Ernst Werner Techow

Ernst Werner Techow (born October 12, 1901 in Berlin ; † May 9, 1945 in Koenigsbrück ) was a German editor , photographer and employee . During the Weimar Republic he belonged to the right-wing extremist or right-wing terrorist organization Consul (OC) and drove the car that his accomplices Hermann Fischer and Erwin Kern used to kill the Reich Foreign Minister during the assassination attempt on Walther Rathenau on June 24, 1922 . Techow stayed in Germany after his release from prison and largely disappeared into anonymity. Legend has it that, as captain of the Légion étrangère , he saved several hundred Jews from persecution during the Second World War .

biography

Member of right-wing extremist associations

While Techow's grandfather, the Prussian officer Gustav Techow , had to go into exile in Australia because of his support for the revolutionaries of the German Revolution of 1848/49 , Techow's father stayed in Berlin and became a magistrate there. Ernst Werner Techow attended the Arndt-Gymnasium Dahlem and volunteered for the war in 1918. He was trained as a midshipman at the Mürwik Naval School . Soon after the end of the war he found himself in ethnic and counter-revolutionary circles. In 1919 he joined the 1st Marine Brigade von Rohden and in 1919/20 the storm company of the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt . He took part in the Kapp Putsch and belonged to the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund .

Walter Rathenau memorial plaque at the crime scene (1929)

Techow began studying mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and became a member of the Corps Teutonia Berlin (WSC) . As a member of the Berlin branch of the OC, a successor organization to the Ehrhardt Brigade, he carried out courier services. He and his younger brother Hans Gerd Techow established connections to Berlin-based comrades for the real assassins, Fischer and Kern. Kern and Fischer were commissioned by the OC to organize the Rathenau assassination on their own and included the Techows in the planning of the assassination so as not to lose any more time after the OC's failed assassination attempt on Philipp Scheidemann on June 4, 1922. Kern had served with Techow in the Ehrhardt Brigade. Ernst Werner Techow procured and maintained the vehicle and, as a local expert, was instrumental in choosing the location of the attack. Nevertheless, he was assigned by Kern as a driver rather by chance and obeyed the order mainly because of the discipline prevailing in the OC. The historian Martin Sabrow considers him to be the mysterious anonymous informant who confessed the plans to assassinate a Catholic priest in advance. The pastor gave Rathenau another urgent warning through Chancellor Joseph Wirth , albeit in vain.

The murder of Walther Rathenau

On the morning of 24 June 1922 followed Techow as a driver of an open Mercedes - touring car with fishing and core in the rear to also open car Rathenau, who is on the way from his villa in Grunewald to the Foreign Office was, on the Koenigsallee . Techow initially maintained a speed of around 30 km / h and a distance of 200 meters. When Rathenau's chauffeur had to brake just before Halensee before an S-bend, Techow overtook. When he was about half a car length ahead, he slowed down to give Kern and Fischer the opportunity to shoot the Minister sitting in the back with a submachine gun and also to throw a hand grenade . Rathenau, who was fatally hit by five shots, had apparently been completely taken by surprise by the attack, and his chauffeur had also noticed nothing of the pursuit by the assassins.

Gut Biegen, where Techow was arrested on June 29, 1922

An associate who had boasted that he had been involved was arrested on June 26 and made a comprehensive confession. On June 27, 1922, Hans Gerd Techow was arrested and the vehicle was seized. Ernst Werner Techow, on the other hand, went to Halle an der Saale on June 24 and drove from there via Jena and Erfurt to the Biegen estate near Jacobsdorf near Frankfurt an der Oder , which belonged to his uncle Erwin Behrens. When the police published a search notice on June 29, Behrens held his nephew until the police arrived. Techow admitted his involvement the next day.

Mathilde Rathenau on the way to the opening of the Walther Rathenau Museum in his villa (June 1923)

Techow and twelve co-conspirators, including Hans Gerd Techow, Ernst von Salomon , Karl Tillessen and Hartmut Plaas , were tried from October 3rd to 14th, 1922 before the Leipzig State Court for the protection of the republic . After Kern and Fischer died while on the run, Ernst Werner Techow was the only one charged with murder . According to a rumored characterization of Kern, he appeared to the public as “a chic kid who does and doesn't ask”. He escaped the death penalty after testifying in tears on the last day of the trial that he had been threatened with death by Kern if he did not participate. A letter from Rathenau's mother, Mathilde Rathenau , to Techow's mother Gertrud may also have contributed to the mildness, in which she forgave the murderer in the name and spirit of the murdered person if the latter wanted to confess and repent. Techow was sentenced to the maximum legal sentence of 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting murder .

National Socialist renegade

Sonnenburg prison, patrolling officer (June 1931)

Ernst Werner Techow initially served his sentence in the Sonnenburg prison , later in the " Red Ox " in Halle (Saale) . After his sentence was halved as part of an amnesty in 1928, he was released in January 1930. Techow remained in contact with right-wing extremist circles during his imprisonment. Joseph Goebbels visited him several times in prison. On the occasion of Techow's release, the Stahlhelm and the local group Halle of the NSDAP marched through the city in marching bands to receive him in freedom.

