Fritz Beckhardt
Fritz Beckhardt (born March 27, 1889 in Wallertheim ; † January 13, 1962 in Wiesbaden ) was a highly decorated German fighter pilot of Jewish origin during the First World War .
Life
youth
Beckhardt was a member of the German gymnastics association in his youth . At the beginning of the 20th century he belonged to the assimilated and patriotically minded majority among German Jews. Beckhardt came from a Rhine-Hessian family of traders and merchants with a rural background and did an apprenticeship as a textile merchant in Bingen am Rhein , Hadamar and Hamburg .
From October 1909 he completed his two-year military service with the 4th Lower Alsatian Infantry Regiment No. 143 in Strasbourg in Alsace. Until the beginning of World War I, Beckhardt worked for an uncle in Marseille who ran a large cloth factory there.
First World War
On August 3, 1914, in Altona, he volunteered in the 12th Company of the Infantry Regiment "Graf Bose" (1st Thuringian) No. 31 ; on November 30, 1914, he switched to Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 86. While Beckhardt and his company spent a rather quiet soldier life in the guards of a 42 cm mortar battery ( Big Bertha ) in the first months of the war , he distinguished himself in years 1915 as a patrol leader because of his particularly great bravery. In the regimental report he was the only non-officer mentioned by name twice and was promoted to vice sergeant twice within just fourteen days . As an infantryman until 1916 he received, among other things, the Iron Cross II and I Class.
In January 1917 Beckhardt was assigned to the air force and trained as a pilot in the Airplane Replacement Department 5 (FEA 5) in Hanover and Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. Assigned to Jagdstaffel 26 (Jasta 26) on February 17, 1918, he flew a little later in the newly founded Jagdgeschwader 3 (JG III) under the leadership of Bruno Loerzer at the side of Hermann Göring . His symbol of luck, which he painted on his planes, was a swastika , a swastika . Beckhardt was the only German fighter pilot of Jewish descent who used this symbol in World War I. Both in newspaper reports and in a prisoner file drawn up by the SS in the Buchenwald concentration camp , he was assigned “17 recognized kills” as a fighter pilot. Apart from the baptized Jew and Knight of the Pour le Mérite , Lieutenant Wilhelm Frankl , Beckhardt was the most decorated Jewish aviator on the German side at the end of the war.
Weimar Republic
After the end of the war Beckhardt became a member of the Reich Association of Jewish Front Soldiers (RjF). On the cover of the book Jüdische Flieger im World War by Felix Aaron Theilhaber (Verlag Der Schild, Berlin 1924), he is depicted with a swastika in his last fighter plane for Combat Single-Seat Squadron 5, a Siemens-Schuckert D.III . Beckhardt founded Edeka in the Mainz district after the war .
Through his friendship with the later mayor of Wallertheim Peter Bittmann ( SPD ), which had existed since his youth, Beckhardt came closer to social democracy. Like many comrades of the RjF, he maintained friendly contacts with the Wiesbaden Reichsbanner and his shop was a meeting place for the Iron Front at the beginning of the 1930s .
time of the nationalsocialism
Beckhardt became a member of the federal leadership of the RjF and tried to counteract the discrimination of German Jews through contact with the new government. The RjF wrote - presumably wrongly - the " front-line combatant privilege " as an exception in the law for the restoration of the civil service . The measure was attributed to Hindenburg . On April 28, 1933 Beckhardt and other members of the RjF board were received in the Reich Chancellery by State Secretary Hans Heinrich Lammers . The attempt by the RjF to influence the “classification of German Jews in the new German Reich” was largely unsuccessful. In the second half of 1933 Beckhardt traveled to the NSDAP party headquarters, the Brown House in Munich, where he met with Gauleiter Adolf Wagner . This conversation about the legal position of the Jewish soldiers at the front in the “new Germany” probably had no consequences either. He also met Hermann Göring in 1933. Probably not just to exchange “memories” - as an eyewitness later reported.
