Friedrich Auhagen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. More details should be given on the discussion: Friedrich Auhagen . Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

Friedrich Ernest Ferdinand Auhagen (born December 24, 1899 in Berlin ; † after 1952) was a German literary scholar in the United States who was convicted of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a Nazi propagandist in 1941 .

Life

Auhagen was a lieutenant in the German Empire . He immigrated to the United States in 1923 and lived in Elmhurst , Long Island . In 1929 he applied for US citizenship, but did not finish the naturalization process. He received his doctorate in philosophy and taught German literature at Columbia University until 1935 .

On March 16, 1939, he founded an American Fellowship Forum (AFF). It should be an educational institution for German-Americans for the purpose of "national rescue". The forum had offices in New York , Newark , Philadelphia , Springfield , Cleveland , Chicago, and La Salle . The AFF supported fascism and National Socialism and advocated American isolationism . Its leaders included George Sylvester Viereck and Lawrence Dennis , who edited The Weekly Foreign Letter , which analyzed foreign policy trends from a fascist perspective.

Auhagen wrote regularly for the publications of the AFF, Today's Challenge and The Forum Observer , which appeared from 1939 until its dissolution in May 1940. Auhagen was arrested in September 1940 and questioned by the " Dies Commission" in October about possible subversive Nazi activities . He was released but remained under surveillance by the US Department of Justice .

process

Arrested again on March 5, 1941 in Ottawa, Illinois , a federal grand jury brought charges against him for deliberately refusing to register as a German lobbyist. She referred to the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (McCormack Act). Auhagen requested that, as part of a mutual legal assistance request, Dr. Gustav Kurt Johannsen from Hamburg would be summoned, but the court identified him as a liaison man and rejected him as a witness. The investigation revealed that Auhagen had received funds to spread propaganda and influence US politics. Johannsen and Dr. Ferdinand A. Kertess, President of the Chemical Marketing Company of NYC and member of the AFF. He should also have contacts to the German consul in New York, Friedhelm Draeger, who was believed to be a section head of the NSDAP / AO , and to Dr. Herbert Scholz, German consul in Boston and alleged key Gestapo agent on the east coast .

On July 11, 1941, he was found guilty of three counts under the McCormack Act, fined $ 1,000 and sentenced to 2 years in prison. With the declaration of war of the German Reich in December 1941, he was described as "dangerous enemy alien" (dangerous enemy alien rejected) and assigned an appeal.

Auhagen remained imprisoned until April 1947 and was then transferred to Germany, where he was charged as a war criminal in the Nuremberg trials . After investigating all charges and files that found no connection to the German Nazi government, he was released on condition that he did not return to the USA. In 1952 he moved to retrial the 1941 trial. Auhagen believed that his arrest was part of a US Democratic plan to discredit German-American Republican party leaders.

literature

  • Auhagen, Fred Ernest: Schiller's theory of the beautiful as developed from Kant's aesthetics . Masters essay. Columbia University. 1929
  • Seldes, George . One Thousand Americans . New York: Boni & Gaer. 1947.
  • Michael Sayers, Albert E. Kahn. Sabotage! The Secret War against America . Harper & Brothers Publishers. 1942
  • Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich . New York: St Martin's Press. 2003

swell

  1. ↑ http://www.wjcash.org/WJCash6/Charlotte.News.Articles/3-5-41.htm
  2. ↑ http://www.prouty.org/brussell/sabotage.html
  3. ↑ http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm02063.htm United States v. Auhagen, 39 F.Supp. 590, Cr.No.67380. U.S. District Court of Columbia.
  4. ↑ http://www.library.northwestern.edu/spec/pdf/auhagen.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Auhagen, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Auhagen, Friedrich Ernest Ferdinand (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German literary scholar in the United States
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH after 1952