Friedrich Wilhelm von Oertzen

Friedrich Wilhelm von Oertzen (born October 5, 1898 in Breslau ; † July 8, 1944 ) was a German journalist, publicist and writer. The long-time Poland correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung belonged to the young conservative “ Tat-Kreis ” and caused a sensation in the early 1930s with anti-Polish publications. He also emerged as a historian of the Freikorps , to which he had belonged after the November Revolution, and which he presented mostly positive. He was also active as a writer under the pseudonym Franz Woertz .

Life

Oertzen was born on October 5, 1898 in Breslau as the son of an officer. He took part in the First World War as an officer . After the November Revolution he joined Freikorps . As a member of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division , he was commissioned by Gustav Noske in January 1919 to monitor radical left-wing politicians. Oertzen had Karl Liebknecht's private telephone line wiretapped and thereby contributed to the capture of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg . According to Hans Meisel , Oertzen was a witness when Liebknecht and Luxemburg were knocked in their skulls with a rifle butt when they left the Eden Hotel . In 1921 he took part in the fighting against Polish insurgents in Upper Silesia as a member of the Upper Silesian Self-Defense .

Oertzen began his journalistic career at the Lippische Tageszeitung in Detmold . At the end of 1924 he came to the editorial office of the Vossische Zeitung , where he was the editor in charge of military, Eastern and League-of-Nations issues , but also partly worked as a correspondent in Poland. During this time Oertzen met the journalist Hans Zehrer , who later brought him to the staff of the influential political monthly Die Tat . For Die Tat , the nationally and right - wing conservative -minded Oertzen mainly wrote essays on the Reichswehr , its position and classification in the state. Due to his good contacts with the Reichswehr, in the early 1930s he assumed a hinge function between the journalists of the "Tat-Kreis" around Zehrer and the Reichswehr leadership. At the Ullstein Verlag , Oertzen was also involved in the acquisition of the Daily Rundschau .

From the summer of 1932 to July 1933, Oertzen was in charge of the service and editor-in-chief at the Daily Rundschau . According to Hans Meisel, Oertzen and Zehrer were warned by friends within the NSDAP about the purges in the course of the so-called Röhm putsch and hid in the forest until the situation had calmed down. Oertzen has joined opposition circles in the Protestant Church. From May 1934 to April 1937 Oertzen worked as the deputy chief editor of the magazine Die Sirene , the magazine of the Reichsluftschutzbund . In Signal , a magazine of Nazi propaganda abroad, in 1941/42 Oertzen promoted a “European union of peoples under the protection of the Axis powers” ​​in line with National Socialist European propaganda.

At the beginning of the Second World War , Oertzen volunteered for the Wehrmacht . Most recently deployed as Captain Ic in a division headquarters, he has been missing since the summer of 1944. At that time he is said to have belonged to the military opposition to Hitler.

He is the father of the political scientist and SPD politician Peter von Oertzen .

plant

Oertzen caused a sensation with his books This is Poland! and Poland at the work of 1931 and 1932. In it he dealt with Polish domestic and minority policy and Polish foreign propaganda and Polish minorities in Germany. This is Poland! conveyed the image of anti-German Polish "gangs". Oertzen characterized the Polish insurgents in Eastern Upper Silesia , who rose after the referendum in Upper Silesia in 1921, as "hungry, malicious rats" who had terrorized the German minority in gangs. In Poland it became This is Poland! prohibited and the subject of a parliamentary debate. In the German Foreign Office , however, the content met with undivided approval. For the missions abroad, 150 copies were purchased for propaganda purposes. The Foreign Office and the Ministerialrat Fritz Rathenau , who is responsible for propaganda issues in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, soon negotiated with Oertzen about another book. Rathenau saw this as a continuation of his own work, Germany's Ostnot .

A short biography of the Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski , which Oertzen published in Coleman's small biographies in Lübeck, was also banned in Poland. Oertzen was commissioned to write a new book in cooperation with the responsible Polish authorities. Major Wacław Lipiński from the Military Bureau in Warsaw gave him some information and made photos available to him. The book Marshal Piłsudski - The Creator and Ruler of the New Poland was included in Germany on the “white lists” of politically particularly “valuable” literature and recommended to all German public libraries by the Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature . The background was the National Socialist foreign policy . At this time, Hitler tried to get Poland and signed the German-Polish non-aggression pact around January 1934 . When this advertising no longer seemed opportune to Hitler in the summer of 1939, three new editions of Das ist Polen! Were published within a short time in the course of anti-Polish propaganda . produced. Oertzen's work also played a role in the general government's propaganda .

