Florentine Rost van Tonningen

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Florentine Rost van Tonningen-Heubel (2003)

Florentine Sophie (Florrie) Rost van Tonningen (born November 14, 1914 in Amsterdam as Florentine Sophie Heubel ; †  March 24, 2007 in Waasmunster , Belgium ) was a right-wing extremist Dutch activist and a leading figure among right-wing radicals and revisionists in Europe.

Life and activity until 1945

Florentine Heubel was born in Amsterdam as the youngest child of a distinguished banking family. She spent her childhood with her two older brothers and her older sister in Hilversum . Because of their resemblance, she was occasionally confused with the princess and later Queen Juliana , whom she also knew personally.

In the early 1930s, she joined the youth movement of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB) directed by Anton Adriaan Mussert . At times she also studied biology in Berlin with a focus on zoology and came into contact with Konrad Lorenz . During this time she became a supporter of Social Darwinism and was enthusiastic about Nazi ideology and the Hitler Youth .

In 1934 she was in mortal danger after an unsuccessful operation and spent almost two years in hospital until she was discharged in February 1936. After moving to the Dutch East Indies (today: Indonesia ) in 1937 , she temporarily left the NSB on her return to the Netherlands. In mid-1939 she met Meinoud Rost van Tonningen , who was already one of the most influential men in the NSB at that time and whom she married on December 21, 1940 (best man was Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ).

In April 1941 Meinoud Rost van Tonningen became Secretary General of the Dutch Ministry of Finance and at the same time President of the National Bank. In a leading position he helped the German occupying power to exploit the Netherlands for the warfare of the Nazi regime . Between 1941 and 1945 the couple had three sons. The third son, Herre, was born on April 28, 1945; On the same day, Florentine's brother Willem Heubel (born June 7, 1910; first name: Wim ) fell as a soldier of the SS in Holland against the Canadians.

In 1986, the three sons publicly distanced themselves from their mother's political activities.

The Allies and the Dutch arrested after the liberation of the Netherlands Meinoud Rost van Tonningen as one of the leading collaborators and brought him to the prison in Scheveningen . On June 6, 1945, he committed there suicide by leaning over a railing fell into the depths.

Florentine Rost van Tonningen and her supporters doubted that it was a suicide, but instead alleged murder by being pushed over a balustrade from the landing after his head had been smashed with a rifle butt. Before that, he had been brutally tortured and tortured for days, as AJ van der Leeuw, employee of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), confirmed in the television program Het Zwarte Schaap in 2000 . In her book In Search of My Wedding Ring , Florentine Rost van Tonningen attributes the alleged murder of her husband Prince Bernhard , the member of the royal family and Allied officer, who had also been Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch armed forces since 1944 .

She, too, was charged with collaboration and sentenced to several years in prison.

archive

Rost van Tonningen wedding ring with the symbol of the tree of life

In her book In Search of My Wedding Ring , Florentine van Tonningen-Heubel had blamed Prince Bernhard for the death of her husband. She claimed to have evidence of this in her private archive. In this archive you can also find out about the private audience with Pope Pius XII. , read about Franz von Papen and the State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker . However, this archive is only accessible through her secretary and archivist FJAM (Ronald) van der Helm, who has supported her in her archival work since 1980 and who created a family tree in 1997. Shortly before Florentine van Tonningen's death, private secretary van der Helm had received, among other things, her golden wedding ring as a kind of vote of confidence.

Political activities after 1945

After her release from prison in the early 1950s, she did everything possible to support the posthumous rehabilitation of her husband. As a token of her continued mourning and as a warning, she always appeared in black clothing, which earned her the name “black widow” in the Netherlands. In contrast, she called her right-wing extremist friends and supporters from all over Europe "Florie".

In the early 1950s she moved into a villa in Velp , the Netherlands , which soon became a kind of pilgrimage site for right-wing extremists, old and neo-Nazis , revisionists and Holocaust deniers . They still see her as an idol and an authority. The villa was searched several times by the police for prohibited Nazi propaganda material , each of which was confiscated. She complained about the house searches in her writings, which were widespread in right-wing extremist circles. Public protests arose when it became known in the Dutch media in the mid-1980s that she had been receiving a pension from the Dutch state for many years.

In response to this, she moved to Belgium in 2000 , where she also stayed in contact with the right-wing conservative Vlaams Blok . She was close friends with the Belgian Nazi collaborator Léon Degrelle until his death in exile in Spain . She maintained close relationships with Gudrun Burwitz , the daughter of her best man Heinrich Himmler , as well as with Thies Christophersen , Luciana Frassati , Arthur Axmann , Hjalmar Schacht , Richard Edmonds , Paula Hitler , Erich Priebke , Ernst Zündel , Siegfried Verbeke , Horst Mahler , Ilse Pröhl , the widow of Rudolf Heß , Gertrud and Arthur Seyss-Inquart , Hanns Albin Rauter , General Otto Ernst Remer , Udo Walendy , Miguel Serrano , Colin Jordan , Karl Anton Prinz Rohan , Manfred Roeder , David Irving and Robert Faurisson and supported him 1951 by Helene Elisabeth Princess von Isenburg with high-ranking exponents of the churches ( Theophil Wurm and Johannes Neuhäusler ) and a number of former high-ranking Nazi functionaries founded and still active today " Stille Hilfe ".

Despite her old age, she was a regular participant at the Ulrichsberg meeting in Austria and at events of the right-wing extremist scene such as the European Youth Congress in Thessaloniki . Until her death, she adhered to the Nazi ideology of racism , social Darwinism , the leader cult and anti-Semitism . At the same time, she was chairwoman of the right-wing extremist association Consortium de Levensboom ("Consortium The Tree of Life "), which publishes relevant publications, since the 1980s .

Fonts (selection)

  • We experienced National Socialism ; Lausanne 1983.
  • Holland and the German Empire. Three speeches. Part II. Consortium de Levensboom. Velp (Netherlands) 1989.
  • In search of my wedding ring: A piece of contemporary European history in Holland from 1900–1990. Remer-Heipke-Verlag. Bad Kissingen 1993 - ISBN 978-3-9802807-2-3 .
  • The indestructible savior. Bringing salvation - inviolable. Consortium de Levensboom. Velp (Netherlands) 1993.
  • The economic use of the Netherlands in the east , Consortium de Levensboom. Velp (Netherlands) 1998.
  • De Waarheid, in navolg op "In search of my wedding ring" , Waasmunster 2004.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Rost van Tonningen, Florentine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heubel, Florentine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch far-right activist and leading figure
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 2007
Place of death Waasmunster , Belgium