Eduard Stadtler

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Eduard Stadtler

Eduard Stadtler (born February 17, 1886 in Hagenau , Alsace ; † October 5, 1945 in the Sachsenhausen special camp ) was a right-wing German politician and publicist. In 1918 he founded the Anti-Bolshevik League and other anti-communist organizations, in which he propagated national socialism . Putsch plans , with which he wanted to be elevated to dictator in 1923, failed. In the following years he published a young conservative magazine and was involved in the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten . In 1932/33 he was a member of the Reichstag (first DNVP , then in the faction of the NSDAP ). From 1936 to 1939 he was monitored by the Gestapo , his books were banned and his publishing house closed.

Life

Empire and First World War

Eduard Stadtler was born in Hagenau in the realm of Alsace-Lorraine as the son of Joseph Stadtler and his wife Catharina Stadtler née Debua. He attended the Catholic elementary school in his hometown and later a school in Belfort , where he passed the French Baccalauréat . In Hagenau he made his German Abitur. He studied in Graz and Strasbourg and passed the state examination for higher subjects in 1910. During this time he was friends with the later Chancellor Heinrich Brüning , with whom he later fell out. Like him, Stadtler was involved in the Center Party . From 1910 he worked as a teacher working while also working on his doctoral thesis , which he at Martin Spahn Dr. phil. received his doctorate . When the school authorities accused him of incorrect booklet corrections in 1912, he left school to pursue a political career and became editor of the members' magazine of the Windthorstbünde , the youth organization of the Center Party. In 1913 he spoke out in public lectures in favor of the defense bill, which made further armament possible for the empire . After the outbreak of World War I , he published a patriotic brochure.

In 1915 he volunteered as a war volunteer . He was soon withdrawn from the western front, where he had initially been deployed, as the army command had doubts about the national reliability of the Alsatian regiment in which he served. In 1916 he was transferred to the Eastern Front and after a few weeks he became a Russian prisoner of war . Here he enjoyed considerable freedom, learned Russian and Turkish , gave private lessons and watched with fascination the events of the Russian Revolution that broke out in March 1917. After the peace of Brest-Litovsk released from captivity, he went to Moscow in May 1918 , where he got a job in the German embassy . In August 1918 he returned to Germany.

November Revolution

In December 1918 he founded the Anti-Bolshevik League , of which he became the first director. With generous donations from German industrialists, he was able to set up other anti-communist organizations, such as the General Secretariat founded in 1919 to study and combat Bolshevism . Stadtler was also chairman of the Association for National and Social Solidarity ( Solidarians ), which had been initiated by Heinrich von Gleichen in 1918 and from which the German gentlemen's club emerged in 1924 . He was also a member of the Young Conservative June Club . His elite circle of exposed national entrepreneurs, politicians and intellectuals included u. a. Karl Helfferich , Simon Marx , Adam Stegerwald , Franz Röhr , Heinrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm , Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , Otto Strasser , Franz von Papen and Hugo Stinnes . Stadtler also became a member of the similarly elitist and influential Society for the Study of Fascism .

From autumn 1918 to spring 1919 Stadtler unfolded a restless agitation in Germany against Bolshevism, which he regarded as the greatest danger. As an antidote he propagated a “German”, “national” or “Christian-national” socialism , in contrast to the “ class struggle- socialism” of the Marxists. The aim of his political thinking was a hierarchically structured " national community ". Stadtler spoke out in favor of an end to capitalism , in the place of which and at the same time as a counter-model to Soviet communism, he wanted to establish an “elitist, egalitarian and militarized social formation [...] as the basis for a renewed external development of imperial power”. He saw himself as the tribune of the people at the head of this project. In doing so, however, he renounced all anti-Semitic undertones. On January 10, 1919, Stadtler gave a lecture on “Bolshevism as a world threat” to 50 high-ranking participants from the German industrial, commercial and banking world, including Hugo Stinnes , Albert Vögler , Siemens, and Otto Henrich in the rooms of the Berlin Aero Club ( Siemens-Schuckert Group ), Ernst von Borsig , Felix Deutsch ( AEG ) and Arthur Salomonsohn ( Disconto-Gesellschaft ). The event was organized by the director of Deutsche Bank Paul Mankiewitz . In his memoirs published in 1935, Stadtler reported that representatives of the German economy then donated 500 million Reichsmarks to an anti-Bolshevik fund, which was used to finance anti-communist activities from meetings and publications to the establishment of voluntary corps. This information is doubted by the American social historian Gerald D. Feldman , who estimates that the fund received five million Reichsmarks from every business leader present.

