Friedrich Cloos

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Friedrich Sigmund Cloos , nickname Fritz Cloos , (born May 1, 1909 in Brassó ( German:  Kronstadt ), Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary ; † May 3, 2004 in Waakirchen ) was head of the National Socialist German Workers' Organization in Romania and until the end of World War II from 1961 to 1987 foreign agent for the Romanian secret service Securitate in West Germany .

Life

In the renewal movement of the interwar period

Friedrich Cloos, who was born as a working-class son, belonged to the radical-Nazi wing of the National Socialist renewal movement of the Germans in Romania since its early days. After Fritz Fabritius founded the National Socialist Self-Help Movement of the Germans in Romania (NSDR) in 1932 , Cloos was appointed troop leader of the self-help work team (SA) on February 3, 1933 after completing training . The labor camp in Cincu (Groß-Schenk), which the SA held in October 1933, was under Cloos' direction. In 1934 Cloos was appointed Gau youth leader of the organization. Together with Pastor Arnold Roth, he moved from Brașov with the Stefan-Ludwig-Rothschar to the Transylvanian parishes in July 1934 and held Bible lessons, church services, celebrations, youth and singing lessons outside of the usual church customs and with disguised propaganda for the National Socialist idea, with which he went on a course of confrontation with the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania .

Viktor Glondys , Bishop of the Church, wrote in his diary on March 11, 1934, that “in Rohrbach […] the Stefan-Ludwig-Rothschar under the leadership of Cloos worked to join the National Renewal Movement of Germans in Romania (NEDR) [have]". On July 13, 1934 he added: "Gau youth leader Fritz Cloos is holding talks with Bishop Glondys regarding the relationship between the church youth organized in brotherhoods and sisterhoods and the youth organized on a Nazi basis in the" general youth union "." On August 23, 1934 he noted that "in a special issue of the working group for religious youth care (Fritz Cloos, Kronstadt) [...] an attack against Bishop Glondys had appeared". His entry of December 10, 1934 said that “in Leblang the gendarmerie [penetrated] the church to blow up an Advent celebration of the Stefan-Ludwig-Rothschar , citing an order from the prefect. The prefect had learned that 20 Hitlerists from Kronstadt wanted to hold a meeting for the purpose of Hitler propaganda and had given the order to prevent the meeting. The report shows that Fritz Cloos (Kronstadt) gave a nationalist speech in the church, Polony also spoke there. "Four years later, Glondys recognized on December 27, 1938 that" [Fritz Cloos] [...] was in [have] placed a situation that makes it impossible to entrust our Protestant youth to him for youth work. "

After the radical National Socialists split off from the National Renewal Movement (NEDR) of Fritz Fabritius and the German People's Party of Romania (DVR) was founded, which was headed by Alfred Bonfert , Friedrich Cloos was also one of the new "regional youth leader" of the DVR youth welfare office in 1935 closest collaborators of the radical leader. Cloos made repeated trips to his SS employers of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) in Berlin. In the autumn of 1938 Cloos received the order from the SS-controlled inner circle around the later " ethnic group leader " Andreas Schmidt , according to which he had to inform relevant Reich authorities about Romanian-German developments. Because of their radical Nazi behavior, Alfred Bonfert and Waldemar Gust were withdrawn from circulation and Friedrich Cloos was ordered to Berlin in 1939 for further use. At the headquarters of the German Labor Front (DAF) he was instructed in training courses for a future assignment in "leadership of the national minorities".

