Ernst Eduard vom Rath

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Ernst Eduard vom Rath

Ernst Eduard vom Rath (born June 3, 1909 in Frankfurt am Main , † November 9, 1938 in Paris ) was a German diplomat and embassy secretary in Paris. The assassination attempt by Herschel Grynszpan on November 7, 1938, served the National Socialist regime as a pretext for the November pogroms that followed .

Life

Vom Rath attended the secondary school in Breslau . He completed his law studies in Bonn , Munich and Königsberg . In 1928 he became a member of the Corps Palatia Bonn . He joined the NSDAP on July 14, 1932, and the SA in April 1933. From 1934 he took the post of legation attaché in the Foreign Office, in 1935/36 he completed his preparatory service in Paris as his uncle's personal secretary, which then ended Ambassador Roland Köster who died in 1935 . On June 24, 1936, he passed the diplomatic-consular exam and was at the consulate general inCalcutta used. There he fell ill with severe amoebic dysentery in December 1937 and had to leave India in March 1938. After returning to Germany for several months of treatment in St. Blasien because of an "intestinal problem", he was transferred to the embassy in Paris on July 13, 1938 , where he was appointed legation secretary on October 18, 1938 . According to affidavits of the attending physicians, vom Rath suffered from homosexually transmitted gonorrheic rectal inflammation . He chose Jewish doctors in Berlin to treat the disease, presumably to reduce the likelihood of reporting or denunciation.

Grave of Ernst Eduard vom Rath in the Düsseldorf North Cemetery

As part of the Poland Action , around 17,000 Jews living in Germany with Polish citizenship were deported to Poland at the end of October 1938. Some of them had to stay in the no man's land between Germany and Poland because Poland refused to allow them to re-enter. Even Herschel Grynszpan's parents and his sister Berta, decades in Hanover resident, sat penniless in a camp in Poland Zbąszyń . After hearing about his family's situation, Herschel Grynszpan gained access to the Palais Beauharnais , the seat of the German embassy, on November 7th by pretending to "speak to a secretary of the legation to hand in an important document". Grynszpan fired a total of five shots from vom Rath, who was hit first in the shoulder. Another bullet struck the spleen . He was operated on in a hospital. On the same day, Adolf Hitler sent his attending physician Karl Brandt and Georg Magnus from Münster to Paris to support the French doctors. Vom Rath succumbed to his injuries on November 9th at 5:30 p.m. Immediately before his death, von Rath was personally appointed Legation Councilor First Class by Hitler . The Nazi leadership used the attack as a pretext to organize brutal riots and murders of Jewish citizens (see November pogroms 1938 ).

After the funeral ceremony organized by Ernst von Weizsäcker in Paris and the transfer of the coffin in a special train via Aachen and Cologne, the state funeral for vom Rath took place on November 17, 1938 in the north cemetery in Düsseldorf in the presence of Hitler. Vom Rath was considered a martyr and martyr in the struggle of world Jewry, so called by the National Socialists , against the Third Reich , and there was talk of Fememord , which the " Elders of Zion " had commissioned. Accordingly, at the end of 1941, the Ministry of Propaganda, Foreign Affairs and Justice came up with a plan to open trial against Grynszpan to prove that the act was part of a comprehensive plan by international Jewry to drive the world into war with Germany.

In the indictment of the Oberreichsanwalts dated October 16, 1941, the following note can be found under the "Admission of the accused":

"In the course of further investigations, he even went so far as to make the cheeky, lying claim that he had already got to know the Counselor vom Rath for a long time and that he had been homosexually abused by him several times."

In addition, Grynszpan alleged at times that he had worked as a pimp for vom Rath, had been cheated out of the commission by him and had homosexual relations with the diplomat - he later withdrew this allegation, but only in the form of a ciphered note.

