Franz Ritter von Epp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Major General Franz Ritter von Epp (1923)
Franz Epp, 1893, painted by his father Rudolf Epp

Franz Xaver Epp , Knight of Epp since 1916 , (born October 16, 1868 in Munich ; † January 31, 1947 there ) was a German professional soldier , politician ( NSDAP ) and from 1933 to 1945 Reich Governor in Bavaria.

Life

Origin and school

Epp was the oldest of three children of the Catholic painter Rudolf Epp and his wife Katharina († 1912). He had two younger sisters, Helene and Auguste. In Munich he attended elementary school and a grammar school.

Career officer

After graduating from high school, Epp joined the 9th Infantry Regiment "Wrede" as a three-year-old volunteer on August 16, 1887 and became a professional officer in the Bavarian Army . From 1896 to 1899 Epp graduated from the War Academy , which pronounced him qualification for the adjutantage and the teaching subject and, secondarily, for the general staff. From 1896 to 1900 he belonged to the 19th Infantry Regiment “King Viktor Emanuel III. from Italy ” . In 1900, Epp volunteered for the East Asian Infantry Regiment in China , where he did not arrive until after the Boxer Rebellion was put down , took part in the battle at Njang-tse-Kuan and left on August 17, 1901. He was then returned to the 19th Infantry Regiment, but without a command. He received one of these only on July 11, 1904 as a company commander of the 1st Field Regiment of the Imperial Protection Force for German South West Africa , where he took part in the battles against the Herero and their destruction, finally with the rank of captain .

After his return to Bavaria in 1906, Epp was company commander in the infantry body regiment until 1908 . From 1908 to 1912 he was an adjutant with the staff of the 3rd Division in Landau in the Palatinate . In 1912 he was promoted to major and commander of the 2nd Battalion of the Leib Regiment. It was in this role that his participation in World War I began .

In 1914 he fought on the western front , including near Saarburg , for which he received the Iron Cross . In the same year he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed commander of the Leib regiment. From mid-1915 he was deployed in South Tyrol and later in the same year in Serbia and on the Greek border. In 1916, the Leib-Regiment with Epp before Verdun was involved in the capture of Fleury , for which he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Max Joseph Order on June 23, 1916 , and through the associated elevation into the personal nobility from this point in time Knight of Epp was allowed to name.

In autumn 1916 he took part in the Battle of Sibiu . In 1917 he was used again in Romania, for a short time on the Western Front and in the autumn in the Venetian Alps , in 1918 at the Battle of Kemmel during the German spring offensive . For the storming of the Kemmelberg in 1918 he was awarded the order Pour le Mérite . At the end of the First World War he held the rank of colonel .

At the beginning of 1919, Epp received an order from the Reich Defense Minister Gustav Noske to form a Bavarian Freikorps for the Eastern Border Guard . The Freikorps Epp was founded in Ohrdruf , Thuringia , because the Bavarian government under Prime Minister Kurt Eisner had previously banned border patrol advertising by the Reich government. The Freikorps and its 700 men were involved in the bloody suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic in April and May 1919 together with other “white” units . Then Epp and his Freikorps were taken over into the new Reichswehr . The Freikorps formed the basis of the Reichswehr-Schützen-Brigade 21, of which Epp became the commander. In addition, the city ​​police , the resident services and the technical emergency aid were subordinate to him.

During the Kapp Putsch in 1920, Epp in Bavaria, together with the head of the radical right-wing resident fighters Georg Escherich and the Munich police chief Ernst Pöhner, brought about the overthrow of the social democratic government Hoffmann and the establishment of the right-wing bourgeois government of Kahr . In April of the same year, the Bavarian Freikorps Epp was used in the Ruhr uprising against the Red Ruhr Army . At the beginning of 1921 Epp was given command of the 7th (Bavarian) Division ; his chief of staff was captain Ernst Röhm , who was responsible for the administration of weapons in the field master's department and who illegally supplied the armed forces with weapons. Epp met Adolf Hitler through Röhm . Like Röhm, leading Bavarian National Socialists such as Hans Frank , Rudolf Heß and the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser had previously been members of the Epp Freikorps.

In June 1921, Epp was promoted to major general. His dismissal at the end of 1923 because of support and close contacts to right-wing extremist circles, he avoided by voluntarily leaving the Reichswehr as Lieutenant General on October 31, 1923. The army had become home to him. He had the future right to wear a general's uniform confirmed. He did not take a clear position on the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch . He only mediated between Röhm, who had occupied the military district command , and the Reichswehr .

