Emil Gansser

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Emil Gansser

Emil Gansser (also Ganßer; born October 7, 1874 in Bregenz ; † January 9, 1941 in Berlin ) was a German explosives chemist at Siemens and a National Socialist politician. He was one of the most successful fundraisers for the early NSDAP at home and abroad (mainly in Switzerland).

Life

education and profession

After attending the Eberhard-Ludwigs-Gymnasium and the Karls-Gymnasium in Stuttgart as well as the Protestant theological seminars in Schönthal and Urach, Gansser studied pharmacy and chemical engineering in Stuttgart as well as natural sciences and medicine in Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin. He then signed up as chief pharmacist for the Landwehr (until 1912), was a laborer in the chemical laboratory at the Württemberg Medical College from 1908 and from 1911 to 1919 a laborer in the Siemens concern in Berlin-Siemensstadt .

During the World War , Siemens ran a physico-chemical laboratory that worked exclusively on secret armaments contracts and which Gansser was in charge of. After the end of the war, it was outsourced from the group for reasons of camouflage, while expenses in kind and remuneration were tacitly continued to be paid out. Siemens stopped making payments in 1922. As a result, Gansser should ceaselessly start (unsuccessful) efforts to enforce his claims through the courts, whereby he became highly indebted.

NSDAP

In 1921 Gansser became a member of the NSDAP. In 1922 he mediated between the NSDAP and Karl Burhenne , head of Siemens' social policy department since 1919, and organized a meeting between Burhenne and Hitler in March of that year. He also arranged the lectures that Hitler gave in December 1921 and May 1922 at the Berlin National Club of 1919 . Gansser managed to get donations from Siemens, Borsig and the malt coffee manufacturer Richard Franck .

Between April 6 and December 30, 1923, Gansser stayed at least six times in Zurich , Winterthur and Basel , where he sent several advertising letters for the NSDAP to Swiss citizens, with whom he also met personally. In that year he managed to get 33,000 Swiss francs to Germany for the NSDAP, which was particularly important because of the inflation of the German currency at the time .

"Gansser was a very close friend of Dietrich Eckart ; his brother Hans Gansser set Eckart's poem " Germany awake "to music , which later became the battle cry of the SA and the NSDAP. [...] Since 1935, Gansser received one from the Reich Chancellery for his services monthly 'honorary pay' of 600 RM. "

Agitation against Friedrich Ebert

In June 1922 Gansser sparked a scandal by screaming when he called Reich President Friedrich Ebert a “ traitor ” on the Munich station forecourt . Subsequently, Gansser's close friend Dietrich Eckart, as editor-in-chief of Völkischer Beobachter, took up the incident in this newspaper under the title “He came, saw and won”. Ebert subsequently sued Gansser for insult. In the trial against Gansser before the Munich District Court , Ebert appeared as a joint plaintiff . When he was first questioned in court, Gansser tried to expose his accusation of treason as objectively justified. a. with reference to Ebert's participation in the ammunition workers' strike of 1918. In order to confirm his point of view, Gansser applied for Ebert, Scheidemann , Dittmann and Barth to be summoned as witnesses, which he was allowed to do. The interrogation of the named persons took place on July 31, 1923 in the Reich President's Palace by the District Court Judge Noel, Ebert's lawyer Wolfgang Heine as well as Gansser and his lawyer were also present. The accusation of treason in connection with the strike was refuted by the testimony of all witnesses (including Georg Ledebour later ).

Gansser subsequently requested that Ebert be interrogated personally, but this time it was to take place in Munich. The court granted this request. A legal dispute developed about the legality of this order (Heine took the view that Ebert could only be questioned in his official residence, i.e. in Berlin), but it quickly came to an end when the presiding judge opposed a police demonstration or a fine or an orderly detention Ebert threatened to stay away without excuse, against which Heine could not appeal. An interrogation of Ebert by Gansser in Munich, however, came the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of 8/9. November 1923 in between, due to which the political situation in Munich was extremely tense. Ebert, who had been declared an outlaw high traitor by the National Socialists , withdrew his criminal complaint against Gansser on January 17, 1924, as he feared he would be the victim of an attack or agitatory abuse of the trial in Munich; the case was dropped on February 5th.

On February 20, 1924, Gansser published, probably on the mediation of Adolf Stein , in the Munich-Augsburger Abendzeitung , which belongs to the Hugenberg Group , an article entitled "Open Letter" in which he implicitly repeated the accusation of treason and called on Ebert to resign; three days later there was a print in the Central German Press run by DNVP member Hans Hottenrott or his representative Erwin Rothardt under the title “A bitter pill for Fritze Ebert”. Because of the article, another criminal complaint was made against Gansser, who evaded it by fleeing to Italy. The "Gansser case" and in particular the withdrawal of the criminal complaint by Ebert were repeatedly taken up in the election campaign for the Reichstag election in May 1924 by the German national press, such as the Deutsche Zeitung , and rated as Ebert's admission of guilt and as evidence of the stab in the back legend .

Member of the Reichstag

In the Reichstag election, the fugitive Gansser was elected to the Reichstag for constituency 26 (Franconia) , where he represented the National Socialist Freedom Party . As a member of the Reichstag , he was safe from arrest without the consent of the Reichstag under Article 37 of the Weimar Constitution .

In December 1924, Gansser and Stein were present as a spectator at the trial against Rothardt for defamation in the Magdeburg courtroom. In this process, the court found the accusation of treason against Ebert to be justified and acquitted Rothardt.

