Franz Schattenfroh

Franz Schattenfroh

Franz Schattenfroh (born September 17, 1898 in Linz , † October 31, 1974 in Gehrden ) was an Austro-German politician ( NSDAP ) and SA leader.

Live and act

After attending elementary school and secondary school , he was trained at the Theresian Military Academy, which he left on August 18, 1916 as a lieutenant . During the First World War he took on as a platoon commander , later as 2nd regimental adjutant and finally until March 1918 as a company commander on the Italian front with the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment 14. He was then assigned to the command of the Isonzo Army, where he served in the General Staff Department before he was transferred to Dragoon Regiment 4 in March 1918. On August 1, 1917, he had already been promoted to lieutenant . In December 1918 he was discharged from the army. On July 6, 1922 he was promoted to titular Rittmeister .

In the 1920s, Schattenfroh graduated from the University of World Trade in Vienna, which he left in 1922 as a business graduate. He also studied six semesters Law at the University of Vienna . He then worked for an industrial group in Vienna for four years.

In 1925 he became editor-in-chief of the main paper of the Austrian DNSAP of the so-called Deutsche Arbeiterpresse and on February 1, 1927, editor-in-chief of the German-Austrian daily newspaper , which he headed until August 1938. As a party functionary, he took over the district leadership of the 9th Vienna district of the NSDAP . In 1926 he became a member of the regional leadership of the Austrian NSDAP.

On April 24, 1932, Schattenfroh was elected to the Austrian Federal Council, of which he was a member until July 1, 1933. During his time as a member of parliament he acted as leader of the National Socialist parliamentary group in the Federal Council. After the NSDAP was banned in Austria between 1933 and 1938, he was regional deputy head of the Austrian section of the party from 1934 to 1936. As a result of a press campaign because of his supposedly Jewish wife and his refusal to divorce, Schattenfroh withdrew from all political positions for some time in 1936. In the five years between 1933 and 1938, according to his own statements, he spent twenty months in prison and in police custody because of his illegal activities for the NSDAP.

After Austria's "annexation" to the German Reich in March 1938, Schattenfroh received a mandate for the National Socialist Reichstag , to which he was a member from April 1938 until the end of Nazi rule in spring 1945 as a member of the State of Austria. In 1938, Schattenfroh also became editor-in-chief of the Kronen Zeitung in Vienna. Because of his services to the Nazi movement, he was also awarded the NSDAP's Golden Decoration. In the SA he was appointed SA group leader on February 22, 1940.

In September 1939, Schattenfroh joined the Foreign Office as a research assistant . In this he took on tasks as a liaison officer between the Foreign Office and the High Command of the 4th Army . In 1943 he became head of the cultural policy department of the Foreign Office in Berlin (planning and deploying exhibitions, painting, films, literature, concerts, ballet). In 1944 he was given leave to serve in the Reich Ministry of the Interior . Later that year he was entrusted with the administration of the position of Governor of the Province of Hanover .

Furthermore, Schattenfroh presented a number of books with historical and political content. In Holocaust research , the work Wille und Rasse has been considered in particular , in which Schattenfroh traces the history of Jewish “aggression” on four hundred pages before suggesting the physical liquidation of the Jews as a method for the final solution to the “Jewish problem”.

At the end of the war, Schattenfroh was arrested by the Allies and interned in the British zone of occupation . In the absence of an extradition request from the Austrian government, he was indicted before a British tribunal in Hamburg , which acquitted him. After his acquittal, he was retired by the state of Lower Saxony . He earned his living in the general agency of the Beckum cement sack factory for the state of Lower Saxony.

Fonts

• Will and Race . Verl. F. Economy u. Kultur, Berlin 1939 and Stubenrauch, Berlin 1943. After the end of the Second World War, placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone .
• British fist and Jewish spirit. A journey through Egypt and Palestine in the shadow of war . Verl. F. Economy u. Culture Payer & Co. Berlin, Vienna a. Zurich 1940. After the end of the Second World War, placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone.
• You and the party. Thoughts on the internal and external attitude of the National Socialist . Pamphlet, 1941.

literature

• Biographical manual of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945. Volume 4: p . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service, edited by: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-71843-3 , p. 46f
• Erich Stockhorst : 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . 2nd Edition. Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Schattenfroh in the catalog of the German National Library
• Franz Schattenfroh in the database of members of the Reichstag
• Franz Schattenfroh on the website of the Austrian Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ^ Claudia Koonz: The Nazi Conscience , 2003, p. 259.
2. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of the literature to be separated , pp. 347-414.
3. ^ German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, List of Literature to be Separated, pp. 127–148.