Fritz Fabritius

Fritz Fabritius (born March 27, 1883 in Hermannstadt , Austria-Hungary , † October 20, 1957 in Prien am Chiemsee , Germany ) was a Romanian-German politician .

Life

prehistory

Fritz Fabritius was the son of a military sub-manager and his wife Viktorine Bielz. He attended the military school in Košice ( German  Kaschau ) and Hranice na Moravě ( Mährisch Weißkirchen ), then the Theresian Military Academy in the castle in Wiener Neustadt . In 1907 he, meanwhile Rittmeister , was granted his application to retire. Then he found a job in the "Hermannstädter Allgemeine Sparkasse".

Fabritius, inspired by the pan-German and ethnic- social conceptions of Georg von Schönerer , founded the “Transylvanian-Saxon Youth Army ” in 1912 in order to “ revive what he believed to be paralyzed ethnic life in the national sense.” In 1918 Fabritius joined the Roland Association for German-ethnic regular customer in Berlin ; In 1921 he was a member of the patronage of the German Farmers College . With August Georg Kenstler as editor, Fabritius became editor of the magazine Sachs' halte Wacht from 1926 , of which only two issues appeared.

Foundation of the self-help organization

In 1922, the bank director of Sparkassa Carl Wolff financed a trip to Germany for Fabritius to find solutions to local economic problems abroad. In Germany there is said to have been a meeting with Adolf Hitler, who was still relatively unknown at the time , but there is no evidence of this. He returned full of enthusiasm for Hitler. As part of the Hermannstädter Saxon Agricultural Association , he founded a building society in 1922 or 1923 under the name Self-Help of Small Animal Breeders, Leingärtner, Land- and Heimstätte- Hunger . The self-help followed since its founding next agricultural populist (see. Poporanism , Sämänätorismus ) and traditional -autochthonen ideas and the ideology and Heraldry of National Socialism . Internally, it combined economic measures with calls for political reform. After initial setbacks (start-up in 1927) had 1929 1,620 members the union, after the Great Depression is the number doubled to 3,200 in 1931, with capital contributions of 121 million lei (about 9.5 million US dollars in values of 2011).

In self-help, originally founded as a business association, political activities increased sharply from 1930 onwards due to the increasing influence of younger talent, without the organization being able to assume a political leadership role. Fabritius propagated on the one hand ethnic togetherness, on the other hand the socialism of economic cooperation. He declared the democratic system to have failed, although the self-help, like no other Romanian-German organization, more emphatically demanded the democratization of the electoral system of the regional people's councils as the representation of the German minority.

Fabritius did not attack the churches, did not see himself as a pioneer of the National Socialist German Reich and was also not understood as such by his opponents. As a minority politician, he was closer to the conservative forces than to the radical wing of his own movement.

Renewal movement

The politically still powerless political opposition within the Romanian Germans tightened its tone after 1930 with radical solutions and offensive positions after a long chain of failed attempts to change the existing conditions among the prevailing conservative elites, which did not enter into a dialogue, and the Bucharest Government. For a political course correction in the minority relations, groups like the dissatisfied , Klingsor or the Banat Jungschwaben were not the crystallization point, but the self-help of Fabritius, renamed in the renewal movement . He particularly criticized the unsuccessful, passive policy of the minority leadership towards the capital. Since the end of the First World War , the dispute between the upper-class industrial group around Hans Otto Roth and the petty-bourgeois rural group around Rudolf Brandsch had paralyzed the conservative camp.

After Hitler's “ seizure of power ” in 1933, the renewal movement achieved its political breakthrough. They no longer saw themselves as a fringe opposition group, but as part of the international National Socialist movement. According to conservative reports, the innovators, which since May 1932 had been renamed the National Socialist Self-Help Movement of Germans in Romania (NSDR), advertised more with election gifts and less with arguments. In addition, they promised to receive even more government grants in the future if they won the election. Economic measures by the local NS groups based on the concept of helping people to help themselves made the poor farmers vote for Fabritius even more than the promise of financial subsidies from Germany. At the beginning of 1934 the NSDR changed its name to "National Renewal Movement of Germans in Romania" (NEDR).