National Socialist politician

Epp joined the Bavarian People's Party in 1927 , but left a year later and became a member of the NSDAP on May 1, 1928 at the age of 59 . In the party, which again gave him recognition and attention, he saw his values ​​such as honor and fatherland, but also the revision of the Versailles peace treaty and the military detention of Germany as well as his militant anti-Semitism best represented. Epp seemed to believe that he would find a home and honor in the party. The well-known general was a showcase for the NSDAP to win further supporters in the conservative bourgeoisie and the military.

In May 1928, Epp was elected to the Reichstag as the top candidate of the Bavarian NSDAP . The NSDAP won twelve seats in this election, and Epp became its defense policy spokesman. Accordingly, his speeches in the Reichstag dealt only with the topic of "making Germany liable for military service". In 1932, Epp observed the Geneva Disarmament Conference on site for the NSDAP , against which he massively polemicized. In September 1932 he was entrusted by Hitler with the management of the NSDAP's new military policy office, which was attached to the staff of the Supreme SA leadership . Hitler wanted to withdraw competences from the SA and at the same time better control them.

The National Socialist seizure of power in Bavaria and the Gleichschaltung took place on March 9, 1933, citing the ordinance of the Reich President for the protection of people and state by the Reich government with the appointment of Epps as Reich Commissioner for Bavaria. He was given executive power, in turn delegating the police powers of the Interior Ministry to Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and appointing Heinrich Himmler as President of the Munich Police . A week later, after the resignation of the Held government , Epp took over provisional leadership of the established state government with Wagner as the new interior minister, Hans Frank as justice minister , Ludwig Siebert as finance minister and Hans Schemm as education minister . Himmler also became head of the entire Bavarian Political Police . Furthermore, Epp was one of the founding members of the Academy for German Law in 1933 .

On April 10, 1933, three days after the proclamation of the second law for the alignment of the states with the Reich , Epp became Reich Governor in Bavaria. He was the first Reich Governor to be appointed on the basis of the Synchronization Act . In this function he was supposed to act on behalf and on behalf of the Reich and had the task of supervising the state of Bavaria and ensuring that the policies of the Reich government were adhered to. However, he had no executive power, and his competences vis-à-vis the state administration only included the appointment and dismissal of the chairman of the state government and, on his proposal, those of the members of the state government. In addition, he announced the state laws. In contrast to the other Reich Governors, Epp was not a Gauleiter of the NSDAP with the corresponding party power. He therefore had to constantly struggle with the six Bavarian Gauleiters as well as the state government with Prime Minister Siebert and Interior Minister Wagner for his competencies. He tried to contain the excesses of the “ protective custody system ” in Bavaria with an average of 4,000 prisoners in 1933. His intervention failed, however, because of the resistance, especially from Interior Minister Wagner, but also from Police Chief Himmler and SA chief Röhm. At the end of 1933 / beginning of 1934 he campaigned for the release of the journalist Erwein von Aretin . His report to the President of the Reich on June 27, 1934 shows that he acted in line with the line. He justified his suppression of the criminal proceedings against two SA men for the murder of a communist by joining the public prosecutor's request: “The execution of the proceedings the inevitable consequence would be that the regrettable occurrences would be known and discussed in a wide public. The authority of the state, the well-being of the Reich and the reputation of the party and the SA would be severely damaged. ”With the second Reich Governor Act of 1935, Epp's tasks were more limited to representation. Both he and the ministers of state were placed under the technical supervision of the Reich ministers in Berlin. Because of his dwindling influence, in 1936, despite massive opposition, he was unable to prevent Siebert from taking over the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Wagner, who thus formed a two-person cabinet.

In 1938, Franz von Epp gave the opening speech in the colonial politics training center in Ladeburg

On May 5, 1934, Hitler appointed Epp Reichsleiter of the Colonial Political Office of the NSDAP and, in May 1936, Federal Leader of the Reich Colonial Association . Both offices were abolished in 1943. In 1934 the passionate hunter was appointed Bavarian state hunter master . A year later, on July 25, 1935, Epp received the character of General of the Infantry and was appointed Chief of the 61st Infantry Regiment. In 1936, Epp took part in the World Power Conference in Washington.

