Frits Clausen

Frits Clausen

Frits Clausen (born November 12, 1893 in Aabenraa , † December 5, 1947 in Copenhagen ) was party leader of the Danish National Socialists (DNSAP) from 1933 to 1944 .

Career

Frits Clausen came from a distinctly Danish-national minded family from northern Schleswig . He took part in the First World War as a German soldier. In 1918 he went to Copenhagen to study medicine. In 1924 he returned to North Schleswig and took over a country doctor's practice in Bovrup ( German: Baurup ) near Varnæs (German: Warnitz ), 13 kilometers south-east of Aabenraa .

In January 1931 he joined the DNSAP and in 1933 became its "Führer". Although he managed to organize the party nationwide and to find supporters from all walks of life, the party remained numerically small. The majority of the Danish population was hostile to the National Socialism that was ruling in Germany .

Despite support from Germany, the DNSAP won only three of 148 mandates in the election for the Folketing in 1939. After the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940, Clausen hoped to soon take over the government of the country. Although he and his party continued to receive support from the German side, on the other hand the German leadership refrained from interfering too much in Danish domestic politics in order not to stir up popular resistance . In 1943, for example, the occupying power allowed a relatively free election for the Folketing. This turned into a fiasco for the DNSAP, while the democratic parties received the full support of the electorate with an extremely high turnout. After that, Clausen was no longer considered suitable within the party.

Although he formally did not give up his party chairmanship, Frits Clausen, who had meanwhile been a strong believer in alcohol, withdrew and in November 1943 volunteered as a doctor with the Waffen SS . His service ended after a short time in a sanatorium for alcoholics in Würzburg. On May 5, 1944, a tripartite council of his party forced him to resign.

Shortly after the surrender of the German troops on May 5, 1945, Frits Clausen was arrested. While in prison, Clausen wrote his memoirs, which were published in 2003 by the historian John T. Lauridsen . Clausen died on December 5, 1947 before a trial against him could be opened.

literature

• Ole Ravn: Fører uden folk. Frits Clausen og Danmarks National Socialistiske Arbejder-Parti . Odense : Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2007, ISBN 978-87-7674-203-4
• John T. Lauridsen: Dansk Nazisme 1930-45 - og derefter . Copenhagen: Gyldendal , 2002, ISBN 87-02-00548-4
• John T. Lauridsen: Føreren har Ordet !, Frits Clausen om sig selv and DNSAP . Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, 2003, ISBN 978-87-7289-759-2
• Frits Clausen , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 37/1948 of August 30, 1948, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Frits Clausen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Frits Clausen in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .