Edgar Jung Circle

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The Edgar-Jung-Kreis (also Papenkreis ) is a group of conservative-Catholic-minded men under the leadership of Edgar Jungs and Herbert von Bose , who were in political competition with National Socialism. The organizational center of the group was in the Vice Chancellery of Franz von Papen , who, however, was not privy to their plans. The young conservative movement in the Weimar Republic is seen as the forerunner of the Edgar-Jung-Kreis, which had its main period between the “ seizure of power ” in 1933 and the “ Röhmputsch ” in 1934.

Goals and story

The Jung group strove to use the supposedly “safe” position of the vice chancellery to prepare for a “ conservative revolution ” of the old elites to be carried out later , the “revolution of the masses” - as the “seizure of power” by the Nazi movement evaluated - should be followed up. Papen, who was largely left in the dark about the plans of his employees for the time being, was to be "harnessed" as an instrument for this purpose. In particular, Papen was to be induced to persuade the aged Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , who as head of state was in command of the armed forces and whose almost unreserved trust Papen enjoyed, to declare the state of emergency . On the basis of the state of emergency, Hindenburg was to give the Reichswehr the order to disarm the SA and SS and to arrest the leaders of the NSDAP . In order to split the NSDAP and to minimize resistance, Hitler and Hermann Göring were to be included in a seven-member Reich Directorate, to which, in addition to them, the generals Gerd von Rundstedt and Fritsch as well as the politicians Papen, Goerdeler and Brüning were to belong. Based on the conservative majority in the directorate and on Hindenburg's position of power, this should then supervise and organize the restructuring of the young and unstable Nazi state in the conservative sense.

These efforts brought the group in opposition to the National Socialist leadership. This took advantage of the political cleansing of June 30, 1934 (" Röhmputsch ") - in the context of which Hitler mainly had his opponents in his own ranks, and there especially in the SA, out of the way - to also allow the Jung circle smashed. While Bose and Jung were murdered by members of the SS and Gestapo , respectively, Savigny, Tschirschky and other members of the Vice Chancellor's office such as Walter Hummelsheim were arrested on June 30, 1934 in the premises of the Vice Chancellery and imprisoned in a concentration camp for a few days . Savigny was arrested despite a rather loose involvement in the plans of Bose and Jung, while Ketteler and Kageneck were allowed to leave the building unhindered despite their belonging to the inner circle of the group in the vice chancellery.

Members

  • Edgar Jung (1894–1934), writer, head of the group, murdered by the Gestapo as part of the smashing of the " Röhmputsch "
  • Herbert von Bose (1893–1934), senior government councilor, head of the press department of the vice chancellery, murdered by the SS as part of the smashing of the "Röhmputsch"
  • Hans von Kageneck (1902–1996), Papen's second adjutant
  • Wilhelm von Ketteler (1906–1938), Papen's secretary
  • Kurt Josten (1912–1994), with some reservations, group member
  • Fritz Günther von Tschirschky (1900–1980), 1st Adjutant Papens
  • Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1903–1944), personal assistant to the Vice Chancellor, head of the legal department of the Vice Chancellery, worked for the group without actually belonging to its core and having been privy to every detail. Its primary task was to maintain ties to church organizations such as the Catholic Action or the Imperial Community of Catholic Germans . Savigny fell in 1944 as a Wehrmacht soldier near Tarnopol .

literature

Monographs :

  • Rainer Orth: “The official seat of the opposition” ?: Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933–1934 . Böhlau, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-412-50555-4 .

Essays :

  • Hermann Graml : Vanguard of conservative resistance. The end of the circle around Edgar Jung . In: Hermann Graml (ed.): Resistance in the Third Reich: Problems, Events, Shapes . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12236-8 .

Entries in reference books # :

  • Edgar-Jung Circle . in: Wolfgang Benz , Walter Pehle (Ed.): Lexicon of German Resistance . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-596-15083-3 , pp. 204-207.

Memoir literature :

  • Fritz Günther von Tschirschky: Memories of a High Traitor . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-421-01602-X .