Also in January 1919, he warned Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske (SPD) urgently about the dangers of Bolshevism and later believed that Noske's crackdown on the Spartacus uprising was due to his influence. In his memoir, Stadtler also claims that on January 12, 1919, he encouraged Commander Waldemar Pabst of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division in the Eden Hotel to murder Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . This information has not found its way into more recent representations of the events of January 1919. Gerd Koenen leaves it open in his account whether Stadtler's conversation with Pabst really took place.

In order not to appear just negative (his nickname was "Dr. Anti"), Stadtler renamed his league in February 1919 to the League for the Protection of German Culture . Because of the less industry-friendly tones he struck, Stadtler was pushed out of their leadership at the end of March 1919. The financial cooperation between big industry and nationalist politicians remained a short-term episode. In 1919 Stadtler also founded an association for non-party politics . The historian Gerd Koenen calls its founding appeal with the title “The dictatorship of the social revolution” a “document of galloping megalomania”. Neither with the association nor with the League for the Protection of German Culture did he find supporters among the politically influential personalities in Germany.

Weimar Republic

During the discussions about the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty , which Germany was ultimately presented for signature in May 1919, Stadtler contacted Foreign Minister Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau . Together they developed the idea of ​​refusing to sign, accepting an invasion of the troops of the victorious powers and in the unrest that developed from this, not least with the threat of a worldwide spread of Bolshevism, to achieve even better peace conditions. Brockdorff-Rantzau even wanted to include Stadtler in the German delegation in Versailles, but failed to get through and resigned shortly afterwards.

From 1919 to 1925, Stadtler was editor of the young conservative magazine Das Gewissen . According to the writer Hans Schwarz , the actual management of the paper was in the hands of Arthur Moeller van den Bruck . In his conscience , Stadtler took part in the right-wing campaign against the Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger , who was hated in nationalist circles not only because of his signature under the Compiègne armistice (1918) , but also because of his reform of the Reich's finances. Stadtler had resigned from the Center Party in 1918 to protest against him. In his polemics against Erzberger, which appeared in conscience from the summer of 1919 , Stadtler also resorted to the stab in the back legend . They increased until the summer of 1921. On August 26, 1921, Erzberger was murdered by members of the right-wing extremist organization Consul .

Before the Reichstag elections in 1920 , Stadtler tried to set up his own "Arbeitsgemeinschaftsliste" , which should include representatives of the middle class , industry and the working class. In the absence of support from business, nothing came of it. During the Polish-Soviet War , Stadtler gave up his sharply anti-Soviet stance for the first time: Now he could imagine an alliance with Soviet Russia . From 1922 onwards he spoke admiringly of “Soviet fascism”: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Benito Mussolini appeared to him as parallel figures. Germany should ally itself with them and with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk . In March 1921 he wrote:

“The peoples of the East, which from now on also include the Germans, will have to deal with the problems without the West and against the West. [... We] welcome all disasters that can bring about decisions. "

In October 1921, Stadtler published a polemic against Reich Chancellor Joseph Wirth in the Daily Rundschau , which he accused of being too cautious about the victorious powers. In truth, however, Wirth is not a pacifist , but understands the ( illegal under the Versailles Treaty ) resident services . Thereupon the senior Reich attorney initiated criminal proceedings for “diplomatic treason ” against him. That seemed implausible to the Berliner Zeitung , which mocked Stadtler: “So far he has shown himself to be so poorly informed that it would be surprising if he had to reveal state secrets”. In December 1921 the proceedings were discontinued.

According to an anonymous memo in the Moscow Special Archives on September 17, 1923, during the occupation of the Ruhr , Stadtler is said to have even held secret talks with Comintern representative Karl Radek in order to found a common resistance front against the victorious powers. The rapprochement had already been evident since the summer when the KPD embarked on its " Schlageter Line ". Conscience praised it as a “fighting party that is becoming more and more national Bolsheviks day by day”. Stadtler also tried to persuade politicians in Bavaria and East Prussia to conduct a putsch , at the head of which he then wanted to position himself. Gleichen criticized his "ambitions for a leading statesman à la Mussolini" and pushed him out of the magazine.

From 1925 Stadtler published the weekly Das Großdeutsche Reich . He became a member of the Federal Board of the Stahlhelm . In 1924 he joined the DNVP. In 1929 he took over the leadership of the paramilitary Stahlhelm student ring Langemarck . He was also on the central board of the DNVP , for which he was a member of the Prussian state parliament from 1932 to 1933 . In the elections of July 31, 1932 , he was elected to the Reichstag .