Processes, sickness and death

Gansser's trials against Siemens consumed more and more money, and so in mid-1935 he turned to Hitler for financial help. Hitler showed himself benevolent at first and stated that Gansser both in the handling of his lawsuits, "perhaps through a certain influence on the Siemens company", as well as through a one-off payment to settle the most urgent debts (10,000 Reichsmarks), and possibly one Wanting to help with a pension of 500 to 600 Reichsmarks a month. In October of that year, Hitler ordered the 10,000 Reichsmark to be paid out to Gansser from the disposition fund. In April 1936, Hitler also ordered the payment of ongoing support on revocation of 600 Reichsmarks per month, which was considered honorary pay and was therefore free of income tax and non-attachable.

When Gansser turned to Hitler again in May 1936 to ask for a one-off donation of 15,000 to 30,000 Reichsmarks to carry out an inheritance process, this was rejected by Ministerialrat Hermann von Stutterheim , as the process was hopeless and Gansser lacked discretion. Hitler was aware of this. The head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers , informed Gansser in writing that Hitler was not prepared to make financial contributions to Gansser beyond what had already been approved and that he had to “fail in particular in matters that are the subject of the pending litigation , […] To intervene somehow ”.

From 1937 Gassner had to go to hospital because of paralysis . On November 26, 1938, Martin Bormann, as head of the party chancellery, announced to Gansser that Hitler would not provide him with any further means to conduct his trials against the Siemens group. On January 14, 1939, Philipp Bouhler , head of the Fuehrer's Chancellery (KdF), noted that Bormann had reported on the occasion (settlement of rent debts by the KdF) that Hitler had strictly refused to seek donations over and over again turning Gansser out of his debts resulting from the litigation costs and referred to the support already granted to Gansser in the form of the pension and the assumption of the hospital costs.

Between March and April 1939, by order of Hitler, Gansser's rent arrears were paid again by Bormann and a further one-off grant of 10,000 Reichsmarks and the continued payment of the 600 Reichsmark monthly pension were approved. Bormann asked Lammers to forward all requests for support from Gansser or his agents. In June Gansser asked again for an audition with Hitler, which Bormann refused with regard to Gansser's poor state of health and that Hitler had refused again to “reopen the Siemens issue”.

After Gansser's death, Lammers published an obituary in the Völkischer Beobachter (No. 17 of January 17, 1941).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Biographical data according to Martin Schumacher (ed.): MdR, the members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, p. 143.
  2. ↑ a b Guardianship and estate administration Dr. Emil Gansser (DE-1958 - R-43-747). In: Archives Portal Europe. Retrieved November 8, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart M 430/5 Bü 682
  4. ↑ State Archives Ludwigsburg E 162 I No. 286
  5. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (eds.): Files of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler government: 1933-1945. Vol. 2 1934/35. Teilbd. June 2 - December 1935: Documents No. 169–286 / edit. by Friedrich Hartmannsgruber. Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, p. 1114. ISBN 3-486-56399-8 .
  6. ↑ a b Hellmuth Auerbach: "Hitler's political apprenticeship years and the Munich society 1919-1923", in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , volume 25 (1977), issue 1 (PDF; 6.7 MB), p. 31.
  7. ^ A b Kurt Gossweiler : Capital, Reichswehr and NSDAP 1912-1924 . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1982, p. 346, see also pp. 558-560.
  8. ^ Niels HM Albrecht: The power of a defamation campaign: anti-democratic agitation of the press and justice against the Weimar Republic and its first Reich President Friedrich Ebert from "Badebild" to the Magdeburg trial . University of Bremen 2002, p. 315.
  9. ^ Kurt Pätzold and Manfred Weißbecker: History of the NSDAP: 1920 to 1945 . PapyRossa, Cologne 1998, p. 57. ISBN 3-89438-134-5 .
  10. ↑ Gossweiler 1982, p. 355.
  11. ↑ Auerbach 1977, p. 32.
  12. ^ Albert A. Feiber: Expert opinion on Max and Maria Wutz. Munich / Berlin 2013 (p. 21).
  13. ↑ Albrecht 2002, pp. 245f.
  14. ↑ Albrecht 2002, pp. 316-318.
  15. ↑ Albrecht 2002, pp. 319–322.
  16. ↑ Albrecht 2002, pp. 323-325.
  17. ↑ Albrecht 2002, pp. 327-332.
  18. ↑ Albrecht 2002, p. 344.
  19. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (eds.): Files of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler government: 1933-1945. Vol. 2 1934/35. Teilbd. June 2 - December 1935: Documents No. 169–286 / edit. by Friedrich Hartmannsgruber. Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, p. 1116.
  20. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (eds.): Files of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler government: 1933-1945. Vol. 2 1934/35. Teilbd. June 2 - December 1935: Documents No. 169–286 / edit. by Friedrich Hartmannsgruber. Oldenbourg, Munich 1999, p. 1131.
  21. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (eds.): Files of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler government: 1933-1945. Vol. 3., 1936 / arr. by Friedrich Hartmannsgruber. Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, p. 839. ISBN 3-486-56626-1 .
  22. ^ Hans Günter Hockerts and Karl Dietrich Erdmann (eds.): Files of the Reich Chancellery. Hitler government: 1933-1945. Vol. 3., 1936 / arr. by Friedrich Hartmannsgruber, p. 858.
  23. ^ Institute for Contemporary History (ed.): Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP . Regesten, Volume 1. Ed. By Helmut Heiber. Oldenbourg, Munich and Vienna 1983, p. 363. ISBN 3-486-49641-7 .
  24. ^ Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP . Regesten, Volume 1. 1983, p. 374.
  25. ^ Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP . Regesten, Volume 1. 1983, p. 395.
  26. ^ Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP . Regesten, Volume 1. 1983, p. 417.
personal data
SURNAME Gansser, Emil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ganßer, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German explosives chemist and politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregenz
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1941
Place of death Berlin