clerk in the administrative office of the Reichsbauernführer"; According to rumors, she worked for the SS main office Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi); the bishop of the Evangelical Church AB in Romania , Viktor Glondys , believed she was a "relative of Himmler". Coler is also said to have had recommendations from the Foreign Office and was particularly convincing with their funds. Assumptions suggest that, as the representative of the German Reich , she threatened the radicals with the cancellation of their funding by the NSDAP. For the first time in 800 years, Germany had an influence on the politics of the local ethnic Germans . The historian Paul Milata commented that "the Romanian Germans [...] were brought into line by a person they knew nothing about."

In several letters to the Foreign Office and to Werner Lorenz , the head of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, Coler reported in November 1938 about the successful settlement of the disputes: "Both claim to be the true representatives of the new worldview ...". But the hotheads continued to worry her, so in September 1939 she asked Lorenz “to step in vigorously” because: “The careless behavior of the ethnic Germans endangers our work.” She also said: “Germans capable of military service are called from here to Germany, even though they on the German front, because of their small number, mean no help at all, but are of the greatest importance here ”.

Economic agreement with Romania

In the service of the blood-and-soil ideology , she officially worked as a journalist and did a number of jobs. This included preparing the economic agreement with Romania, which was signed on March 23, 1939 and which secured Germany 's oil and grain imports from Romania, in which Edit von Coler played a key role. According to her, she achieved “the peaceful conquest of Romania”. Their work led to the first substantial rapprochement between Berlin and Bucharest; Coler described it as "securing peace" and "peacefully gaining a real friend for Germany".

Meeting with Charles II of Romania and recall

After the armistice of Compiègne, the former ally France initially no longer played a political and military role, so Romania no longer had the political strength to defend itself against the "German embrace". In addition, the Soviet Union threatened an attack if northern Bukovina and Bessarabia were not ceded to them. The Second Vienna Arbitral Award resulted in the return of northeastern Transylvania to Hungary . The southern Dobruja was returned to Bulgaria . The Great Romanian King Charles II abdicated and went into exile. Shortly before that, Edit von Coler received a private audience with the king, albeit without the approval of the German embassy. Her unauthorized actions angered her superiors in Bucharest and Berlin, so that she was recalled from Bucharest by the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop , “for political reasons” and had to leave the country on August 2, 1940. In Germany, Coler's passport was taken away and she was not allowed to travel abroad until the end of the war .

After the end of the war , Coler was briefly at Civilian Internment Camp No. 6 in Moosburg an der Isar , from where she was released after efforts by her daughter Jutta Schröder († November 2009). Edit von Coler died alone in May 1949.

reception

In October 1943, the American magazine Coronet published an article by the German-Jewish journalist Bella Fromm entitled "The Sirens of Swastiska". In it she reported on "Agents of the Third Reich", with a special focus on Edit von Coler. As a salon journalist in Berlin from 1930 to 1938, Fromm described Edit as a femme fatale .

As press correspondent for the American newspaper Newsweek, Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck reported on her stay in Bucharest from June 1940 to January 1941. In her book Athenée Palace , she devoted an entire chapter to Edit von Coler entitled “The Fifth Column”. Waldeck had the opportunity to watch Edit von Coler at the Athenée Palace Hotel. “At the Athenée Palace, every Coler woman looked at Mata Hari like a Mata Hari , born in 1940, but this simplification, which everyone was satisfied with, was wrong. Ms. von Coler is as much a Mata Hari these days as a cavalry attack in 1914 is equivalent to a modern armored division. [...] She was not a spy for Hitler, but a propagandist for Hitler. Their work was much more complex and designed on a much more realistic basis. Seduction alone was not enough. Von Coler had to be as ingenious as Jules Cambon in diplomacy and as witty in the salons as Madame Récamier . "

The historian Paul Milata stated: “Their trump card, however, was glamor and the talent to negotiate successfully, quickly and, above all, discreetly. To this day, most Germans in Romania do not understand that they were brought into line as early as 1938 and not until September 1940 with the appointment of Andreas Schmidt as ethnic group leader ; this was merely their most visible consequence. Von Coler's communication style was so successful that she was never remembered then or until now. "

In early 1939, the French secret service suspected her of being a Gestapo agent. As a result of the economic agreement of March 1939, the British press became aware of her and referred to her as "an SS agent whose weapon is her appearance". The large number of her contacts also aroused the suspicion of the Gestapo, who suspected her of being a double agent . At an unspecified time, von Coler is said to have had connections with the Wehrmacht intelligence service .

Author Klaus Popa noted in a 2010 review of Jacques Picard's Edit by Coler. As a Nazi agent in Bucharest that Picard “did not strictly draw the line between fiction and reality”. “As a result, the influence that the Hitler Reich struggled for until General Antonescu took over government in Romania in 1940 is tied exclusively to Colers. In this way it is possible to solidify the fairy tale of their 'two achievements' and Coler also has a special 'feel' for the weak points in Romanian domestic and foreign policy. Coler is said to have played a key role in the conclusion of the economic agreement of March 23, 1939 between the 'Third Reich' and Romania. Author Picard mentions the involvement of the national group leader of the NSDAP in Romania, Konradi, in the arbitration talks between the rival Nazi groups of the Romanian Germans, but prefers to attribute the main role to von Coler and not to Konradi. The author proceeds in a similar way with the episode of the German-Romanian economic negotiations, which were initiated, prepared and contractually sanctioned by experts on both sides, but not by von Coler. And with the likewise unsubstantiated claim that von Coler had known about the secret clauses of the pact on the cession of the provinces of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to Russia since December 1939, the measure of what is reasonable has been exceeded. "

literature

  • Jacques Picard: Edit by Coler. As a Nazi agent in Bucharest. Schiller Verlag, Hermannstadt / Bonn 2010, ISBN 978-3-941271-31-9 , p. 230.
  • Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck: Athenée palace. RM McBride and company, 1942, p. 357.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hannelore Baier : A colorful personality. April 9, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Konrad Wellmann: Mata Hari in Romania? April 9, 2010.
  3. ^ Edit by Coler. in the portal of the German National Library .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Paul Milata : Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu. Romanian Germans in the Waffen SS. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-13806-6 , p. 349, here p. 36–37.
  5. ^ Time : New Order , February 10, 1940.
  6. ↑ Half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics , Klaus Popa : Review of Jacques Picard's edit by Coler. As a Nazi agent in Bucharest , issue No. 1 a. 2, 2010, p. 231.

( C ) Jacques Picard: Edit by Coler. Schiller Verlag, Hermannstadt / Bonn 2010, ISBN 978-3-941271-31-9 .

  1. ↑ p. 19.
  2. ↑ p. 20.
  3. ↑ p. 22.
  4. ↑ pp. 62-63.
  5. ↑ p. 112.
  6. ↑ p. 90.
  7. ↑ pp. 9-10.
  8. ↑ p. 11.
  9. ↑ p. 8.
  10. ↑ p. 211.
  11. ↑ p. 212.
  12. ↑ pp. 94-100.
  13. ↑ p. 67.
  14. ↑ p. 212.
personal data
SURNAME Coler, Edit of
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Coler, Edith of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Gestapo agent
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Germany
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1949