Franz Riedweg

Franz Egbert Riedweg (born April 10, 1907 in Lucerne ; † January 22, 2005 in Munich ) was a Swiss doctor and SS-Obersturmbannführer .

Life

Switzerland

Riedweg was born into a Lucerne hotelier family. He completed his medical studies in Bern , Berlin and Rostock .

Between 1934 and 1936 he was a member of the National Front . From 1936 to 1937 he was secretary and political advisor to the former Federal Councilor Jean-Marie Musy . In 1937 he worked for the "Aktion gegen den Kommunismus" (Action Against Communism), which produced the propaganda film The Red Plague , which portrayed the Swiss national strike of 1918 along with riots and conflicts around the world as part of a Jewish-Bolshevik-intellectualist conspiracy .

Second World War

Riedweg became one of the most influential Swiss people in Germany during World War II . In 1937 he was on the Nazi Party Rally of the NSDAP invited and met Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , Reich Leader SS Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich , chief of the Security Police (Sipo). In 1938 he married Sybille von Blomberg, the daughter of the Reich War Minister Generalfeldmarschall Werner von Blomberg and moved to Berlin, where he joined the SS with the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (SS-No. 293.744). Riedweg took part in the attack on Poland as a doctor for the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler .

In 1941 he was a medical officer in the SS main office in Berlin and founded the “Panoramaheim” in Stuttgart , which served as a reception camp for Swiss people who wanted to fight or work for Germany. He took part in the French campaign and then returned to the SS main office in Berlin.

Riedweg was also the head of the "Germanic volunteers" who recruited non-German Waffen SS men. He was also head of the "Germanic control center" of the SS main office until 1943 and was awarded the Iron Cross .

In early 1944, Riedweg gave a speech at the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz, in which he called for the "independence of the states of Europe". Himmler then left Riedweg to III. Transfer Germanic Panzer Corps to the Eastern Front .

In 1944 his Swiss citizenship was revoked. On May 3, 1945, he was captured by the Allies in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania .

post war period

On December 20, 1947, Riedweg was sentenced in absentia by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court - like Benno Schaeppi - to sixteen years in prison for "attacking the independence of Switzerland and for advocating for foreign military service". The judgment expired in 1974.

After 1949 Riedweg worked as a doctor in Munich, where, among other things, he was Otto von Habsburg's personal doctor . He died there on January 22, 2005 at the age of 97.

Publications

• Frederick the Great. Soldier, statesman, thinker. From his writings (= soldier and statesman. H. 1). Selected by Franz Riedweg. Nibelungen-Verlag, Berlin 1940.
• Departure to freedom. 1813 - 1814 - 1815. From contemporary writings (= soldier and statesman. H. 4). Nibelungen-Verlag, Berlin 1941; Reprint: Deutscher Militär-Verlag, Remscheid 1988, ISBN 3-927036-06-4 .
• Conservative evolution. The end of secularism. Bogen-Verlag, Munich 1968.
• Is the modern age coming to an end? (= Series of publications of the Europa League. H. 2). Klinger, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-920545-04-4 .
• On the change in thinking in medicine. The buried dimension. Limes, Wiesbaden 1977, ISBN 3-8090-2113-X .
• End of secularism. European Conference, Regensburg, 29. 9. – 1. 10. 1978 (= publication series of the Europa League. Issue 7). Klinger, Munich 1978.
• End of materialism. The way into the third millennium (= publication series of the Europa League ). League Europe, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-922942-01-6 .
• Hormone deficiency. Theory and practice of plant hormonal gland stimulation. Sonntag, Regensburg 1987, ISBN 3-87758-016-5 ; 3rd, revised and supplemented edition: Sonntag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-87758-234-6 .
• Aut deus, aut nihil. End of materialism (= series of the Europa League ). League Europe, Munich [1994].

literature

• Bruno Jaeggi et al .: The Red Plague: Anti-Communism in Switzerland . In: Film - Critical Film Magazine 1 (1975). Pp. 49-86.
• Thomas Knellwolf: Obituary II. Franz Riedweg (1907-2005). In: Die Weltwoche . 2005, no. 18 (May 5, 2005).
• Thomas Knellwolf: Swiss Nazi. Franz Riedweg, Adolf Hitler's most willing helper. In: Die Weltwoche. 2006, no. 33 (August 17, 2006).
• Peter Quadri: Riedweg, Franz. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz . 5th November 2010 .
• Hans Stutz: death of a Swiss SS man. In: Sunday newspaper . April 24, 2005.
• Marco Wyss: Un suisse au service de la SS, Dr. Franz Riedweg et le "travail germanique" de la SS. In: Revue Suisse d'Histoire . Vol. 57 (2007), H. 4, pp. 417-440, DOI: 10.5169 / seals-98971 .
• Marco Wyss: Un Suisse au service de la SS. Franz Riedweg (1907-2005) , Neuchâtel 2010.

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Riedweg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Franz Riedweg in the Rostock matriculation portal
• Newspaper article about Franz Riedweg in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Franz Riedweg estate in the Archives for Contemporary History
• A Swiss architect of the "SS as the elite of the new Europe" on Swissinfo.ch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z10BWRkRNnU
2. ↑ Bruno Jaeggi et al .: Die Rote Pest: Antikommunismus in der Schweiz, in: Film - Kritisches Filmmagazin 1 (1975). Pp. 49-86.
3. ↑ Daniel Artho: The Revolutionsnarrativ in the movies: The Red Plague of 1938 , in Roman Ross Field et al. (Ed.): The national strike: Switzerland in November 1918 . Baden 2018. p. 427.
4. ↑ https://www.eda.admin.ch/dam/parl-vor/2nd-world-war/1970-1989/film-die-rote-pest.pdf
5. ↑ https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/der-altbundesrat-und-sein-hetzfilm-ld.1418663
6. ↑ Swiss in the Waffen SS. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on January 10, 2018 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.