Fridolin Beeler

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Fridolin "Fritz" Beeler (born February 4, 1921 in Netstal , Canton Glarus ; † April 20, 1943 near Zurich ) was the youngest of 17 traitors sentenced to death during the Second World War .

Life

Fridolin Beeler attended after elementary school, a convent school in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley and then worked as a bakery - foothills in Zurich. From the end of November 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, he lived in Schaffhausen , where he began an apprenticeship in the "Ermatinger bakery" and soon developed a close relationship of trust with his teacher.

Beeler had meanwhile started reading Friedrich Nietzsche ( Zarathustra ) and also regularly attended events organized by the “ National Community of Schaffhausen ”, a local frontist group. According to his own statements, Beeler felt "a National Socialist " at the time and considered Adolf Hitler to be the superman described by Nietzsche . He was now constantly monitored by the political police .

As a result, Fridolin Beeler held various short-term positions at bakeries in the canton of Zurich . He was arrested for the first time in autumn 1941 - probably wrongly - on suspicion of espionage . A little later, out of frustration, Beeler contacted agents of the German intelligence service and the Gestapo in Waldshut and subsequently scouted out military objects in central Switzerland for them.

At the end of February 1942, Fridolin Beeler was arrested by the political police in Schaffhausen. The main court hearing took place in March 1943, and although Beeler revoked his confession and the psychiatric expert attested that he was of reduced health , he was sentenced to death by shooting . Beeler renounced a pardon , although this would have had a chance, and evidently took pleasure in his " martyr's death ." He was 22 years old, in a forest near Zurich on the morning of April 20, 1943 executed .

swell

  • SH City Library, letter bequest from Fridolin Beeler
  • City Archives SH, files Pol. Police, C II 06/03/60
  • Interview with contemporary witness Dr. Matthias Wipf with Oskar Brunner (Police, March 6, 1998)
  • Tages-Anzeiger , August 8, 2000.

literature

  • Matthias Wipf: Fridolin Beeler - between traitor and martyr. In: MC Neininger, W. Schreiber (Hrsg.): Stories on history: Authors and readers of the Schaffhauser Nachrichten look back - the 20th century in the Schaffhausen region. Meier-Verlag, Schaffhausen 1999, ISBN 3-85801-113-4 , pp. 150-155.
  • Matthias Wipf: Executed as a Swiss «traitor». In: Mag20 , accessed on September 3, 2012
  • Peter Noll : traitor. 17 CVs and death sentences 1942–1944. ISBN 978-3-71930681-6 .

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Beeler, Fridolin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beeler, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss traitor
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Netstal
DATE OF DEATH April 20, 1943
Place of death near Zurich