German national community in Romania

As a result of the election victories in the regional people's councils, Fabritius was elected chairman of the Romanian-German umbrella organization on June 29, 1935 with 49 votes and 18 conservative abstentions, which was renamed the German National Community in Romania . The association received a popular program inspired by National Socialism , against which neither the conservatives nor the Evangelical Church AB in Romania revolted, but the radical faction of the innovators, which meanwhile under Waldemar Gust and Alfred Bonfert on February 10, 1935 (initially with the Fabritius' approval) founded the German People's Party of Romania (DVR). The radicals complained that the people's program did not correspond to the “real spirit of National Socialism”. The conflict between the national community and the DVR shaped the political discussion of the Romanian Germans until October 1938. The "quarrel separated court neighbors and divided families, children fought in the street and shouted 'Fabritius should rule, Bonfert should die' or vice versa (depending on the parents' attitudes)", hall battles raged in the cities.

The length of the conflict did not reflect the true balance of power, as a two-thirds majority was clearly in favor of Fabritius. The People's Party was only supported by the People's Council of Bukowina ( Buchenland ) and by district committees in Burzenland .

Synchronization

In October 1938, the special representative in Romania, Edit von Coler , invited Fabritius and Helmuth Wolff , chairman of the German People's Council for Transylvania, to the Bucharest apartment of the German Legation Councilor Stelzer on October 26, 1938 . Also in Bucharest, in the apartment of the representative of the NSDAP-AO , regional group leader of the foreign organization of the NSDAP in Romania, Artur Adolf Konradi , she spoke the next morning with Bonfert, the regional farmer leader Hans Kaufmes and the district leader for Transylvania East Waldemar Gust. On the evening of October 27, both parties came to an agreement in which Fabritius was confirmed as national chairman of the national community. The DVR organizations were dissolved and incorporated into the national community. Assumptions suggest that, as the representative of the German Reich, she threatened the radicals with the cancellation of their funding by the NSDAP. On November 6th, the "reconciliation" was celebrated with a mass rally in Timișoara . After the Coler talks, Fabritius made no more demands for autonomy for the Romanian German minority. With his staff he only dealt with the day-to-day business of the national community. In the case of important matters such as press releases, strategic issues or the appointment of management staff, decisions were sent by telegram from the Main Office of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi).

The Romanian king Charles II. That founded on December 15, 1938 Unity Party Frontul Renasterii national (FRN), Front of National Rebirth . The next day the representatives of the national community started negotiations for joint entry, but the Romanian government required the Romanian Germans to join individually. Fabritius resisted because he suspected it was an intention to split the minority. The German embassy encouraged him to continue negotiations and indicated that Bucharest would give in. The course of the negotiations exceeded Fabritius' expectations, and on January 10, 1939 he was authorized by Interior Minister Armand Călinescu " to create an organization of its own as the collective representation of the Romanian Germans [...] with cultural, economic and social goals"; all “political manifestations” had to take place within the framework of the FRN. The intermediary role of VoMi was excluded at the Romanian request.

In the Karlsburger Resolutions ( Alba Iulia ) of December 1, 1918, Romania had assured the Magyars and Germans of extensive equality as minorities, but later did not comply. Twenty years later, the Romanian Germans had now achieved their most important goals. What was remarkable here was not the authorization per se, but the exclusivity of the authorization for political activity given to the organization headed by Fabritius, with the simultaneous ban on the Bucharest-friendly conservatives. Hans Otto Roth later commented: "National Socialism had prevailed across the board and took over the leadership of the national community with the express permission of the Romanian government."

