Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz (born May 7, 1899 in Frankfurt am Main ; † February 26, 1968 in Bad Nauheim ) was a German journalist , writer and intelligence officer. During the Weimar Republic he conspired against the Republic as a member of the Consul organization . As a national revolutionary opponent of Adolf Hitler , he joined the military resistance around Hans Oster during the Nazi era . After the Second World War , he set up his own military intelligence service, the Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz Service , in competition with the Gehlen Organization .

Life

Soldier in the First World War 1914–1918

As a child, the son of a pharmacist joined the Frankfurt scout group Black Freischar , which belonged to the Jungdeutschland-Bund .

On May 3, 1916, he reported as a war volunteer and joined the replacement battalion of the Berlin Guard Fusilier Regiment . On October 8, 1916 he became a candidate for the flag junior in the III stationed in Wreschen ( Posen ). Battalion of the Infantry Regiment "Graf Kirchbach" (1st Lower Silesian) No. 46 and promoted to Fahnenjunker on January 2, 1917 .

He was also politically active at an early age, initially in the right-wing national German Fatherland Party .

After participating in the Third Battle of Flanders and the Battle of Cambrai , he completed training at the Döberitz Infantry School from late 1917 to March 1918 , after which he was promoted to ensign . He then took part in the German spring offensive and the subsequent position battles, during which he was promoted to active lieutenant in IR 46 on July 21, 1918. In August 1918 he was seriously wounded and experienced the end of the war in the hospital.

Border guard in the province of Poznan 1919–1920

After his recovery, Heinz served in April to June 1919 as a volunteer combatant in the Voluntary Infantry Regiment No. 46 (IR 46) of the Border Guard East on the province of Posen - Lower Silesian border. During active combat against Polish insurgents in the Wielkopolska uprising in the province of Poznan , his makeshift armored train derailed on June 23, 1919 when a rail was blown by the Polish side, and he was seriously wounded again. On January 11, 1920 he returned to IR 46 and until he was retired on March 31, 1920 as a war disabled first lieutenant, he was posted as a military educator in the Wahlstatt cadet institute .

Leading member of the Consul organization

Via a political information course in the early summer of 1919, Heinz came into contact with the “ National Association ” around Walther von Lüttwitz and Wolfgang Kapp . Here he also met Waldemar Pabst , Hermann Ehrhardt , Erich Ludendorff and Wilhelm Canaris . Heinz joined the Ehrhardt Marine Brigade and took part in their march on Berlin as a company commander during the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. In the brigade he found like-minded people like Manfred von Killinger and Erwin Kern . Heinz joined the secret society Organization Consul (OC) organized by Erhardt and soon became the center of the Frankfurt group, to which Ernst von Salomon , Hartmut Plaas and Karl Tillessen also joined. He was directly involved in the preparation of the attacks on Matthias Erzberger , Philipp Scheidemann and Walther Rathenau . In contrast to Plaas, Tillessen and Salomon, who were sentenced to several years' imprisonment, Heinz managed to convince the authorities that he knew nothing about the assassination plans. After 1933, Heinz openly admitted his involvement.

However, Heinz also had excellent connections to the Reichswehr. On the one hand, the Reichswehr wanted to create a silent reserve among the right-wing extremists, better known as the “ Black Reichswehr ”. On the other hand, Heinz worked on her behalf not only in the training battalion of the Hessian infantry regiment, but also worked in the illegal intelligence service " German Overseas Service " (DÜD). The network of agents of the DÜD carried out espionage, reported on "radical left forces", arms trade and committed acts of sabotage against the French during the occupation of the Ruhr . Heinz also switched off competing organizations to the OC, now trading as Bund Wiking , such as the separatist " Blücherbund ", which he betrayed to the police. According to the Femeparagraphen the OC Heinz participated in March 1922 the Fememordversuch of the alleged spies Erwin Wagner. It was not until 1926 that the act came to light. In March 1927, Heinz was brought to court together with Ernst von Salomon and another OC man in the so-called "Gießener Fememordprogangs", but acquitted for lack of evidence, a "blatant mistake" as the historian Martin Sabrow notes.

After an agreement between Hitler and Ehrhardt, the OC or Bund Wiking formed a cartel relationship with the NSDAP and their SA . Heinz and Tillesen built the NSDAP and SA in Hesse . SA leader Hermann Göring referred to Heinz in 1923 as the "highest authority" for the SA in Hesse and Hesse-Nassau. When Ehrhardt set up his brigade on the Bavarian border for a march on Berlin in the run-up to the Hitler putsch in October 1923, the Heinz group was supposed to secure the flanks against the Ruhr area and Thuringia . Heinz experienced the march to the Feldherrnhalle as an uninvolved eyewitness. He was arrested a little later and released after the Reichswehr intervened.