Beckhardt lived in Wiesbaden-Sonnenberg as a businessman until 1934 . After the boycott of Jewish shops on April 1, 1933, he had to close his shop and took over the food wholesale business of an emigrated Jewish colleague in the anonymity of Wiesbaden city center.
After the birth of a son and daughter, his intimate relationship with a domestic worker resulted in the birth of an illegitimate son in 1934. That is why Beckhardt was denounced by a neighbor in 1937 and charged with “ racial disgrace ”, then sentenced to only one year and nine months in prison on December 14, 1937 for his “indisputable exceptional war merit”, as noted in the sentence. Subsequently, by order of the Gestapo, he was taken into “ protective custody ” and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was assigned to the punishment company as a Jew and “racial abuser” .
In March 1940 Beckhardt was released from the concentration camp as prisoner number 8.135. Various sources suggest that Hermann Göring was involved. In various cases, he stood up for former aviators and their families, even if they were of Jewish origin. Beckhardt emigrated in December 1940 with his wife Rosa Emma via Portugal to England, where his children now lived, who had left Germany on a Kindertransport in 1939 .
post war period
In 1950 the German patriot returned to the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany and, after several years of trials, received part of his "Aryanized" property back in the course of reparation . In 1955 he opened the first self-service grocery store in the greater Wiesbaden area.
Beckhardt died in 1962 after several strokes. At the end of his life he was bitter because it was only later that he became aware of the sometimes negative, sometimes openly hostile attitude that part of the population and the authorities showed him as a Jewish returnee.
Resting place
After the City of Wiesbaden's magistrate refused to keep Beckhardt's original grave beyond the rest period as a grave of honor, the family reburied him. Beckhardt is now lying with his wife Rosa Emma in the Jewish cemetery in Wiesbaden on Platter Strasse.
Military awards
Beckhardt was a bearer of the highest military orders and decorations of the empire. The highest and extremely rare award he received was the owner's cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords, which was only awarded 18 times during the First World War , and the highest award for non-officers , along with the Golden Military Merit Cross . The first publication on the bearer cross was brought out by a certain Schwarke in 1936. He named only 16 award winners, but not the two Jews Edmund Nathanael and Fritz Beckhardt.
He was also awarded:
- Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
- Hessian bravery medal
- Warrior Medal of Honor in Iron
- Baden War Merit Cross
- Wound badge (1918) in black
- Bavarian Military Merit Cross III. class
- Prussian military pilot badge
- Honor goblet for the winner in the dogfight
- Cross of honor for front fighters
literature
- Lorenz S. Beckhardt : The Jew with the swastika. My German family. Construction. Berlin 2014. ISBN 978-3-351-03276-0 .
- Michael Berger : Iron Cross and Star of David. The history of Jewish soldiers in German armies. transformer. Berlin 2006. ISBN 3-89626-476-1 .
- Dieter Hoffmann: ... we are Germans. On the history and fate of rural Jews in Rheinhessen. Published by the city of Alzey. Publishing house of the Rheinhessische Dr.-Werkstätte. Alzey 1992. ISBN 3-87854-087-6 . ( Alzeyer history sheets. Special issue 14).
- Friedrich Joachim Klaehn: History of the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 86 in the World War. Stalling et al. Flensburg et al. 1925. ( Reminder sheets of German regiments. Troops of the former Prussian contingent. 149).
- The shield. Journal of the Reich Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers. The shield. Berlin 1923–1938.
- Felix A. Theilhaber : Jewish Aviators in the World War. The shield. Berlin 1924.
Movie
- The Jew with the swastika. Documentation by Mathias Haentjes with Lorenz Beckhardt . Production: WDR . Initial broadcast date: November 12, 2007.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Beckhardt, Fritz |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Joseph ben Abraham (ritual name, synagogue name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German fighter pilots of Jewish origin in the First World War |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 27, 1889 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wallertheim |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 13, 1962 |
| Place of death | Wiesbaden |