Franz Schönhuber

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Franz Schönhuber

Franz Xaver Schönhuber (born January 10, 1923 in Trostberg ; † November 27, 2005 in Munich ) was a German right-wing extremist politician , journalist , moderator and author . He gained notoriety as a co-founder and later federal chairman of the party The Republicans .

Professional background

Schönhuber was the son of a butcher who had been a member of the NSDAP since 1931 . He attended a grammar school in Munich and graduated from high school there in 1942. As a 19-year-old youth he belonged to the Hitler Youth and was a member of the NSDAP. Soon afterwards he volunteered for the Waffen SS and was deployed at the front during the war . Initially, Schönhuber wanted to join the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler . According to his own information, he was active as an interpreter and trainer in the brigade (later division) Charlemagne and then fought with this association. As SS-Unterscharfuhrer he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class.

After the end of the war, in the course of denazification, the US military government classified him as a “fellow traveler” . Schönhuber then began a career as a journalist and wrote for some newspapers such as the Münchner Abendzeitung and the Deutsche Woche . He worked as editor-in-chief at tz . At the same time, he moderated several television programs for Bayerischer Rundfunk , first Gute Fahrt , later also Jetzt red i ; he was the deputy editor-in-chief of Bavarian television . In 1975 Schönhuber became head of department at Bayerischer Rundfunk in the "Bavaria Information" division.

From 1971 to 1977 he was chairman of the Bavarian Association of Journalists (BJV) and temporarily a member of the German Press Council . He then became honorary chairman of the BJV. On November 24, 1981, the board of directors of the BJV requested Schönhuber to immediately resign from the honorary chairmanship of the BJV. At the same time, the board of directors expressly distanced itself in a press release from the form and intent of Schönhuber's autobiographical book entitled I was there . He justified this with the resulting loss of reputation for the association and the entire profession. Since Schönhuber did not resign the honorary chairmanship voluntarily, this was given to him at the BJV Association Day on 13/14. March 1982 revoked by voting. On the same day, 17 supporters of Schönhuber resigned from the BJV. A week later, Schönhuber also ended his membership in the BJV. In the same year, Schönhuber's career at Bayerischer Rundfunk ended with the dismissal of the then 58-year-old without notice. The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation justified this with its 1981 autobiography I was there . He was accused of right-wing extremism and downplaying National Socialism . Later, in an insulting trial (which Schönhuber won against a journalist) , the Munich Regional Court I found that his autobiography was a clear distancing from the Nazi regime. As part of a labor law process, it was also established that the dismissal had been wrongly effected. The Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation was sentenced in the last instance to either reinstate Schönhuber or to immediately pay him all retirement benefits until the end of his life.

Schönhuber was a bearer of the Bavarian Order of Merit , but gave it back in 1992, due to the observation of the Republicans by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution ("because of the unworthy treatment of German patriots"). He was also the recipient of the “ Munich Glows ” award , the “Environmental Protection Medal” and the “Journalism Prize of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft ”.

In 1994, after the first arson attack on the Lübeck synagogue , Schönhuber claimed that Ignatz Bubis , then President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, was responsible for the existence of anti-Semitism and accused Bubis of “sedition”. In the course of the Möllemann affair in 2002, Schönhuber declared that he was “extremely satisfied” with Möllemann's “dam break”, which he, Schönhuber, helped to prepare.

In his penultimate work The Abused Patriotism he criticized a. a. the “backward-looking” right-wing parties in Europe, claiming to have been “always national and never nationalistic ”.

Political career

Franz Schönhuber on a Republican election poster for the 1989 European elections

Together with the members of the Bundestag Franz Handlos and Ekkehard Voigt , who had recently left the CSU , Schönhuber, who was initially close to the SPD , founded the Republicans (REP) party in 1983 and became its deputy chairman.

In 1985 he was elected federal chairman of the REP in the course of internal party struggles. With him as chairman, the party made a clear turn to the right. The party was able to achieve considerable success in state elections and in the European elections in 1989 from the mid-1980s . Schönhuber was a member of the European Parliament between 1989 and 1994. There he joined with the other REP MEPs of the Technical Group of the European Right led by Jean-Marie Le Pen , whose deputy group chairman was Schönhuber. However, deteriorating election results led to differences within the party. Schönhuber accused several members of the party, including Harald Neubauer , of their past as NPD members. After these allegations, the REP MPs in the European Parliament withdrew their confidence in Schönhuber because of “behavior that was harmful to the party”, which prompted him on May 25, 1990 to give up his post as party chairman. In the same week, the new party leadership initiated a party exclusion procedure against its founder, which was initially enforced by court decision, but was overturned again in a higher instance.

With the help of his numerous supporters, Schönhuber succeeded in becoming federal chairman again in 1990, but was dismissed four years later because of contacts with DVU chairman Gerhard Frey (legal disputes ensued ). At the end of 1994, he did not resume as REP federal chairman. The candidate he favored, Rudolf Krause, was defeated by the "putschist" Rolf Schlierer . In 1995 Franz Schönhuber resigned from the party.

After his commitment to the Republicans, Schönhuber appeared more frequently in right-wing extremist political circles. In 1998 he was a candidate of the German People's Union (DVU) for the Bundestag and in 2001, together with Horst Mahler, published an end to German self-hatred , another book criticized as right-wing extremist. He also wrote for the DVU organ National-Zeitung and for the magazine Nation und Europa .

In September 2005, he ran for the National Democratic Party of Germany in the Dresden I constituency in the 2005 Bundestag election , after its direct candidate Kerstin Lorenz died shortly before the regular election date. In the by-election on October 2, he received 2.42% of the votes as a direct candidate, and the NPD who made him up 2.56% of the second votes .

Franz Schönhuber died on November 27, 2005 at the age of 82 of a pulmonary embolism as a result of a dragged-out flu in Munich.

Work in the European Parliament

Along with the ten members of the Front National (FN) and the one of the Vlaams Blok , the REP formed the European Right ( Technical Group of the European Right ). In the previous negotiations there had been disputes because FN boss Jean-Marie Le Pen also wanted to win the Italian MSI for the group. The Republicans refused, on the one hand out of concern that they would be discredited by rapprochement with the then openly fascist MSI, on the other hand because of differences in the South Tyrol issue. Ultimately, the MSI decided not to cooperate. Schönhuber became vice-chairman of the parliamentary group.

On December 10, 1990, Schönhuber left the parliamentary group. Around the same time he expelled Neubauer and Grund from the Republicans and accused them of right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic views. Grund and Neubauer initially remained in the ER parliamentary group, but left it in May 1991.

Against the remaining MPs (Köhler, Schlee and Schodruch) Schönhuber also initiated party exclusion proceedings, which they anticipated by resigning in the spring of 1991. Schlee left the parliamentary group on April 23, 1991, to which only Schodruch as vice-chairman and Köhler belonged after the aforementioned departure of Grunds and Neubauer. Schönhuber, meanwhile the only REP member in parliament, made public disdain for his former colleagues and above all criticized their lack of work and presence. In general, the REP MPs rarely took part in committee meetings, Schönhuber himself only in about 25 of the 101 meetings of the Political Affairs Committee . They appeared more often as speakers in the plenary, in particular Schönhuber used the parliament for some speeches.

Publications

See also

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 542.


personal data
SURNAME Schönhuber, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schönhuber, Franz Xaver (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and politician (NSDAP, REP), MEP
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Trostberg
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 2005
Place of death Munich