Towards the end of the Weimar Republic , Stadtler made several unsuccessful attempts to orient the Reich government more to the right: In May 1931, in two newspaper articles, he urged his former fellow student , Reich Chancellor Heinrich Brüning (center), not to allow himself to be tolerated by the SPD but to cooperate with the political right . But Brüning stuck to the cooperation with the SPD. In the spring and summer of 1931, Stadtler published several articles about the Chancellor, which later appeared in a brochure funded by DNVP chairman Alfred Hugenberg . To Brüning's annoyance, he reported on his background discussions with Martin Spahn, with whom they both had studied, and presented events from Brüning's past untruthfully in order to portray the Chancellor as a procrastinator. He must be overthrown so that “Germany does not go down in chaos and Bolshevism”. On June 4, 1931, at an evening event, Stadtler tried to sell the National Socialist Gauleiter of Berlin Joseph Goebbels the idea of ​​a joint front from NSDAP, DNVP and DVP , but he saw through the plan and snorted in his diary: “We should hand over the accessories . This is how you look. ”After the Reichstag elections of November 1932 , Stadtler developed the plan that Reich President Paul von Hindenburg should make Adolf Hitler Chancellor of a minority government made up of the NSDAP and DNVP, which the center should tolerate. Hugenberg is said to be an “economic dictator” in this government. This plan did not materialize either.

Nazi era

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 for operation Stadtler with other DNVP deputies to merge their fraction of the NSDAP. On May 31, 1933, he resigned from the DNVP and joined the NSDAP faction as an intern . Whether he also became a member of the party is not clear from the sources.

In 1933 Stadtler became political director at Ullstein Verlag , but lost this post the following year in a dispute with Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels . From 1934 on he lived as a writer and owner of the Neue Zeit publishing house in Düsseldorf . This emerged from the former DNVP publishing house. Stadtler only published his own works. In 1935 his memoirs appeared in three volumes. They were criticized as being overconfident. The Frankfurter Zeitung wrote on September 10, 1936:

“This author doesn't like to put his light under a bushel. He never tires of attesting to his 'creative energy', his 'self-sacrificing idealism' and above all the extraordinary fascination that came from his eloquence. "

In 1936, Stadtler was targeted by the Gestapo and monitored. He was considered a reactionary , which is why the Düsseldorf Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian forbade him in 1937 to give lectures in the local industry club . In 1937 Stadtler published the book World Revolutionary War , with which he wanted to set a monument for himself as a pioneer of the National Socialist anti-Comintern policy and at the same time wanted to correct the racist anti-Bolshevism of the NS state . In it he praised the “ vitalism of the Jewish race”, which in the October Revolution and called Josef Stalin's policy "for Russia 'nationalistic to the bone'". The barely concealed criticism of the anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda that Stadtler used with it contributed to the further distrust of the authorities. In 1938 his book “Bolshevism as a world threat” was confiscated and shortly afterwards he was interrogated in the high treason case of Walther Hensel . In 1939 his publishing house was closed and his books destroyed, whereupon Stadtler moved back to Berlin. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Soviet secret police NKVD arrested him there . On October 8, 1945, Stadtler died as a prisoner in the Soviet special camp Sachsenhausen .

Fonts (selection)

  • The February Revolution of 1848 began and took effect in Alsace. Dissertation. Strasbourg 1911. Herder, Strasbourg i. E. 1913.
  • Peace Negotiations and Bolshevism . Flyer (24 pages), 1919 ( online )
  • The dictatorship of the social revolution . Koehler, Leipzig 1920 ( online )
  • The world war revolution (lectures by E. Stadtler). Koehler, Leipzig 1920 ( online )
  • Seldte-Hitler-Hugenberg! The front of the freedom movement. Sagt & Sohn, Berlin 1930.
  • Will Brüning make it? . Berlin 1931
  • Life memories. 3 volumes. New Zeitverlag, Düsseldorf 1935:
    • Volume 1: The fates of young people 1886–1914.
    • Volume 2: As a political soldier, 1914–1918.
    • Volume 3: As Antibolschewist 1918-1919.
  • World Revolution War . New Zeitverlag, Düsseldorf 1936

