Elisabeth von Schleicher

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Kurt and Elisabeth von Schleicher (1931)

Elisabeth Auguste Kathinka Gertrud von Schleicher , b. Elisabeth von Hennigs (born November 18, 1893 in Potsdam , † June 30, 1934 in Neubabelsberg ) was the wife of the German Chancellor and General Kurt von Schleicher .

Life

Elisabeth von Hennigs was born in 1893 as the second child and the only daughter of the Prussian general Victor von Hennigs (1848–1930) and his wife Paula, née von Albedyll . Her two brothers were killed in the First World War .

On January 7, 1916, von Hennigs married the Brandenburg nobleman and royal Prussian cavalry master Bogislav Otto Hans Karl von Schleicher (born October 23, 1892 in Perleberg; † November 2, 1945 in the Soviet Union) in Berlin-Lichterfelde . The marriage resulted in a daughter, Lonny Elisabeth Marie Paula von Schleicher (born November 4, 1919 in Berlin-Lichterfelde-West; † November 13, 2014 in Munich). On July 28, 1931, she married the officer and later Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, a cousin of her first husband, from whom she had previously divorced on May 4, 1931 by mutual agreement of all parties involved.

Marriage certificate for Elisabeth von Hennigs' first marriage to Bogislav von Schleicher with a note in the margin about the divorce in 1931.

If one can believe the records of Count Kessler , Elisabeth von Schleicher's divorce from her first husband and her remarriage to Kurt von Schleicher were indirectly of not insignificant political significance: Kessler reports in his diaries (Diaries 1918–1937, pp. 737ff. ), the former German Chancellor Heinrich Brüning told him in the later 1930s at a meeting in Paris that "the National Socialists" had in the course of their dispute with Schleicher - who from 1929 to 1932 in his capacity as the most important advisor to the Reich President Paul von Hindenburg He gave advice directed against the National Socialist movement - the divorce case used to diminish the reputation of the unpopular sneak with the Reich President. To this end, they had "unpleasant" documents relating to Elisabeth von Schleicher's divorce by breaking into a law firm and sending them to Hindenburg. Hindenburg - a very conservative man and devout Christian who had a very negative attitude towards the subject of divorce - had subsequently been negative towards his protégé because of the information leaked to him about the divorce that had preceded Schleicher's marriage. In Brüning's view, this matter had contributed significantly to the fact that Schleicher increasingly fell in favor of the aged head of state in 1932 and lost his key position as the most important advisor to Hindenburg in favor of Franz von Papen . This made it possible for von Papen to win his position of trust with Hindenburg, which turned out to be fatal.

In 1931, Schleicher himself judged in a letter to the former Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler about his marriage that he needed “a certain amount of support through feminine wisdom and tactful tact” in his work. Various memoirs, such as von Papen's “The Truth One Alley”, independently of each other noted about Elisabeth von Schleicher: “Her appearance and her charm earned her (and Schleicher) a lot of admiration at all events, both official and private.” And I helped her husband to develop his relationships on a political and semi-political (social) level (von Plewhe, p. 143).

The family initially lived in Schleicher's apartment on Alsenstrasse in Berlin and, after his appointment as Reichswehr Minister, moved into an official apartment in the Reichswehr Ministry in Bendlerstrasse in 1932, where they stayed even after Schleicher took office as Chancellor . At the beginning of February 1933, shortly after Schleicher's resignation as Chancellor and Adolf Hitler's appointment as head of government , the Schleicher couple bought a villa at Griebnitz-Strasse 4 in Neubabelsberg - more precisely: in Klein Glienicke - near Potsdam (now part of Potsdam) Neighborhood to the Adenauer family. The building was later demolished because it was in the death strip of the wall.

assassination

Death certificate for Elisabeth von Schleicher dated July 2, 1934.

Elisabeth von Schleicher accompanies her husband on the way to the polling station (July 1932)

On June 30, 1934, five younger men, who have not yet been identified, gained access to the Schleicher family home and shot Elisabeth von Schleicher together with her husband. The general died on the scene, his wife succumbed - in an unconscious state - from her injuries during the transport to the Nowawes District Hospital. The death certificate lists "internal bleeding" as the cause of death. The bodies of Kurt and Elisabeth von Schleicher were confiscated by the Gestapo shortly before the planned funeral . Only after the “burial” of Elisabeth von Schleicher and her husband, which had to take place in the Lichterfelde park cemetery without the remains, were urns with the ashes of the dead sent to the relatives. The dead were cremated on July 3, 1934 in the Wilmersdorf crematorium.

Hermann Göring , Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler himself were suspected to be the originator of the murder assignment against Kurt von Schleicher, to whom his wife probably fell victim by chance . Most likely in research the thesis applies that the murderers acted on behalf of Himmler, since Göring's statement at the Nuremberg trials that he only wanted to have the general arrested is supported by the fact that on the day of the crime, a few hours later When the murderers appeared, a second raid party of men actually arrived in the family house to arrest the general, but found him already dead. However, the thesis introduced by Holtzendorff into the literature that a “ rolling command gone wild ” could have committed the act must be ruled out, since the close coordination of the murder of Schleicher with the murder of his confidante Ferdinand von Bredow speaks against this . Goebbels' remark in a diary entry from July 1, 1934 - “In Berlin according to the program. There was no mishap than that Elisabeth Schleicher was also involved. Too bad, but not to be changed. ”- supports the thesis that Elisabeth von Schleicher's death was an accident, while the death of her husband“ corresponded to the program ”, i. H. was intended.

The murder of Elisabeth von Schleicher together with her husband by the SS (or Gestapo) during the so-called “Night of the Long Knives” on June 30, 1934 is considered to be one of the first acts of terror of the Nazi regime. In contrast to the acts of violence by the SA in 1933 and 1934, which could be justified as excesses that the government could not change, the state leadership was directly responsible for the targeted murder of the Schleicher couple and other people.

This act of violence was undisguised insofar as it, unlike the attacks against other, more defensive, persons such as B. parties or political combat groups, met a housewife, and thus could not be justified as a " state emergency service ". The act is often rated as one of the first publicly visible indications of the character of the Nazi regime and as a warning of what is to come. In this context, it is also significant that Friedrich-Karl von Plehwe made a presentation to the Gestapo at the Nowawes hospital in the introduction to his Schleicher biography (p. 7ff.) In order to take the jewelry from the dead, which, however, is due to the refusal of the responsible doctor failed to surrender it.

The acceptance of the killing by the population and in particular by the relevant political and military circles without protest was seen by many historians and journalists (such as Andreas Hillgruber or Sebastian Haffner ) as an initial complicity or at least as a failure in the face of the acts of the National Socialists rated. The accusation that is often voiced was that they kept quiet when the regime began to unmask itself.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Berlin-Lichterfelde registry office : marriage register . No. 4/1916.
2. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Commissioned by the Institute for Contemporary History , Part 1 (Notes 1923–1941), Volume 3 / I (April 1934 to February 1936), Munich 2005, p. 72.