In the steel helmet, the Association of German Frontline Soldiers and the NSDAP

In the months after the failed coup, the Bund Wiking and the NSDAP had become estranged, regardless of ideological similarities. A group of the Bund Wiking around Heinz campaigned for a national- revolutionary cross-front policy and found their political home in 1925 in the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten . Heinz moved to Magdeburg and published in the organ of the association alongside Ernst Jünger , Franz Schauwecker and Georg Dertinger and others. In 1929 he met Friedrich Hielscher , with whose worldview he increasingly identified. He later read his book Das Reich , published in 1932 , to which he remarked that it contained his "political creed". Since 1933/34, however, he increasingly distanced himself from Hielscher and finally broke off contact. With their positions, however, the so-called “boys” soon aroused the displeasure of traditionalists in steel helmets. After an interlude in the Braunschweig regional association in 1928/29, Heinz joined the NSDAP in April 1929, where he oriented himself to the national revolutionary wing around Otto and Gregor Strasser . He also joined the rural people movement , where Plaas, Bruno and Ernst von Salomon and Walther Muthmann were also active. From here, Heinz drove the disempowerment of Hitler in favor of the Strasser wing. Bernhard Rust saw through this attempt and initiated a party expulsion process.

After being excluded from the party, Heinz worked in Berlin as a writer and journalist for the Hugenberg Group , as press chairman of Otto Strasser's Black Front and as Ehrhardt's personal advisor. In 1931 he tried in vain to mediate a merger of the groups around Ehrhardt, Strasser and Walther Stennes . He broke with Ehrhardt and founded the National Association of German Writers with Schauwecker and August Winnig . He was also a member of the Young Conservative Club and the Society for the Study of Fascism . In 1933 he returned to the federal management of the steel helmet.

During the National Socialism

Although Heinz welcomed the seizure of power on January 30, 1933, as Strasser's partisan he got between the fronts and only escaped the political cleansing after the Reichstag fire and the " Röhm Putsch " through intercession . His request for re-entry into the NSDAP was rejected. After the dissolution of the Stahlhelm in 1936, Heinz was reactivated to the Wehrmacht and , through Canaris' mediation, became a press officer in the Defense Department in the Reich Ministry of War .

Through his new position, Heinz quickly came into contact with circles of the resistance that was forming . During the September conspiracy in 1938, after consultation with his superior Hans Oster, he assembled a raid party to penetrate the Reich Chancellery in order to either arrest or shoot Adolf Hitler . According to Heinz 'ideas, the monarchy under Wilhelm von Prussia , the eldest son of the German Crown Prince , should be restored after Hitler's elimination . The shock troop was not carried out because of the conclusion of the Munich Agreement . In August 1939, Heinz was appointed head of Group III C (Defense Inland) in the Foreign Office / Defense. The death of the imperial grandson in the French campaign, with which he was a close friend, shook him very much.

In December 1940, Heinz was appointed major in command of the 1st Battalion / training regiment z. b. V. 800 Brandenburg , a unit for special operations under the control of the defense. With this he took part in Operation Barbarossa , with the nightingale battalion formed from Ukrainian nationalists reporting to him. Heinz witnessed the mass murders in Lemberg in the summer of 1941 , about which he wrote a critical report to the higher army corps. After his battalion had withdrawn from the Eastern Front, Canaris commissioned him to set up a defense school and a so-called V-Department to manage V-men and agents. In January 1943 he became the commander of the 4th Jägerregiment "Brandenburg" in the now established special association Brandenburg , with which he was deployed in the partisan war in Yugoslavia. In September 1943, however, Heinz , who had meanwhile been promoted to lieutenant colonel , was transferred to the Führerreserve of Military District III (Berlin), where he was then appointed commander of the Army Patrol Service. He was only marginally involved in the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 , but had to go into hiding from November 1944 and survived the end of the war underground.

After the Second World War

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Heinz procured food in the surrounding area on behalf of the city of Berlin. He became mayor of Bad Saarow -Pieskow and founded the SPD in the Fürstenwalde / Spree district with Gustav Dahrendorf . In the summer of 1946 he returned to Berlin and worked as a journalist under the pseudonym "Horst Falkenhagen". At the same time he made connections with the French, Dutch and American secret services. During the Berlin blockade , Heinz was flown out by the Americans and given a publishing license by the French in Neuwied . The network of agents that Heinz built up was de facto an American intelligence service, so the French stopped working together in 1948/49.

