Franz von Redwitz

Franz Freiherr von Redwitz (born October 7, 1888 in Munich ; † 1963 ) was a German court official. Among other things, Redwitz was court marshal of the last Bavarian crown prince Rupprecht from 1923 to 1950 and then head of court and property management of the Wittelsbach family .

Life and activity

Redwitz was a son of the Bavarian chamberlain Philipp von Redwitz and his wife of a baroness von Stilfried. His older brother was Alfons von Redwitz . After attending a humanistic grammar school in Munich, where Hitler's later confidante Ernst Hanfstaengl was one of his classmates, he embarked on a military career.

On July 15, 1908, he joined the 1st Bavarian Heavy Cavalry Regiment as a flag junior . On February 20, 1909, he was promoted to ensign and on October 23, 1910 to lieutenant.

From 1914 Redwitz took part in the First World War. On June 1, 1915, he was promoted to first lieutenant. On July 1, 1916, Redwitz was appointed personal adjutant to the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht. In this position he reached the rank of Rittmeister on August 18, 1918, shortly before the end of the war.

In the first years after the First World War , Redwitz held a leading position in the Bavarian homeland security movement and was involved in efforts to restore the Bavarian state monarchy. In particular, he was also closely related to the Escherich organization .

From 1921 to 1922 Redwitz was a member of the German Army Peace Commission. In 1923 the Bavarian pretender to the throne Rupprecht of Bavaria appointed him court marshal of his house, which was a regional political factor due to the monarchist efforts in the Bavarian region in the post-war years. In 1924, Redwitz's old school friend Ernst Hanfstaengl tried to convince him that the Bavarian monarchists and especially the former Crown Prince should campaign in favor of an amnesty for Adolf Hitler , who was in custody after his failed coup attempt in November 1923 , for which he in return should work for the interests of the monarchists. According to Hanfstaengl, Redwitz is said to have been open to this proposal, but in the end, because the Crown Prince rejected it, he did not pursue it any further.

Redwitz retained his position as Court Marshal Rupprecht of Bavaria until 1950. In 1933, he was also promoted to Rupprecht's head of cabinet as the successor to Count von Soden.

In the course of the Röhm affair in the summer of 1934, Redwitz, then one of the leading Bavarian monarchists, was arrested by the Bavarian Political Police and held in a concentration camp for a few weeks, but was released again in August. Abroad, he was sometimes mistakenly reported as shot.

In the following years Redwitz belonged to the Bavarian bourgeois resistance group against the Nazi rule around the former Bavarian envoy in Berlin Franz Sperr . From 1935 onwards, Sperr held secret meetings with political opposition members whom he drew into his circle in Redwitz's house. There were u. a. The Reichswehr Minister Otto Geßler and the former Bavarian Minister of Commerce and Reich Economics Minister Eduard Hamm invited him and Sperr to discuss state policy plans for the time after the hoped-for collapse of National Socialism.

In 1940 Redwitz was drafted into the Wehrmacht and appointed head of the department for military replacement in military area VII. In this position he was promoted to major and lieutenant colonel. At the end of the war he was discharged from the Wehrmacht because of his unreliability.

In 1950 Redwitz was appointed head of court and property management of the Wittelbach family and a member of the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund, of which he later became chairman. After Rupprecht's death, Redwitz was president of the office and administration of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria until 1958 .

Fonts

• Crown Prince Rupprecht and the resistance in Bavaria , unpublished manuscript 1960/19 062.

literature

• Karl-Ulrich Gelberg (editor): The Ehard II cabinet. September 20, 1947 to December 18, 1950 , (= The Protocols of the Bavarian Council of Ministers), 2005, p. 148.
• Wilhelm Kosch: Biographical State Handbook. Lexicon of Politics, Press and Journalism , Vol. 2, Bern / Munich 1963, p. 1019.
• Horst GW Nusser: Conservative Defense Associations in Bavaria: Prussia and Austria: 1918-1933; with a biography by Forstrat Georg Escherich, 1870-1941 1973, p. 279.
• Dieter J. Weiss: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (1869-1955): a political biography , 2007.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See White Book about the shootings of June 30, 1934, p. 90.
2. ↑ Manuel Limbach: Citizens against Hitler. Prehistory, structure and work of the Bavarian "Sperr-Kreis" . Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-525-31071-7 , pp. 212-220 .