In the leadership of the ethnic groups and in World War II

Following the appointment of Andreas Schmidt for " community leaders " which took place in September 1940 Gleichschaltung of all German institutions in Romania. With the founding of the NSDAP of the German ethnic group in Romania ((NSDAP der DViR)) on November 9, 1940, Cloos became Schmidt's right-hand man and took over important political and organizational positions within the "ethnic group leadership". In that year he began to set up the German Workers' Organization of Romania (DAR), in which the cultural program Kraft durch Freude should serve as an incentive for the workers. As a representative for the German economy, he played a central role in the industrial area of ​​the Banat Uplands from 1941 . Especially among the social democratic and communist oriented workers in the local Reșița there was resistance to the “Gleichschaltung”. Cloos was sent in March 1941 as a special representative to the newly created Gau Bergland with the aim of eliminating the existing influence of the left. In May 1941, the DAR registered 20,000 members, and 61,000 the following year. The increase in membership came under pressure, however; “Refusers” had to expect reprisals from the Romanian secret police Siguranța . In 1942, the “legal office” of the “ethnic group” constituted a “Völkisch Tribunal”; As head of the DAR, Cloos was able to nominate workers classified as "unreliable" for military service. During his visit, a German envoy noticed that German workers' children were malnourished and applied for an aid operation. In 1942 the number of workers organized in the DAR who were employed by the Hermann Goering Works, Organization Todt and other war-important companies in Reșița fell to 54,000 people.

Cloos served as a war reporter in Transnistria in the summer of 1941 and in the autumn of 1943 . He published his war-glorifying front reports in the party organ Südostdeutsche Tageszeitung , the mouthpiece of the German ethnic group in Romania . From 1941 he was deputy head of the press department of the "ethnic group", in the second row behind propaganda chief Walter May. At a DAR rally in Reșița in April 1944, Cloos gave a bellicose speech filled with hate propaganda against Jews.

In the underground and in captivity

On August 16, 1944, Cloos, in his capacity as head of the Reșița district, reported “suspicious tendencies” for the Red Army to march into the Kingdom of Romania to the German ambassador Manfred von Killinger . With the start of Operation Jassy-Kishinev , Cloos demanded that the workers expand war production with longer working hours. After the royal coup in Romania on August 23, 1944, Cloos went underground and participated as an agent of the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) in resistance operations with officials of the former "ethnic group" and members of the legionnaires' movement remaining in Transylvania as part of Operation Regulus , for which several groups of paratroopers were prepared, who landed behind the front in Romania in late 1944 and early 1945 to carry out terrorist and sabotage operations. In addition, the jumps of mixed groups of agents consisting of legionaries and members of the "ethnic group" had specific tasks such as

  • the establishment of contact with the anti-Soviet resistance and the agents of the German intelligence networks that remained in Romania after August 23, 1944
  • gathering and transmitting information about the Red Army and the mood in the country
  • the preparation of an internal revolt against the Soviet occupation.

Cloos was the deputy of Andreas Schmidt, who was shot down and captured on February 9, 1945 with the legionnaire Constantin Stoicănescu on a flight from Oradea . During this time Cloos took over the organizational leadership of the Germans in Romania who wanted to join the resistance actions and kept in contact with legionaries who operated a secret command center in Bucharest. Cloos lived in various conspiratorial houses until March 1945 and was finally arrested in Bucharest.

After his arrest, Cloos was interrogated in Moscow's Lubyanka and sentenced to 20 years in prison in the Soviet Vorkuta labor camp . In 1955 he returned to Romania after Konrad Adenauer's intervention to release the last German prisoners of war of the Second World War from the Soviet Union and was initially taken into Romanian custody for about a year in Gherla .

Used as a Securitate informant

Here the Romanian secret police recruited him under cover names such as Ion Lăzărescu , Gheorghe Mihailescu , Konrad or Radovan as an employee. On April 1, 1956, Cloos signed a handwritten declaration of commitment as an unofficial employee of the Securitate and was released. After his release, he identified "large numbers" of people whom he suspected of "counterrevolutionary activities". As a former prisoner in a Soviet camp, he deliberately abused the trust of his target persons and provided the secret service with all the details necessary for operational and repressive actions. For his activities Cloos received considerable sums of money (in Romania between 250 and 2000 lei and in Germany an average of 800 marks per month in the first few years) and "favors", for example when he was involved in illegal business in which the Securitate stood up for him .

In his work he gathered information about the evangelical pastor Konrad Möckel (1892-1965) from Brașov (then Orașul Stalin → Stalinstadt), who was convicted in the black church trial in 1958 as leader of a group of accused. He also directed his informant work against Andreas Birkner , who was indicted with four other German writers in the Kronstadt writer trial and who was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor in Brasov in 1959. Cloos was also involved in the gathering of compromising information about Grete Loew, a colleague of the poet Oskar Pastior , whom the Securitate later pushed into their service. Loew was arrested in 1959 and sentenced to seven years in prison.

From July 1960, the secret service trained Cloos for a spy activity abroad, in which it had three main goals:

  • the spying on and influencing the Romanian-German country teams in the Federal Republic
  • the implementation of a certain historical pattern of interpretation of the events until August 23, 1944, corresponding to the interpretation of historical events from the national-communist perspective of the last phase of the regime of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and the subsequent regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu
  • the informative monitoring and influencing of the activities of the legionaries living in exile.

In 1961 he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany with his wife, the kindergarten teacher Gerda (* 1910, nee Polony), and the children Erika and Friedrich.

Cloos provided the Securitate with information on the role of the Gehlen organization , the Federal Intelligence Service and the Romanian exiled legionaries. From 1965 to 1985 he was a consultant for repatriate care and repatriation issues in the management of the Transylvanian Saxon Landsmannschaft in Munich. He took an active part in the policy of expellees and social support in the Landsmannschaft and was committed to the agitation-oriented efforts of the association with a view to accelerating the emigration of Romanian Germans. Here he operated disinformation in the interests of his clients and tried to bring the country team to a cooperative attitude towards communist Romania. His agent activity lasted until July 8, 1987, and filled two dozen files in the Securitate's foreign espionage department.

From January 30, 1976, he was active on the advisory board of the Executive Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in refugee and displaced matters, which enabled him to provide the Romanian secret police with the desired information, for which he received financial support. Here he influenced the party's attitude to emigration policy and played the part intended by the Securitate in the discussion about the control of emigration and the bounties to be paid by the Federal Republic for ransom Romanian Germans .

Working group for southeast German folk and local research

The Securitate files show that Cloos was initially supposed to "skim off and influence old comrades [...] from the intelligence service, particularly those in the western world , and use them as multipliers for the rumors and false news drafted by the Bucharest disinformation department". To achieve this objective established Cloos 1965 as front group along with former Office trustees of "ethnic group leadership," the Association for Southeast German folk and country research , based in Bad Tolz , which at their sessions in addition to the socializing with old comrades, a revisionist view of his own Nazi involvement used. In order to conceal his secret service activities, these persons were integrated into the organization by Cloos, which made it easier for him to act in public. Thanks to his working group, Cloos had succeeded in establishing his relationships with the management bodies of the Saxon and Swabian country teams .

The only more extensive editorial product of the community was Cloos' book (with his brother-in-law Karl M. Reinerth): On the history of the Germans in Romania 1935–1945. Posts and reports. Verlag der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Südostdeutsche Volks- und Heimatforschung, Bad Tölz 1988. In the book, the authors made many inconsistent claims and alleged clarifications about the historical development of the German ethnic group in Romania .

reception

The historians Johann Böhm and Klaus Popa summarized in 2014: “Cloos succeeded in interfering in the interests of the Germans from Romania by carrying out the task received from the Romanian secret police with regard to influencing the historical and cultural journalism of the compatriot press of the Transylvanian Saxons. Cloos constantly had to work between what he actually wanted and had to do and what he had to report to the Romanian secret police without revealing himself. With the help of the Landsmannschaft press, Cloos succeeded again and again in branding opponents who publicized his and his comrades' inglorious roles during the Nazi era as polluters, pests and well poisoners. Cloos found it difficult to contain himself because manic righteousness is a defining characteristic of the Nazi type. The mechanism of this type boils down to always being a bit more radical than the “conventional” conservative. As the gray eminence of the Landsmannschaftsführung of the Transylvanian Saxons in Munich and their organ, Cloos and his comrade Karl M. Reinerth formulated publicistic attacks against dissenters very sharply, presented them brusquely and often demonized them unchecked. "