literature

  • Reichstag manual. Legislature (election) period 1890–1933. Berlin 1890–1933.
  • Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdL, the end of the parliaments in 1933 and the members of the state parliaments and citizenships of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. A biographical index. Droste, Düsseldorf 1995.
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 2nd Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, p. 555 f.
  • Rüdiger Stutz : The political development of Eduard Stadtler from 1918 to 1933. A contribution to the history of right-wing extremism in the Weimar Republic . Dissertation, Jena 1985.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Schulz : From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship. Volume 3). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, p. 5.
  2. ↑ Claudia Kemper : The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 121 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  3. ↑ Volker Bendig (2014): The popular science journal Koralle in Ullstein and Deutsche Verlag 1925-1944 , p. 50 ( online )
  4. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 123 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , pp. 107, 133 ff. And ö. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  6. ↑ Gerd Koenen : The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 246, 379-32.
  7. ↑ Christoph Hübner: The right-wing Catholics, the Center Party and the Catholic Church in Germany up to the Reich Concordat of 1933: a contribution to the history of the failure of the Weimar Republic. Lit Verlag, Berlin 2014, p. 148
  8. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman: Hugo Stinnes. Biography of an industrialist 1870-1924. Beck, Munich 1998, p. 553.
  9. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 126 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  10. ↑ Annelies Laschitza : In the rush of life, in spite of everything. Rosa Luxemburg. A biography. Structure, Berlin 1996, p. 620; Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society. Volume 4. Beck, Munich 2003, pp. 217f. and 402; Klaus Gietinger : murderer of the revolution. Waldemar Pabst - bridge builder between conservatism and fascism. A research report. ( online ); Mark Jones : In the beginning there was violence: The German revolution of 1918/19 and the beginning of the Weimar Republic . Propylaeen, Berlin 2017, pp. 216–219.
  11. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 243 f.
  12. ^ Armin Mohler : The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. A manual. 3rd edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1989, p. 405.
  13. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 129 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  14. ↑ Gerhard Schulz: Rise of National Socialism. Crisis and Revolution in Germany. Propylaea, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna 1975, p. 303.
  15. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 250.
  16. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 129 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  17. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 251.
  18. ^ Armin Mohler: The Conservative Revolution in Germany 1918–1932. A manual. 3rd edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1989, p. 60.
  19. ^ Herbert Hömig: Brüning. Chancellor in the crisis of the republic. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 74.
  20. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 262 ff. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  21. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , pp. 257 f. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  22. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. Beck, Munich 2005, p. 329 f.
  23. ↑ Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 257 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  24. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945 . CH Beck, Munich 2005, p. 331 f.
  25. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. Beck, Munich 2005, p. 332 f .; Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 136 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  26. ↑ a b c Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 2nd Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, p. 555.
  27. ↑ Files of the Reich Chancellery . The Brüning I and II cabinets (1930–1932). Volume 1, arr. v. Tilman Koops, Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1982, No. 292 ( online ); Gerhard Schulz: From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship. Volume 3). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, p. 355, note 307.
  28. ^ Gerhard Schulz: From Brüning to Hitler. The change in the political system in Germany 1930–1933 (= Between Democracy and Dictatorship. Volume 3). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1992, p. 555 f. (here the quote); Herbert Hömig: Brüning. Chancellor in the crisis of the republic. Schöningh, Paderborn 2000, p. 411 f.
  29. ↑ Ralf Georg Reuth (Ed.): Joseph Goebbels. Diaries. Vol. 2: 1930-1934 . Piper, Munich 1992, p. 597.
  30. ↑ Hermann Weiß and Paul Hoser (eds.): The German Nationals and the Destruction of the Weimar Republic. From Reinhold Quaatz's diary 1928–1933 . (= Series of the quarterly books for contemporary history , vol. 59), Oldenbourg, Munich 1989, p. 213.
  31. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. Beck, Munich 2005, p. 346.
  32. ^ Biogram Stadtler, Eduard on the website of the Federal Archives , accessed on January 24, 2020.
  33. ↑ a b Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 2nd Edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1992, p. 556.
  34. ^ W. Joachim Freyburg and Hans Wallenberg: Hundred years of Ullstein. Volume 3: 1877-1977 . Ullstein, Berlin 1977, p. 272.
  35. ↑ Quoted from Claudia Kemper: The "Conscience" 1919-1925. Communication and networking of the young conservatives . Oldenbourg, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-486-71385-5 , p. 138 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
  36. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. Beck, Munich 2005, p. 418 ff.
  37. ↑ Gerd Koenen: The Russia Complex. The Germans and the East 1900–1945. Beck, Munich 2005, p. 492.
personal data
SURNAME Stadtler, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (DNVP, NSDAP), MdR, publicist and founder of several anti-communist organizations
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Haguenau , Alsace
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 1945
Place of death Sachsenhausen internment camp