Even during the Second World War , Epp publicly represented the racist core dogmas of National Socialism. This is evidenced by his “Foreword” to the special “Our Colonies. The tasks of German science in the colonies ”of 1941 of the magazine Deutschlands Erneuerung , which began to appear in 1917 as a magazine of the Pan-German Association .

“If today we are conscious of the value of our racial structure and have established racial purity as a determining state-political principle, then this principle has to a very substantial extent the spiritual side in mind. We know that it is precisely here that we have outstanding values ​​from our people, in contrast to the peoples that we have recognized as parasites because they live from our intellectual achievement, because they copy our culture and because they believe on the basis of this imitation to register claims to power in this world, to be able to patronize or exploit our people. "
- Franz Ritter von Epp: Foreword to the special issue “Our colonies. The Tasks of German Science in the Colonies ” , 1941

During the Second World War , Epp's aversion to National Socialism grew. In doing so, he did not criticize its goals and values, but only clashed with individual party functionaries.

In April 1945, his adjutant Günther Caracciola-Delbrück tried to win him over to the Bavarian Freedom Campaign resistance group . Epp was supposed to declare the state of emergency for Bavaria, take executive power and declare surrender to the Americans. On April 27, 1945, however, he refused to take part on the grounds that he could not stab his friends, the military, in the back. The next day the Gauleiter Paul Giesler put down the uprising of the Bavarian Freedom Campaign with the help of SS units and had 40 people executed, including Major Caracciola. Epp was arrested and taken to Salzburg. There he was taken into custody by the US Army in early May. He was transferred to Camp Ashcan in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg , where he was interned until August 1945.

Due to the law for the liberation from National Socialism and militarism , the General-von-Epp barracks in Garmisch-Partenkirchen was renamed the artillery barracks in the summer of 1945 .

On January 31, 1947, Franz Ritter von Epp died in detention in a Munich hospital at the age of 78. He was buried in the Munich forest cemetery.

Honors

  • The mountain motor sports school of the National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps (NSKK) in Kochel am See was named after him.
  • The motorsport area (long track) in the municipality of Herxheim near Landau / Pfalz was renamed the "Ritter-von-Epp-Stadion" during the National Socialist era. After the war, the original name "Waldstadion Herxheim", which is still in use today, was used again.

literature

  • Wolfgang ZornEpp, Franz Xaver Ritter v. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 547 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Katja-Maria Wächter: The power of powerlessness. Life and politics of Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp (1868–1946). Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1999. ISBN 3-631-32814-1 (= European university publications . Series 3: History and its auxiliary sciences. ISSN  0531-7320 , 824). (At the same time: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 1997.)
  • Andres E. Eckl (Ed.): S'is a bad country here: on the historiography of a controversial colonial war. Diary entries from the Herero War in German South West Africa 1904 by Georg Hillebrecht and Franz Ritter von Epp. Köppe, Cologne 2005, ISBN 978-3-89645-361-7 .
  • Bernhard Grau: stirrup holder of the Nazi state. Franz Xaver Ritter von Epp and the time of the Third Reich. In Marita Krauss: Right careers in Munich. From the Weimar period to the post-war years. Volk Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-937200-53-8 .

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lilla: Epp, Franz Ritter v. , 2014.
  2. Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , p. 430.
  3. Wächter: The power of impotence. 1999, p. 97.
  4. Wächter: The power of impotence. 1999, p. 128.
  5. Wächter: The power of impotence. 1999, p. 118.
  6. ^ Reichstag handbook .
  7. Reichstag speech of May 22, 1930 .
  8. ^ Yearbook of the Academy for German Law, 1st year 1933/34. Edited by Hans Frank. (Munich, Berlin, Leipzig: Schweitzer Verlag), p. 253
  9. Elisabeth Chowaniec: The "Dohnanyi Case" 1943–1945. Resistance, military justice, SS arbitrariness. Munich 1991, p. 559.
  10. Documents des Verbrechens 1933–1945, Vol. 2, Dietz Verlag Berlin 1993, p. 96f.
  11. Reinhard Stumpf: The Wehrmacht Elite. Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1982, ISBN 3-7646-1815-9 , p. 149.
  12. Franz Ritter von Epp: Foreword to the special issue “Our colonies. The tasks of German science in the colonies. ” Of the magazine“ Deutschlands Erneuerung ”, JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich and Berlin 1941
  13. a b Wächter: The power of impotence. 1999, p. 230.
  14. Wächter: The power of impotence. 1999, p. 237.