Franz Sperr

Franz Sperr (born February 12, 1878 in Karlstadt ; † January 23, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German professional officer , lawyer , envoy of the Bavarian government in Berlin and ultimately the core of a bourgeois resistance group against the National Socialists .

Life

Franz Sperr was the son of an engineer for the Royal Bavarian State Railways . Since his father's place of work often changed, he attended high schools in Kempten (today Carl-von-Linde-Gymnasium Kempten ) and Neu-Ulm . After graduating from high school in 1897, he joined the 12th Infantry Regiment "Prince Arnulf" of the Bavarian Army as a two-year-old volunteer . In 1899, Sperr became a lieutenant and, as such, in 1903, adjutant of the Passau district command . From 1906 to 1909 Sperr graduated from the War Academy , which made him qualified for the General Staff.

During the First World War , Sperr had various general staff assignments, initially as a captain and later as a major . In 1916 he was sent to Berlin, where he was entrusted with managing the affairs of the military representative in the Federal Council . After the end of the war it was put up for disposal in 1919 . Sperr was then until 1934 as a civil servant and last Bavarian envoy in the Weimar Republic with the Berlin legation of Bavaria . As a staunch opponent of National Socialism and out of his federalist understanding of the constitution, he resigned from office on June 20, 1934 because of the destruction of the federal system by the National Socialists, left the civil service at his own request, became an entrepreneur in Munich and joined the resistance.

He maintained contact with Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and used his connections from his active military and ambassadorial times. In the following years he gathered a small group of oppositionists who sought to replace the National Socialists and re-establish the monarchy in Bavaria . Above all, the former Bavarian and Reich ministers Otto Geßler , Anton Fehr and Eduard Hamm , but also bankers and business people like Kurt Schmitt , from 1937 President of the Munich Reinsurance Company, belonged to the Sperr-Kreis . Since Sperr saw no realistic possibility of Hitler's overthrow, he considered, together with circles in exile in Switzerland, to outsource Bavaria from the Third Reich with military and police means during the advance of the Allies in France.

Through the Jesuit fathers Alfred Delp and Augustin Josef Rösch, he made contact with the Kreisau Circle in the winter of 1942 and was introduced to Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , among others . In June 1944 there was a meeting with Colonel i. G. Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg , where Sperr assessed the idea of ​​an attack with skepticism. He was arrested on July 28, 1944, sentenced to death by the People's Court under the chairmanship of Roland Freisler on January 11, 1945 , and hanged in Plötzensee on January 23, 1945 because he was complicit in the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 and failed to report it .

Honors

• Memorial plaque in the Church of St. Georg in Munich- Bogenhausen (since 1946)
• Franz-Sperr-Weg in Munich- Feldmoching (since 1947)
• Memorial plaque in the foyer of the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria in Berlin (since 2004), since 1998 a conference room has been named after him.
• Ceremony to commemorate Sperr in the Bavarian State Chancellery in Munich (on January 22, 2005). A string quartet with students from the Carl-von-Linde-Gymnasium Kempten was also involved.
• Memorial plaque on the house where he was born in Karlstadt.
• Bronze plaque in the auditorium of the Carl-von-Linde-Gymnasium Kempten (since January 23, 2007) commemorating Franz Sperr and Corvette Captain Alfred Kranzfelder (1908–1944) as resistance fighters .
• In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Franz Sperr into the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , pp. 578-579.
• Peter Pfister (Ed.): Franz Sperr: Martyrs of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. The martyrs of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising during the National Socialist era. Regensburg 1999, pp. 67-69.
• Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , 510-513.
• Hermann Rumschöttel , Walter Ziegler (Ed.): Franz Sperr and the resistance against National Socialism in Bavaria. CH Beck, 2001.
• Winfried Becker : The Bavarian resistance group around Franz Sperr and Otto Geßler. In: Ulrich Karpen (ed.): Europe's future. CF Müller, Heidelberg 2005, pp. 33-51.
• Walter Ziegler:  Sperr, Franz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 670 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Manuel Limbach: Citizens against Hitler. Prehistory, structure and work of the Bavarian "Sperr-Kreis". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019. ISBN 978-3-525-31071-7 .
• Ralf Lienert : Kempten resistance fighter. Kempten 2008, pp. 86-93.

Web links

• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center
• Joachim Lilla : Sperr, Franz. In: ders .: Minister of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) officials in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945. September 19, 2012.
• Katharina Köhn: Franz Sperr's 140th birthday: a committed federalist and resistance fighter. In: Hanns Seidel Foundation , January 2, 2018.
• The martyr Franz Sperr from Bogenhausen (PDF).
• Manuel Limbach: Sperr-Kreis . In: Historical Lexicon of Bavaria

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Othmar Hackl: The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-10490-8 , p. 578.
2. ↑ Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. Vol. 3, Literareron, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8316-1026-6 , p. 69 ( PDF; 6.0 MB ( memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ))