Franz-Peter Weixler
Franz-Peter Weixler (born August 31, 1899 in Munich , † April 23, 1971 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German photographer and war correspondent . He became famous for his photos of hostage shootings in Crete during World War II .
First years
After attending secondary school, Weixler studied banking at the Berlin School of Management . CSU protocols show that Weixler belonged to a Christian trade union and was active in Catholic associations. After his military service in the First World War , he joined the Epp Freikorps in 1919 , which at that time was involved in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . From 1922 to 1924 he worked in Berlin at Creditbank for industry and agriculture. He then worked as director of Reichsbundbank AG until 1926 and from 1926 to 1930 as co-owner of the Weixler & Co building command in Berlin. From 1930 he headed the branch of the Prussian Landespfandbriefanstalt in Munich.
time of the nationalsocialism
In 1933 Weixler became a member of the NSDAP and the SS . In 1934 he was expelled there for political reasons and participated in resistance groups. In 1934 he was arrested. A special court case against him was dropped as part of an amnesty . In 1937 he lost his job at the bank for political reasons and worked as a freelance photographer and author from 1937 to 1939.
In 1939 he joined the German armed forces as a war correspondent and took part in the 1941 Balkan campaign with the airborne battle for Crete . In addition to his normal camera, he also worked with a stereoscopic camera and at times used color films that were still rare at the time. War correspondents were given the task of supplying the Nazi-led Propaganda Ministry with photos that only painted a positive, as heroic as possible picture of the German view of the war. Franz-Peter Weixler did not necessarily adhere to it.
On June 2, 1941, he documented with a series of photos the shooting of 23 unarmed Greek civilians in the small Cretan village of Kondomari by German soldiers, which they named in retaliation for alleged Greek atrocities against German paratroopers.
→ Main article: Condomari
Taking photos of this kind and showing them uncensored to unauthorized persons was seen as degrading military strength and, according to martial law at the time, should be punished with death . Weixler was denounced, arrested and, in March 1944, taken to Munich's Neudeck prison on charges of high treason and continued degradation of military strength . After the relevant files were burned during the war, the process was delayed until the end of the war and the photographer escaped conviction.
After the end of the war
In November 1945, Franz-Peter Weixler submitted a written testimony and his documentary photos of the Kondomari executions to the court of the Nuremberg war criminals trials .
In his place of residence, Krailling , he was one of the founding members of the local CSU union. He died on April 23, 1971 in Bad Reichenhall.
The German Historical Museum in Berlin keeps around a thousand photos by Weixler, which show the entire spectrum of his work.
Publications
- Anno Santo 1950. Raumbild-Verlag, Oberaudorf a. Inn 1950.
- Then and now on the Western Front. Publishing house Scherl, Berlin 1938.
literature
- Stephan D. Yada-McNeal: Franz-Peter Weixler - The invasion of Greece and Crete through the camera of a propaganda photographer. Publisher: Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2018.
- Barbara Fait, Alf Mintzel, Thomas Schlemmer : The CSU 1945-1948 - protocols and materials on the early history of the Christian-social union. Institute for Contemporary History. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1989.
- Marlen von Xylander: The German occupation in Crete 1941-1945. Rombach, Freiburg 1989, 153 pages, ISBN 3-7930-0192-X
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Kalmbach: A "main weapon against defeatism" - the fact of the "decomposition of military strength" as an instrument of the Nazi judiciary. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Wehrrecht, Vol. 54, 2012, pp. 25, 27 f
- ↑ Weixler's testimony
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Weixler, Franz-Peter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German photographer and war correspondent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 31, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Munich |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 23, 1971 |
| Place of death | Bad Reichenhall |