The legal recognition and securing of his position made it possible for the regional chairman Fabritius to openly rebuild the structures of the minority according to Reich German guidelines. The national community of Germans in Romania was renamed the German national community in Romania , all minority associations were dissolved and gradually re-established as class-related branches of the national community. The guide principle and a completed National Socialist program became the guiding principle . The corporate entry of the Romanian-German associations into the FRN proceeded without serious incidents.

case

In February 1939 Fabritius was elected chairman of the Association of German Nationalities in Europe to succeed the Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein . Above all, however, the occupation of Prague in the course of the Sudeten crisis sparked new fears of a fifth column in Bucharest , whereupon the Romanian authorities in Romanian German circles intensified investigations into "Sudeten-like" behavior. Allegedly, Fabritius is said to have also planned to record advertising records in Vienna on which the ethnic German population of Romania should be asked to arm themselves and to make themselves “available to the Führer”. Fabritius also loudly supported “an imperial German expansion in the southeast”.

The Bucharest government had tacitly collected incriminating material against Fabritius, and in July 1939 there was a scandal. During a meeting with Fabritius, Armand Călinescu, now Prime Minister, accused him of a list of illegal activities of the national community, from the formation of paramilitary units, which swore their oath of allegiance to Fabritius, to his statement that he firmly reckoned with the expansion of Germany to the Carpathian Arch would. Only the intervention of the German ambassador prevented charges of high treason . Hans Otto Roth also participated in efforts to depose Fabritius. On the day of his interview with Călinescu, he submitted a recording of the conversation to the German embassy, ​​in which Fabritius' behavior was described as "intolerable".

There was also internal opposition within the national community that had crystallized around the core of the former DPR leaders. In addition, a group of Romanian Germans appeared in Berlin for the first time in the summer of 1939 (including the later ethnic group leader Andreas Schmidt ) who viewed the Coler unification of October 1938 as a betrayal of "National Socialist consequences". Fabritius was summoned to Berlin, but suspiciously delayed his departure. Meanwhile, the German ambassador insisted on his dismissal as land ruler. When the Romanian authorities found orders for paramilitary target practice in the briefcase of an employee of the Volksgemeinschaft on August 10, Fabritius' political fate was sealed.

After repeated requests and threats, he arrived in Berlin on August 14 and was informed that Germany saw its relations with Romania endangered by his behavior. His argument that the national community had moved within the framework of the Romanian constitution was rated as "hardly tenable". The VoMi demanded that he remain on the territory of the Reich because the Romanian authorities were preparing for his arrest. Fabritius remained provincial chairman in absentia , his powers were taken over ad interim by his deputy, the Hermannstadt doctor Wolfram Bruckner . In order to be able to identify the change in leadership in the Romanian government as a change of direction, the VoMi simultaneously changed the name of the "German National Community in Romania" to the name "German National Group in Romania (DViR)", which lasted until the Soviet occupation of Romania in 1944. The new Prime Minister of Romania, Constantin Argetoianu , announced in October 1939 that Bucharest could refrain from arresting Fabritius if he remained in the Reich. The VoMi, however, wanted Fabritius to be able to travel to Romania for a short time in order to counter Romanian German rumors that the governor was holding back against his will.

During the absence of Fabritius in the months of August to October 1939, according to Hans Otto Roth, “the crisis of our people had intensified to the highest”; On the one hand, the beginning of the Second World War occurred in Europe; on the other hand, Hitler had announced the resettlement of all “ ethnic Germans ”. Within a few days, Fabritius further frightened the German minority and again endangered German-Romanian relations by claiming that Germany would declare war on Romania within the next few weeks. He recommended the immediate occupation of Sibiu, the arrest of Romanian hostages, and continued to criticize the German legation. At the pressure of the Foreign Office - from the envoy to the Reich Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop - Fabritius was finally ordered back to Germany at the end of November 1939. Wolfram Bruckner was confirmed in the position of regional chairman and “ ethnic group leader ”.

After the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht at the end of the Second World War, Fabritius was taken into custody in Deggendorf in Lower Bavaria , from where he was released and rehabilitated. He spent the last years of his life in the Siebenbürgenheim in Rimsting am Chiemsee .

Publications

• One year of the national community of Germans in Romania under Fritz Fabritius , Bruckner, Hermannstadt, 1936, p. 68.

literature

• Otto R. Ließ: Fabritius, Fritz . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 1. Munich 1974, p. 485 f.
• Tammo Luther: Volkstumsppolitik of the German Reich 1933-1938: Germans living abroad in the field of tension between traditionalists and National Socialists. Volume 55 of Historical Messages on behalf of the Ranke Society, Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-515-08535-1 ( excerpt from Google Books )
• Paul Milata : Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu. Romanian Germans in the Waffen SS. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-13806-6 , p. 349.
• Andreas Möckel: Contested Volkskirche: Life and work of the Evangelical-Saxon pastor Konrad Möckel (1892-1965). Volume 42 by Studia Transylvanica, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar, 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20662-8 , p. 171 ( excerpt from Google Books )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Paul Milata : Between Hitler, Stalin and Antonescu. Romanian Germans in the Waffen SS. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-13806-6 , p. 349, here p. 27 ff. And p. 336.
2. ↑ Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims , Werner Conze, Adolf Diestelkamp, ​​Rudolf Laun, Peter Rassow, Hans Rothfels: Documentation of the expulsion of Germans from East Central Europe. Volume III: The Fate of the Germans in Romania. DTV, 1957, DNB 450972356 , p. 32E.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Transylvania Institute, SI A XII-3 / 5.9: Interview with Fritz Fabritius jr. June 29, 1969.
4. ^ ^{A b} Johann Böhm , Wolfgang Knopp: The Germans in Romania and the Weimar Republic 1919–1933 , publishing house of the Working Group for the History and Culture of German Settlements in Southeast Europe eV, Ippesheim 1993, ISBN 3-928389-02-5 , p. 299, here p. 189.
5. ^ Johann Böhm: National Socialist Indoctrination of Germans in Romania 1932-1944 , Verlag Peter Lang, 2008, ISBN 978-3-63157-031-9 , p. 253, here p. 7.
6. ↑ Joseph Trausch , Friedrich Schuller, Hermann Adolf Hienz: Writer's Lexicon of the Transylvanian Germans: bio-bibliographical manual for science, poetry and journalism, Volume 7 , Böhlau Verlag Köln Weimar, 2000, ISBN 978-3-41212-599-8 , P. 388, XX abbreviations.
7. ^ Günter Schödl: German history in Eastern Europe: Land on the Danube. Siedler Verlag, Munich, 1995, ISBN 3-88680-776-2 , p. 720, here p. 560.
8. ↑ Hildrun Glass: Broken Neighborhood. The German-Jewish Relationship in Romania (1918-1938). Volume 98 of Southeast European Works, R. Oldenbourg, 1996, ISBN 3-486-56230-4 , p. 638, here p. 323.
9. ↑ globalfinancialdata.com and CPI Inflation Calculator ( Memento from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (Inflation Calculator no longer works). According to values ​​from February 7, 1929, the exchange rate for 1 US dollar was 167.20 lei. Adjusted for inflation, the real size of $ 1 in 1929 is $ 13.24 in 2011, so deposits were worth about $ 9.5 million in 2011 values.
10. ^ Johann Böhm: Hitler's vassals of the German ethnic group in Romania before and after 1945. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006
11. ^ Georg Weber, Renate Weber: Zendersch: a Transylvanian community in transition. Delp, 1985, ISBN 3-7689-0222-6 , p. 751, here p. 265.
12. ↑ Wolfgang Miege: The Third Reich and the German minority in Romania 1933-38. Volume 18 of Europäische Hochschulschriften: History and its auxiliary sciences, Europaische Hochschulschriften, Verlag Herbert Lang, 1972, ISBN 3-261-00761-3 , p. 346, here p. 170.
13. ↑ disposal of Prime Minister Armand Călinescu no. 675/10. January 1939
14. ^ Johann Böhm : National Socialist Indoctrination of Germans in Romania 1932-1944. Peter Lang, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-63157-031-7 , p. 90.