The Banat Swabian writer Hans Wolfram Hockl is considered one of the most vehement critics of the Cloos working group. In 1975 he took part in a meeting of the working group, after which he heavily criticized the founding members: “The ethnic group leadership (VG) from then and the working group (AG) from Cloos today, entangled with each other through comradeship and kinship, acted then and now under the Appearance of officiality and legality, only this happened back then in the Nazi unjust state, today it happens in the rule of law. Then as now, those who disagree and opponents are dealt with, while old comrades are spared and embellished. In this way, leaders and researchers, in some cases identical in any case, put each other together with the “idea” in an impeccable light. One of the worst violations of their totalitarian opinion-making continues to be their so-called indiscipline. Discipline, that is, in the sense of its order, to which one has to submit, means that the subject submits, obeys all orders, recognizes them as the highest authority in all matters. Anyone who opposes this totalitarian power is a putschist, a rebel, harms the community, people and home. These are the sacred districts that may only be administered by them, those who are called to perpetual authority. Folk and local research - their competence should already be in the name of the working group - can be carried out solely by them, the knowledge carriers, as they call themselves, under fraudulent authority, today just as in 1940-44. We are lucky that in 1941, at the height of National Socialism, we had some rebels; they do honor to the Germans in Romania. "

In an obituary in the organ of the Siebenbürger Sachsen Landsmannschaft, the Siebenbürger Zeitung, Cloos was praised in 2004 by the Transylvanian writer Hans Bergel for his long-term contributions to the dissemination of aspects of recent history and for his work on the reunification of separated families, as well as for his fellow countrymen Celebrated merits. The journalist William Totok saw in the text a repeated and deliberate suppressing of Cloos' Nazi past against better knowledge. Klaus Popa said: “Bergel's attempt to portray Cloos as an atypical Nazi functionary and association membership is too forced to withstand criticism based on historical facts. On the contrary, Cloos represents the tip of the Romanian-German Nazi iceberg, which was made up without exception of shameless and unscrupulous careerists and demagogues. "