In 1950, Heinz received the German representation of the news magazines Time and Life and was called in to set up a military intelligence service for Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . He built up the Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz Service (FWHD), which was affiliated with the Central Office for Homeland Service (ZfH) in the division of the Federal Chancellery . He came into competition with the Gehlen organization under Reinhard Gehlen . With the approval of Hans Globke , the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Otto John , collected material against Heinz. On October 1, 1953 the employment relationship was terminated. In December 1954, Heinz visited the Soviet headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst . It is still unclear what Heinz wanted there. The KGB had hoped to recruit Heinz. The Ministry of State Security of the GDR went but later from a feint. Heinzen's claim that he had been kidnapped seems unlikely. Heinz settled near Wiesbaden and worked in Frankfurt as an advertising specialist.

Fonts

• Explosive. Frundsberg, Berlin 1930.
• Franz Alfons Gayda, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz and Franz Schauwecker: Nation and literature. Berlin 1933.
• The nation is attacking. History and criticism of soldier nationalism : Das Reich , Berlin 1933
• Comrades of work. German labor camps: status, task and future. Frundsberg, Berlin 1933
• Human unknown. Encounter and memory. Eckart , Berlin 1934
• Documents. Revue mensuelle des questions allemandes, 6. = N ° spécial. Special issue: Free Germany. Ed. Center d'études culturelles, économiques et sociales. Self-published, Paris 1949
• Breakthrough into the empire. Bublies , Schnellbach 2011, ISBN 978-3-937820-15-6
• Memories 1919 - 1945, from national revolutionary in the Ehrhardt Brigade to resistance fighter in the Abwehr and the Brandenburg Division. Michael Heinz Verlag, Kleinmachnow 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-053754-7

literature

• Susanne Meinl : National Socialists against Hitler. The national revolutionary opposition around Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. Siedler, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-88680-703-7 .
• Susanne Meinl, Dieter Krüger : Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, From Free Corps Fighter to Head of the Intelligence Service in the Federal Chancellery. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 42, Issue 1, January 1994, pp. 39-69. ( PDF - 1.4 MB)
• Susanne Meinl: In the maelstrom of the Cold War. Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz and the beginnings of the West German intelligence services 1945–1955. In: Wolfgang Krieger , Jürgen Weber (Hrsg.): Espionage for peace. Munich, Landsberg a. L. 1997, pp. 247-266.
• Martin Sabrow: The Rathenaumord. Reconstruction of a conspiracy against the Republic of Weimar. Munich 1994.
• A hero song. In: Der Spiegel. November 18, 1953, pp. 9-15.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website of a son to Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz. In: www.friedrich-wilhelm-heinz.de. Retrieved March 15, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Heinz, Friedrich -Wilhelm: explosives . Frundsberg-Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 67-74 .
3. ↑ This is the guest book! Retrieved March 22, 2016 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Meinl u. Krüger, The Political Way , pp. 39–42.
5. ↑ Martin Sabrow: Der Rathenaumord , S. 128f.
6. ↑ Sabrow, Rathenaumord , pp. 130-134, cited above. P. 131.
7. ↑ Quotation in: Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, The causes of anti-Semitism , in: Clarification. 12 authors, Politiker über die Judenfrage , Berlin 1932, pp. 97–115, here p. 98. On Heinz's relationship to Hielscher cf. Ina Schmidt, The Lord of Fire. Friedrich Hielscher and his circle between paganism, new nationalism and resistance against National Socialism , SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004, pp. 49–52. There is also a relatively detailed depiction of Heinz's life, especially up to the Second World War.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Meinl u. Krüger, The Political Way , pp. 42–45.
9. ↑ See Joachim Fest: Coup. The long way to July 20th. Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-88680-539-5 , p. 94.
10. ↑ Meinl u. Krüger, The Political Way , pp. 54–64
11. ↑ Meinl u. Krüger, The Political Way , pp. 67–69.
12. ↑ therein as Horst Falkenhagen: L'Armée Rouge et la Reichswehr. In the wake of the beginning of the Cold War, the French occupying power did not want to stand back either. This issue was published as a special edition of the Offenburg and Freiburg i. Br. Cultural magazine for Franco-German understanding. The peculiarities of the national Bolshevik main author (in addition to Heinz an Antoine Wiss-Verdier wrote La fin d'une legende: de L'Armee Paulus au Nationalbolchevisme. ) Should not have been unknown to them. The "Revue" appeared later (1952) on behalf of a "Bureau international de liaison et de documentation" or in English an "Association for international collaboration"