Emanuel von Galen

Emanuel Graf von Galen (-Beversundern) (born October 6, 1877 in Münster , † October 20, 1950 in Lingen ) was a German landowner , district administrator and MdL ( German party ).

Life and activity until 1945

Wilhelm Emanuel Maria Bruno Johannes Clemens Antonius Hubertus Florentinus von Galen comes from the noble family Galen . He was the eldest son of Wilderich von Galen (1835-1922) and Antonia von Weichs zur Wenne (1850-1927). His uncle was the center Reichstag deputy Ferdinand Heribert von Galen (1831-1906). He attended high schools in Feldkirch / Austria and Lingen . There he graduated from high school in Georgianum in 1899 . At the Jesuit grammar school Stella Matutina Feldkirch, he studied with his cousins Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946), who later became Cardinal from Münster, and his brother Franz von Galen (1879-1961). He later became a member of the Prussian state parliament of the Center Party and was a staunch Nazi opponent in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 until the liberation . All three remained close friends their entire lives.

Emanuel von Galen studied law in Munich , Lausanne , Kiel and Münster . After completing his legal traineeship, he resigned from the civil service and took over the paternal estate of Beversundern near Lingen. After participating in the First World War , he became the third chairman of the Lingen agricultural district association in 1920 and was a member of the extended board of the “Emsland Farmers Association” (EBV). He took part in numerous meetings of the Christian-oriented " Association of German Farmers' Associations " in which u. a. the EBV was organized. Through family and friendly relationships, Galen was kept up to date on internals in numerous influential associations and clubs. The lawyer was a principled advocate of unrestricted property rights, so he vigorously faced the demands of the hired men and their “ Association of Christian Heuermen ” for the wasteland settlement in the Emsland , if necessary by expropriating moor and heather areas in return for compensation. To this end, he was involved as Lingen district chairman in the “ Association of Tenants and Landowners in Lower Saxony ”. In addition, he was chairman of the "Emsland Race Club", which ran a horse racing track in Lingen, a sought-after judge at tournaments and was politically active.

Until the revolution of 1918 , the aristocrat turned away from the Catholic party when it increasingly accepted trade unionists in its management bodies and formed coalitions with the Social Democrats. In 1920 he was tangible as a sponsor of the German-Hanoverian Party (DHP), in 1924 he tried to work with the Lingen District Farmers' Association to find an agricultural candidate from the DHP or the German National People's Party against the very socially minded new center candidate in the Weser-Ems constituency, Reich Labor Minister Dr. Heinrich Brauns to launch. This failed, as did his attempt in 1930 to overthrow the chairman of the EBV, the farmer and central politician Heribert Schulte-Eissing from Aschendorf. The plight of agriculture also affected the count personally, as he had relatively little real estate, including a lot of forest. In 1931 he joined the NSDAP , an outsider party in Emsland that was fiercely opposed by the regional center. Galen's party affiliation was not publicly known. When his Westphalian colleague Franz von Papen , whom he knew personally, became Chancellor in 1932, he supported him. In 1933, when agriculture was brought into line with the Nazis in the Emsland / Bentheim region, the aristocrat was overthrown after a few weeks because he did not want to submit to the NSDAP's agricultural section adviser. Galen, who succeeded the NSDAP list in the district committee, was arrested at short notice in 1935 for insulting the “Third Reich” and sentenced to a fine in a spectacular trial in Osnabrück. This also resulted in his exclusion from the party.

Emanuel von Galen was a Roman Catholic . He was Honorary Commander of the House Knight Order of St. George .

Political activity after 1945

Therefore, the British appointed him in 1945 to the district administrator of the Lingen district . In his denazification proceedings , Galen claimed to have only been in the NSDAP from 1933 to 1934 and only as a party candidate, a status that was only introduced in 1937 when the NSDAP was banned from membership . Galen was appointed member of the Lower Saxony state parliament from December 1946. Here he was chairman of the electoral law committee. He joined the Lower Saxony State Party (NLP), which was renamed the German Party in 1947 and was essentially a successor party to the DHP. In 1947 Galen was elected for the party, of which he was district chairman from August 1948 to February 1949, also in the Lower Saxony state parliament in the first electoral period from May 28, 1947 to October 20, 1950. He was involved in a leading position in the German Council of the European Movement ( Europa-Union ) and was chairman of the re-established Lingener Heimat- und Verkehrsverein.

literature

• Barbara Simon : Member of Parliament in Lower Saxony 1946–1994. Biographical manual. Edited by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Lower Saxony State Parliament, Hanover 1996, p. 113.
• Wilhelm Kleeberg (editor), Handbook of the Lower Saxony State Parliament as of April 1, 1948, Hanover 1948, p. 81.
• Martin Löning, The implementation of National Socialist rule in the Emsland (1933-1935), in: Emsland / Bentheim. Contributions to the history of Vol. 12. Ed. Of the Emsland landscape for the districts of Emsland and Grafschaft Bentheim, Sögel 1996, pp. 7–353.
• Helmut Lensing, The National Socialist Coordination of Agriculture in Emsland and in the Grafschaft Bentheim, in: Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Ed.), Emsländische Geschichte Vol. 4, Bremen 1994, pp. 43–123.
• Helmut Lensing, The Lingen Local History and Tourist Office (1930-1963). A contribution to the history of local associations and tourism in the Emsland (= materials on Lingen history, vol. 4), Lingen 2004.
• Helmut Lensing, Emanuel von Galen-Beversundern - His contact with National Socialism and the Nazi regime, in: Joachim Kuropka (Ed.), Galen dispute. Studies and documents, Münster 2007, pp. 223–246.
• Helmut Lensing, The work of Count Emanuel von Galen in the Emsland during the Weimar Republic and the Nazi period, in: Study Society for Emsländische Regionalgeschichte (Ed.): Emsländische Geschichte 14, Haselünne 2007, pp. 94–169.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lingen local family book: Emanuel Graf von Galen
2. ↑ Stephan A. Glienke: The Nazi past of a later member of the Lower Saxony state parliament . Final report on a project of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen on behalf of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Published by the President of the Lower Saxony State Parliament. Revised reprint of the first edition. Hannover 2012, p. 105 ( online as PDF) .