Edmund Raitz from Frentz

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Edmund Erwin Joseph Hubert Maria Freiherr Raitz von Frentz (born July 18, 1887 in Bonn , † November 2, 1964 in Rome ) was a German journalist for the central press .

Life

Edmund Raitz von Frentz came from the old Cologne noble family Raitz von Frentz . His parents were Lieutenant General Freiherr Joseph August Raitz von Frentz (1858–1922) and Johanna geb. Noble von Solemacher (1863–1936). His brothers were the lawyer and politician Maximilian Raitz von Frentz (1885–1967) and the association director Josef Raitz von Frentz (1895–1977).

On the maternal side, Edmund Raitz von Frentz descended from an old electorate court and diplomatic nobility, from which a Trier court chancellor and an imperial envoy emerged. He probably got his nickname from his maternal grandfather Edmund Ritter and Edler von Solemacher zu Namedy, which until then had been rather unusual for the Raitz von Frentz line. Raitz von Frentz was also distantly related to the Jesuit scholar Emmerich Raitz von Frentz (1889–1968), who was known in Catholic Germany at the time.

Raitz von Frentz studied law and political science at the universities of Lausanne , Berlin , Kiel and Münster . His main interests were in the humanities, especially German literature, which is why he attended literary lectures as well as lectures in history, philosophy and art history. He also listened to theological lectures, and at universities where he did not find a Catholic theological faculty, he also heard from respected Protestant theologians ( Adolf von Harnack ).

After taking the first legal examination at the Higher Regional Court in Hamm in the summer of 1912 , he went to Breslau to obtain a doctorate in law. He received his doctorate in 1914 with a work on constitutional and legal history with the then well-known legal scholars Siegfried Brie (1838-1931) and Otto Fischer (1853-1929).

Raitz von Frentz had to interrupt the legal preparatory service that followed his doctorate in the summer of 1914 because of the First World War . Shortly before the outbreak of World War I, on June 29, 1914, he married Martha Bollig (1892–1978), daughter of the landowner and chairman of the horse committee of the Rhenish Chamber of Agriculture, Economist Joseph Bollig from his first marriage to Sophie, née. Stollwerck, who in turn is the daughter of the well-known Rhenish industrialist Heinrich Stollwerck and his wife Apollonia, née. Krusius was. Edmund Raitz von Frentz was married to Martha for over 50 years, but the marriage remained childless. After the end of the First World War, Raitz von Frentz swapped his legal profession for that of journalist.

Edmund Raitz von Frentz initially worked for the Kölnische Volkszeitung , which was considered the largest press organ of political Catholicism in Germany. In 1924 he was sent to Rome as the foreign correspondent of a newly created joint press ring of the most important daily newspapers, such as the Kölnische Volkszeitung and Germania , which are closely related to the Central Party and the Bavarian People's Party . There he held a monopoly on the Catholic-oriented Rome and Vatican reporting for Germany and the neighboring German-speaking countries, which naturally played a prominent role in these papers , until the collapse of these papers during the Nazi era .

Due to these circumstances, he worked as a journalist between 1924 and 1964 at an important interface between the German Empire , Italy and the Vatican during the politically most turbulent epoch of the 20th century. During his most effective working period between 1924 and 1933, he observed the Italian system of Mussolini and from 1930 noticed the rise of the National Socialist movement in his home country.

In his correspondent activities, the first section stands out between 1924 and 1933, before the Zentrumsblätter voluntarily submitted to the restriction of free reporting by Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine in 1933 .

The establishment of the Nazi regime gradually restricted the journalist's radius of action to the limit of his own viability. The Germania newspaper was discontinued in 1938, the Kölnische Volkszeitung fell victim to the war economy in 1941, so his professional existence was about to end, but the proximity to the Roman Curia gave him the opportunity to stay in Rome and the dangerous months of the German occupation for him to survive between 1943 and 1944 in the safety of Campo Santo Teutonico. Although after 1949 he tried tirelessly to get involved in the newly emerging spectrum of the West German press, these efforts failed because of the changed working conditions and journalistic requirements of the post-war period, and the journalist was more and more forgotten. In 1954 he received the Federal Cross of Merit .

Edmund Freiherr Raitz von Frentz died on November 2, 1964 in Rome; he is buried in the Campo Santo Teutonico in the Vatican.

Honors

Significance for contemporary history research, estate

Raitz von Frentz often spoke to Cardinal State Secretary Eugenio Pacelli , who later became Pope Pius XII, about the growth of the German Nazi movement until 1932/1933 and - in the months up to the conclusion of the Reich Concordate - about the future of the Center Party . With his articles he often acted as a mouthpiece for the German center milieu, but this did not mean that he had to coordinate every single article with Pacelli. Rather, he took over its political guidelines more and more.

In contemporary historical research, the relationship between German Catholicism and National Socialism is a controversial topic. This was shown e.g. For example, in 1978 in the controversy between Konrad Repgen and Klaus Scholder over the question of whether there was a close connection between the negotiations on the Reich Concordat and the Center's approval of the Enabling Act or not. Raitz von Frentz is an important contemporary witness for the Vatican's view of the prehistory of the Reich Concordat. His analyzes are documented in numerous articles and confidential letters. Due to his close relationship with the three protagonists of the treaty - Eugenio Pacelli, Ludwig Kaas and Franz von Papen - as well as due to his rank as papal secret chamberlain, he was a participating observer.

Raitz von Frentz's estate is in the archive of the Commission for Contemporary History.

literature

  • Andreas Burtscheidt: Edmund Freiherr Raitz von Frentz. Rome correspondent for the German-speaking Catholic press 1924–1964 . Schöningh, 2008, ISBN 3-506-76472-1 .
  • Andreas Burtscheidt: More admiration than criticism? Mussolini and Fascist Italy in the analysis of Robert Michels and Edmund Freiherr Raitz von Frentz , in: To the problem of ideology in history. Herbert Hömig on his 65th birthday , ed. v. Erik Gieseking [ua] (Subsidia Academica, Series A: Newer and Recent History, Vol. 8). Lauf ad Pegnitz 2006, ISBN 3-931070-46-8 , pp. 405-418
  • Edmund Freiherr Raitz von Frentz , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 25/1965 of June 14, 1965, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Christoph Kösters: Catholic Church in National Socialist Germany - Current research results, controversies and questions . In: Rainer Bendel (Ed.): The Catholic Guilt? Catholicism in the Third Reich between arrangement and resistance . Lit, Münster, 2nd, through. Edition 2004, ISBN 3-8258-6334-4 , pp. 25–46, here pp. 29–30.
  2. ^ Edmund Freiherr Raitz von Frentz, 1887–1964 ( memento of March 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on September 8, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Raitz von Frentz, Edmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raitz von Frentz, Edmund Erwin Joseph Hubert Maria Freiherr
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, papal secret chamberlain, writer and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH November 2nd, 1964
Place of death Rome