literature

  • Mariana Hausleitner : The Danube Swabians 1868–1948. Your role in the Romanian and Serbian Banat. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-10686-3 , pp. 192, 216, 307, 308, 316, 355, 362, 368.
  • Johann Böhm , Klaus Popa : From NS-Volkstum to functionary for expellees. The founding members of the Südostdeutschen Kulturwerk München and the country teams of Germans from Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 3-631-65240-2 , pp. 189–242.
  • William Totok : The Securitate's influence on foreign policy on history. In: Florian Kührer-Wielach , Michaela Nowotnick: From the poison cabinets of communism: Methodical questions on dealing with surveillance files in Central and Southeastern Europe. Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2018, ISBN 3-7917-7181-7 , pp. 359-386.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Klaus Popa : Careers before and after 1945. Fritz Cloos and Walter May. In: Half-year publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics . Created: November 2, 1999, updated October 1, 2001.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g William Totok , Elena-Irina Macovei: De la SD la Securitate. Biografia secretă a lui Fritz Cloos. In: Caietele CNSAS No. 14, 2/2014, pp. 201-219.
  3. ^ Johann Böhm , Dieter Braeg: Diary of Viktor Glondys. Records from 1933 to 1949. AGK-Verlag, Dinklage 1997, p. 104.
  4. ^ Johann Böhm, Dieter Braeg: Diary of Viktor Glondys. Records from 1933 to 1949. AGK-Verlag, Dinklage 1997, p. 110.
  5. ^ Johann Böhm, Dieter Braeg: Diary of Viktor Glondys. Records from 1933 to 1949. AGK-Verlag, Dinklage 1997, p. 112.
  6. ^ Johann Böhm, Dieter Braeg: Diary of Viktor Glondys. Records from 1933 to 1949. AGK-Verlag, Dinklage 1997, p. 155 (157).
  7. ^ Johann Böhm, Dieter Braeg: Diary of Viktor Glondys. Records from 1933 to 1949. AGK-Verlag, Dinklage 1997, p. 291.
  8. ^ Mariana Hausleitner : The Danube Swabians. P. 126.
  9. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Danube Swabians. P. 192.
  10. ^ A b c Mariana Hausleitner: The Donauschwaben. Pp. 215-217.
  11. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Danube Swabians. Pp. 307-308.
  12. ↑ a b The German ethnic group and the "Operation Regulus". In: General German newspaper for Romania . July 21, 2016.
  13. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Danube Swabians. P. 368.
  14. ^ A b c Hans Bergel : To the death of Fritz Cloos: Brechungen einer Jahrhundert. In: Siebenbürger Zeitung of May 17, 2004.
  15. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Danube Swabians. P. 355.
  16. ^ Mariana Hausleitner: The Danube Swabians. P. 316.
  17. ↑ a b c d William Totok: Recurrent SD şi agent al Securităţii. In: Radio France Internationale România . June 28, 2013.
  18. ↑ William Totok: Historical-political influence on foreign countries through the Securitate. P. 274.
  19. ↑ William Totok: With treacherous slyness. Implementation of the official history and cultural policy in national communist Romania with intelligence support (II). In: Half-year publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics (HJS), 26th year, issue No. 1 and 2, 2014, pp. 147–166.
  20. ↑ Georg Herbstritt : Divided friends. Romania, the Securitate and the GDR State Security 1950 to 1989. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 3-647-35122-9 , p. 486.
  21. ↑ Johann Böhm: What was the main reason that Andreas Schmidt (former ethnic group leader of the Germans in Romania) went to Berlin in 1937, as well as reinterpretations of the history of the Transylvanian Saxons. In: Electronic half-yearly publication for Southeast European History and Politics, 2/2017, p. 11.
  22. ↑ William Totok: Historical-political influence on foreign countries through the Securitate. P. 385.
  23. ↑ William Totok: Historical-political influence on foreign countries through the Securitate. Pp. 377-378.
  24. ↑ Johann Böhm: What was the main reason that Andreas Schmidt (former ethnic group leader of the Germans in Romania) went to Berlin in 1937, as well as reinterpretations of the history of the Transylvanian Saxons. In: Electronic half-yearly publication for Southeast European History and Politics, 2/2017, p. 9.
  25. ↑ Johann Böhm: What was the main reason that Andreas Schmidt (former ethnic group leader of the Germans in Romania) went to Berlin in 1937, as well as reinterpretations of the history of the Transylvanian Saxons. In: Electronic half-yearly publication for Southeast European history and politics, 2/2017, p. 7.
  26. ↑ Johann Böhm, Klaus Popa: From NS-Volkstum- to expellee functionary. The founding members of the Südostdeutschen Kulturwerk München and the country teams of Germans from Romania, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Chapter II, Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 3-631-65240-2 , pp. 189–242.
  27. ^ Hans Wolfram Hockl : A memorable conference. About the meeting of the "Working Group for Southeast German Folk and Local Research" on February 5 and 16, 1975 in the House of the German East , Munich. In: Half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics.
  28. ↑ William Totok: Historical-political influence on foreign countries through the Securitate. Pp. 179-180.
  29. ↑ Hans Wolfram Hockl: German than the Germans. Documentary study on Nazi engagement and resistance by Romanian German people's politicians. (May germani decît germanii. Documente şi studii despre angajamentul nazist şi despre rezistenţa unor politicieni germani din România.) Linz 1987, p. 73.
  30. ^ William Totok, Elena-Irina Macovei: Între with şi bagatelizare. Despre reconsiderarea critică a trecutului. Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu şi rezistenţa armată anticomunistă din România. (Between myth and trivialization. Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu and the armed anti-communist resistance in Romania.) Iaşi 2016, ISBN 978-973-46-6127-5 , pp. 77-78.
  31. ^ The front organization of Fritz Cloos. "Working Group for Southeast German Folk and Local Research" . In: Half-yearly publication for Southeast European History, Literature and Politics from February 3, 2014.
  32. ↑ Klaus Popa: Bergel's “Poetry and Truth” makes even Goethe pale. In: zinnenwarte.de of May 31, 2004, changed on July 6, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Cloos, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cloos, Friedrich Sigmund (full name); Cloos, Fritz (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian-German Nazi functionary and agent of the Securitate
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Brassó (Kronstadt), Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2004
Place of death Waakirchen