As early as 1941, the Ministry of Justice and the Reich Security Main Office knew from various sources that von Rath was apparently actually active in the homosexual scene in Paris and had also gotten to know Grynszpan there, which is why there were increasing internal reservations about the opening of the trial. For example, around the writer André Gide , the homosexual relationships between vom Rath and Grynszpan were already rumored at the end of 1938. In addition, on June 6, 1941, von Rath's brother was convicted of "fornication with men".

It cannot be ruled out that vom Rath and Grynszpan actually knew each other and that vom Rath's murder was blackmailed - e. B. about money or travel documents - could have preceded, which also suggests information from Grynszpan's parents.

Goebbels had planned a show trial against the murderer in order to expose Grynszpan as a stooge of the "international Jewish world conspiracy". A parallel to the assassination attempt in Sarajevo in 1914 was also to be constructed. However, the overzealous public prosecutor made what Goebbels saw, a fatal mistake, of adding the charge of homosexuality to the indictment. According to Goebbels' statements, this was based only on an anonymous letter "[...] from some Jewish emigrant who leaves open the probability of homosexual intercourse between Grünspan and vom Rath"; he rejected the claim as "absurd, typically Jewish claim". Nevertheless, the "de-politicization of the act" and the reference to the homosexual milieu meant that the process was postponed and ultimately never materialized. According to official records of the envoy Ewald Krümmer, Goebbels withdrew from the trial on April 16, 1942 for these reasons. Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop followed suit because of Hitler's reluctance to answer the question and on May 13, 1942 because of the war Coming to terms with the murder of vom Rath.

literature

  • Armin Fuhrer : Herschel. The assassination attempt by Herschel Grynszpan on November 7, 1938 and the beginning of the Holocaust . Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86368-101-2 .

Web links

Commons : Ernst Eduard vom Rath  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 14, 736 (addendum).
  2. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 365.
  3. ↑ Gerald Schwab: The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan. Praeger, New York 1990, p. 14; 142, 186.
  4. ^ Hans-Hasso von Veltheim-Ostrau : Diaries from Asia . Hamburg 1956, p. 94 f.
  5. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher : "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, p. 69 f.
  6. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 365.
  7. ↑ " Wilhelm Gustloff and Ernst vom Rath are the martyrs who fell abroad for the resurgence of Germany." Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop at the celebration in Düsseldorf, Ufa-Wochenschau, 23 November 1938 ( cine-holocaust.de ( Memento vom 9 November 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
  8. ^ Raul Hilberg : The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 3. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 1089.
  9. ^ Trude Maurer: Deportation and Assassination. The expulsion of the Polish Jews and the pretext for the “Kristallnacht”. In: Walter H. Pehle : Der Judenpogrom 1938. Von der "Reichskristallnacht zum Genölkermord. Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 70 f.
  10. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, pp. 165 and 169.
  11. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, p. 165 f.
  12. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, p. 73 and p. 74, end note 23.
  13. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, p. 171.
  14. ↑ Hermann Weiß (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 366.
  15. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, p. 72.
  16. ↑ Ralf Georg Reuth (Ed.): Joseph Goebbels. Diaries. Vol. 4: 1940-1942. Munich 2008 (4th ed.), P. 1778 f. And p. 1777, footnote 44, and p. 1781.
  17. ^ Trude Maurer : Deportation and Assassination. The expulsion of the Polish Jews and the pretext for the “Kristallnacht”. In: Walter H. Pehle: Der Judenpogrom 1938. From the “Reichskristallnacht” to genocide. Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 70 f.
  18. ^ Raul Hilberg: The annihilation of the European Jews. Volume 3. Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 1089.
  19. ↑ Ralf Georg Reuth (Ed.): Joseph Goebbels. Diaries. Vol. 4: 1940-1942. 4th edition Munich 2008, p. 1777, fn. 44.
  20. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Döscher: "Reichskristallnacht". The November pogroms 1938. 3rd edition Munich 2000, pp. 165 f., 182 f.
personal data
SURNAME Vom Rath, Ernst Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and embassy secretary in Paris
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1938
PLACE OF DEATH Paris , France