Techow initially tried to get a place to study agriculture at the University of Jena , but then joined the NSDAP and the editorial staff of the Nazi newspaper The Attack in early 1931 . During the reorganization of the Berlin SA on March 1, 1931, he became Motor Sturmbannführer . During the so-called Stennes Putsch of the Berlin SA he was one of the rebels against Gauleiter Goebbels. The not necessarily credible Ernst von Salomon claims that Techow slapped Goebbels in the face and yelled: “We didn't shoot Rathenau because of you bastards!” Techow was expelled from the NSDAP and dismissed without notice when attacked . A police surveillance report reported in April 1931 that Techow was very unfavorable about Adolf Hitler and called him "the greatest word-breaker".

During National Socialism (1933–1945)

Techow last appeared in public at the end of October 1933, when a new tomb for Fischer and Kern was inaugurated in Saaleck . From then on, he earned his living as a photographer, bank clerk and employee of the Deutsche Umsiedlungs-Treuhand-Gesellschaft . Allegedly he also registered for an officers 'course in Döberitz , but it is said that he was expelled at Goebbels' instigation. In May 1941 he was drafted into the Navy as a motor vehicle chief mate. He was a Marine war correspondent - Company in Kiel allocated and Marine artillery sergeant promoted and special leader. When a ship sank in the Gulf of Finland in October 1942, Techow was so badly burned that he was discharged from the Navy in August 1943.

Towards the end of the war Techow was drafted into the Volkssturm . Ernst von Salomon wrote to the Munich Institute for Contemporary History that Techow had been captured by the Red Army on May 9, 1945 after defending a last post in a Dresden suburb . When he stepped out of line to help a comrade, a guard killed him with a spade. It is not guaranteed to what extent this story is true. Techow's death on the Königsbrück military training area is documented .

The Tessier legend

Emergence

In April 1943, the article My favorite Assassin by journalist George W. Herald appeared in Harper's Magazine . Herald reported that he had met Ernst Werner Techow in February 1940 under the name Tessier with the rank of captain of the French Foreign Legion at Fort Flatters on the Libyan border. Techow-Tessier spoke French without an accent and was a connoisseur of Jewish history and literature. He revealed himself when Herald introduced him to the legionnaire Rathenau, a nephew of Walther Rathenau. Techow-Tessier took out the letter from Rathenau's mother and said that after his early release in 1927, he opened up to Judaism, joined the Foreign Legion and served with distinction in Morocco , Syria and Indochina . In February 1941, Herald reports, he met Techow-Tessier again in Marseille , where he had obtained exit visas for Jews and, as a “one-man aid organization”, had already saved 700 people.

The author Horst Behrend processed this material from Techow-Tessier's encounter with Rathenau's nephew to create the play Hauptmann Tessier , which was performed in 1953 by the Berlin Vaganten stage . Criticism attested that the piece, which was not a success, had well-meaning intent and clichéd presentation. The historian Martin Sabrow describes the fiction of Techow's alleged conversion to Tessier as an “ideal of lived re-education ”, in which the National Socialist persecution of Jews and the Shoah as a fall from grace and probation would have enabled active repentance at the same time.

background

Doubts about the authenticity of the legend arose early on. After all, Techow had an apologetic pamphlet in 1934 under the title Common Murderer ?! released. Critics noted that Rathenau did not have a nephew. Varian Fry and Golo Mann from the Emergency Rescue Committee , who organized the escape of many persecuted people in Marseille in 1940, did not know any Tessier. Techow's older brother denied that Ernst Werner was in the Foreign Legion.

However, reported Hans W. Rathenau, the son of a cousin of Walther Rathenau, in his unpublished memoirs from 1964 he was in 1940 in the passage barracks of the Foreign Legion Fort St. Jean in Marseille of a corporal been addressed Veroff who identified themselves as Ernst Werner Techow have. Sabrow traces the Techow-Tessier story Heralds back to this encounter. Herald himself belonged to the Foreign Legion in 1939 and in June 1940 was at the Legion's Algerian headquarters in the same month as Hans Rathenau, who reported to the commandant about his encounter with Veroff. Herald spun the Tessier legend from it. However, Veroff was a hateful, anti-Semitic superior who bullied Rathenau. According to Sabrow, Hans Rathenau was the victim of a swindler who falsely pretended to be Techow and made use of the aura of the Foreign Legion as a refuge for the ostracized.

Fonts

• "Common murderer?" The Rathenau assassination attempt (= national contemporary issues , Volume 3), Schroll, Leipzig 1934, OCLC 48455102 .
• The old home. Description of the Waldviertel around Döllersheim. Ernst-Werner Techow. Ed .: German Foreign Settlement Society Berlin. Sudetenland Verlag- und Druckerei GmbH, Eger 1942.

literature

• Martin Sabrow: The Rathenaumord. Reconstruction of a conspiracy against the Republic of Weimar (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history , volume 69). Oldenbourg, Munich 1994, ISBN 978-3-486-64569-9 .
• Martin Sabrow: Murder and Myth. The plot against Walther Rathenau 1922. In: Alexander Demandt (Ed.): The assassination in history. Böhlau, Cologne 1996, pp. 321-344.
• Martin Sabrow: The Tessier legend or From the goodness of the Klio. In: Ders .: The power of myths. Walther Rathenau in public memory . Verlag Das Arsenal, Berlin 1998, pp. 117–130.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Werner Techow in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sabrow, Rathenaumord , pp. 144–148; Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , p. 118.
2. ↑ Sabrow, Rathenaumord , pp. 143f.
3. ↑ Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , p. 119.
4. ^ Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , p. 128.
5. ↑ Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , p. 129.
6. ↑ Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , p. 122 f.
7. ↑ Sabrow, Tessier-Legende , pp. 125–127.