Oertzen also wrote books and essays on the history of the Freikorps. The historian Hagen Schulze points out the partisanship of these writings, in which the Freikorps are positively portrayed as ideologically as well as politically clearly oriented entities in order to ascribe “the Freikorps, especially the early ones, features that they did not have, just to to rediscover precisely these traits in the SA , the SS or in National Socialism . ”Despite all his partisanship, Oertzen had retained“ a certain critical distance from his subject ”; his sources are also relatively well documented. After all, he knew his subject from his own experience.

Oertzen published a novel and the comedy oil in the fire under the pseudonym Franz Woertz .

Fonts

• That is disarmament! The scorn of the Versailles articles of disarmament. 1st edition. Stalling, Oldenbourg 1931.
• This is Poland. Georg Müller, Munich 1932.
• People and Wehrmacht. In: Krisis: a political manifesto. 1932, pp. 119-130.
• Poles at work. 4th edition. Langen Müller, Munich 1932.
• Deals with death. Behind the scenes of the French defense industry. Hanseatische Verl.-Anst, Hamburg 1933.
• Pilsudski. Coleman, Lübeck 1933.
• and Wilhelm Petersen: Comrade, give me your hands. Freikorps and Border Guard, Baltic States and Homeland. Ullstein, Berlin 1933.
• All or nothing. Poland's struggle for freedom in 125 years. Korn, Breslau 1934.
• In the name of history! Postwar Political Processes. Hanseatic Publishing House, Hamburg 1934.
• Marshal Pilsudski. The creator and ruler of the new Poland. Kittler, Berlin 1934.
• The rubber monopoly. National Archive, Oldenburg i. O. 1935.
• The oil companies. National Archive, Oldenburg i. O. 1935.
• The great war and the South Slav soldier. In: The Kingdom of South Slavia. 1935, pp. 206-214.
• The international arms industry. National Archive, Oldenburg 1935.
• Humanity in chains. Forces and powers in the dark. National Archive Publication, Oldenburg iO 1935.
• The German Freikorps, 1918–1923. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1936.
• The gold. National Archive, Oldenburg 1936.
• Trading with people. The cotton. National Archive, Oldenburg 1936.
• Junker. Prussian nobility in the century of liberalism; with four picture panels. 6th edition. Stalling, Oldenburg i. O. 1939.
• Baltenland. A history of the German broadcast in the Baltic States; [with 3 cards]. F. Bruckmann, Munich 1939.

as Franz Woertz :

• One plays against all. Novel. Ullstein, Berlin 1936.
• Oil in the fire. A comedy in four acts. [Reference], G. Marton, Vienna 1937?

literature

• Ebbo Demant : From Schleicher to Springer. Hans Zehrer as a political publicist. v. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 1971.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wolfram Wette: Gustav Noske. A political biography . Droste, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 311.
2. ↑ James H. Meisel: Counter-Revolution. How Revolutions Die . Atherton Press, NY 1966, p. 138.
3. ^ ^{A b c} Peter Fischer: German journalism as a factor in German-Polish relations, 1919–1939 . O. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1991, p. 124.
4. ↑ James H. Meisel: Counter-Revolution. How Revolutions Die . Atherton Press, NY 1966, p. 148.
5. ^ Rainer Rutz: Signal. A German illustrated abroad as a propaganda instrument in World War II. Klartext, Essen 2007. ISBN 978-3-89861-720-8 , p. 264.
6. ↑ Ebbo Demant: Von Schleicher zu Springer , Mainz 1971, pp. 68f.
7. ↑ Klaus Wettig: The Social Democrat Peter von Oertzen , in: Wolfgang Jüttner; Gabriele Andretta; Stefan Schostok (ed.): Politics for Social Democracy. Remembering Peter von Oertzen, Berlin: vorwärts 2009, pp. 12–28; P. 14.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Lars Jockheck: "Bandits" - "Terrorists" - "Agents" - "Victims". The Polish Resistance and the Home Army in the press propaganda of the “General Government”. In: Bernhard Chiari u. Jerzy Kochanowski: The Polish Home Army. History and myth of Armia Krajowa since World War II . Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, pp. 431-471, here p. 433.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Roman Dziergwa: On the eve of horror. Studies on the tension between politics, literature and film in Germany and Poland in the 1930s . P. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 2005, p. 15.
10. ↑ Peter Fischer: German journalism as a factor in German-Polish relations, 1919–1939 . O. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1991, pp. 124-126.
11. ^ Hagen Schulze: Freikorps und Republik, 1918–1920 . Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1969, p. 353.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich Wilhelm von Oertzen in the catalog of the German National Library