Franz Karmasin

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Franz Karmasin, April 1940

Franz Karmasin (born September 2, 1901 in Olomouc ; † June 25, 1970 in Steinebach am Wörthsee ) was Slovak State Secretary for the affairs of the German ethnic group and National Socialist " ethnic group leader " in Slovakia from 1938 until the end of the Second World War .

Life

He finished studying at the agricultural college in Tetschen-Liebwerd , which he ran from 1919 to 1923, as a qualified farmer .

From 1926 Karmasin worked for the German Cultural Association in Slovakia until, in July 1928, together with Roland Steinacker and Karl Manouschek, he founded the Carpathian German Party (KdP), the aim of which was to promote the political and cultural interests of Germans in Slovakia and the To represent Carpathian Ukraine . Under Karmasin's influence, the KdP became increasingly nationalistic and right-wing.

After the organizational cooperation of the KdP with the Sudeten German Party , Karmasin served as a member of the Czechoslovak Parliament from 1935 to 1938 and was also Konrad Henlein's deputy for Slovakia and Carpathian Ukraine.

After the ban on the KdP, which was imposed shortly before the beginning of the Sudeten crisis , Karmasin founded the German Party , a National Socialist collective movement of the German minority in Slovakia. In the "election" for the autonomous Slovak state parliament , he was elected to this state parliament and joined the faction of the Slovak People's Party Hlinkas .

In October 1938 Jozef Tiso appointed him State Secretary for the affairs of the German ethnic group in the autonomous Slovak government, an office that Karmasin also held in the First Slovak Republic .

Franz Karmasin in Sanok (1939)

On February 6, 1939, in the Sudeten German newspaper Die Zeit , he explained how he envisioned the cooperation between the German “ethnic group” and the Slovak government: “We don't want contracts, but rather clear relationships between the Slovak people and the German ethnic group. The prerequisite for this is the elimination of all resistance, but above all the elimination of the Jews. It is the Jewish press that has an interest in the fact that there are no clear relationships. We want to speak and negotiate with one another without mediation by the Jews. "    

In March 1940, Karmasin was also elected "Leader" of the German ethnic group in Slovakia. In this capacity he demanded on May 1, 1940: “First we must work to ensure that our German communities are freed from the plague of Jews, even if we are always hindered by others. But we have to constantly propagate this idea and achieve that the Slovaks understand what a burden the Jews are for this state. "

In 1941 he founded a Nazi-oriented " Institute for Local Research " in Kezmarok to " research " Germanic roots in Slovakia . The intention was to coordinate the relevant institutes in Prague and Vienna, and the “institute” also procured material for its German party. He sat on the institute's “research council” with Hans Joachim Beyer from the Reinhard Heydrich Foundation (after 1945 professor in Flensburg), as well as with Josef Hanika , Bruno Schier , Walter Gierach and Wilhelm Weizsäcker .

Karmasin is said to have been involved in the deportation of Jews , as well as in the cleansing of the German ethnic group from (Karmasin's quote :) " racially inferior and anti-social elements ".

In 1941 he was appointed SA Brigade Leader , 1943 SS Hauptsturmführer and 1944 SS Sturmbannführer . Among the ethnic Germans he campaigned for entry into the Waffen SS .

After the end of the war, Franz Karmasin fled to Austria , where he lived under the false name of Franz Dibak . After the Nuremberg Trials were over, he moved to Germany .

In 1952 he became a member of the Witikobund and from 1959 held the position of managing director. This association is assigned to the right wing of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft and shows right-wing extremist efforts. As a "highly esteemed" functionary of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft, he did not want to remember his National Socialist past in Slovakia, his anti-Semitic statements and the persecution of the Jews. He told a Spiegel editor in 1966: "What do you want, I wasn't even in the NSDAP ."

As early as 1947, Franz Karmasin was sentenced to death in absentia in Czechoslovakia . Prague repeatedly demanded his extradition from the German government , but to no avail, since German nationals are not extradited abroad under German law .

family

Franz Karmasin's son Fritz Karmasin (* 1930, † 2013) was an Austrian market researcher.

The grandson Matthias Karmasin (* 1964) is an Austrian media and communication scientist.

The Austrian ÖVP politician and former family and  youth minister Sophie Karmasin (* 1967) is his granddaughter.

literature

  • Andreas Wiedemann: The Reinhard Heydrich Foundation in Prague 1942 - 1945. Series: Reports and Studies # 28, Hannah Arendt Institute , Dresden 2000 ISBN 3931648311 (esp. P. 91)
  • Thilo von Uslar: "The 'honorable' Karmasin" . The time 1966, 26.
  • P. Rainer Rudolf, Eduard Ulreich: Karpatendeutsches Biographisches Lexikon. Working group of Carpathian Germans from Slovakia, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-927096-00-8 , p. 152.
  • A bullet for the State Secretary - the background to the attempted assassination attempt on Franz Karmasin in Untermetzenseifen on December 11, 1938 - by Michal Schvarc; (translated from Slovak and revised by Anton Klipp) in Carpathian Yearbook 2014, Stuttgart 2013, pp. 132–146.
  • Mads Ole Balling : From Reval to Bucharest - Statistical-Biographical Handbook of the Parliamentarians of the German Minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945 , Volume 1 and 2. Copenhagen 1991, ISBN 978-87-983829-3-5 , p. 397 and 665.

Web links

Commons : Franz Karmasin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anton Klipp: Franz Karmasin, in Carpathian Yearbook 2014, Stuttgart 2013, p. 129 ff.
  2. ↑ a b Karmasin - Macht des Schicksals DER SPIEGEL 21/1966 of May 16, 1966, accessed on July 27, 2018; also with Anton Klipp: Franz Karmasin, in Carpathian Yearbook 2014, Stuttgart 2013, p. 129 ff.
  3. ↑ Tobias Weger : “Volkstumskampf” without end? Sudeten German Organizations, 1945–1955. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 2008, ISBN 3-63157-104-6 , p. 605.
  4. ↑ Nina Brnada: Researched. In: Datum No. 4, 2014, pp. 36–40.
personal data
SURNAME Karmasin, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German State Secretary and National Socialist group leader in Slovakia
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Olomouc
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1970
Place of death Steinebach am Wörthsee