Fritz Fries (politician)

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Carl Friedrich Fries , called Fritz Fries (born March 3, 1887 in Siegen , † May 25, 1967 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen ), was a German entrepreneur and social democrat. He sat in the Prussian state parliament and was the district president in Arnsberg.

Imperial times and Weimar

Born as the son of a carter in Siegen, Fritz Fries remained connected to his hometown throughout his life. Fries completed commercial training as a draftsman, locksmith , plumber and fitter . He then attended a training school and a state technical school. From 1905 to 1911 he was a freelance draftsman and later a fitter for the company "Apparate- und Konstruktionsbau Siegen". From 1911 to 1914 he was foreman and since 1914 operations manager for a branch in Attendorn .

Since 1912 Fries was a member of the German Werkmeister Association and in 1916 joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany . It is noteworthy that he joined social democracy against a Christian background ( Salvation Army ).

During the First World War , Fries was a soldier and in November 1918 became spokesman for the soldiers' council in Siegen (to be distinguished from the Siegen workers' and soldiers' council). From 1920 to 1923 Fries was the full-time managing director of the German Association of Workers' Masters for South Westphalia and parts of the Rhine Province . He was also a representative of the association at the federal headquarters of the General German Association of Civil Servants and a member of the arbitration committee of the Reich Ministry of Labor .

From 1924 to 1933 Fries was full-time party secretary of the SPD sub-district Siegen-Olpe-Wittgenstein. In the years 1920/21 and 1927 to 1933 he was a member of the executive committee of the SPD district of Western Westphalia. He was also chairman and partner of the publishing house of the social democratic Siegener Volkszeitung . Between 1924 and 1933 he was district leader of the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold and chairman of the regional Iron Front .

From 1919 to 1933 Fries was a city ​​councilor in Siegen, from 1919 to 1920 a member of the constituent Prussian state assembly and then until 1933 a member of the Prussian state parliament . Along with Fritz Fränken and Walter Krämer, he was one of three members of the Weimar state parliament of the political left who were active in the Siegerland. He was also one of three members of the Association of Religious Socialists of Germany (BRSD) in the Prussian state parliament. In Prussia, left-wing socialists dominated the BRSD, Fries belonged to the minority. In 1933 he was a member of the Provincial Parliament of the Province of Westphalia .

Fries stood for a conservative direction within the SPD. In the dispute over the construction of new armored cruisers (“children's feed instead of armored cruiser”) in 1928 the SPD, KPD and the left-liberal DDP faced the Reichswehr and all parties to the right of the DDP as well as a minority of the Social Democrats. Fries considered himself to be one of these. He was of the opinion that the popular initiative to build armored cruisers had been subverted by communists. He also rejected the German Peace Society because of “demagogic showmanship” and as anti-social-democratic. She is an opponent like the KPD. Within the League of Religious Socialists with its numerous left-wing socialists, he was their antipode, warning the federal government to be “unfriendly” towards the SPD (as in the question of the construction of the armored cruiser). Communists viewed Fries as "mortal enemies," a qualification that has not been passed down to other parties.

It will have to remain open whether or to what extent the Christianity of his political conception was primarily determined by the hope for political advantage, as assumed in the literature: It was “clear to him that in the Siegerland with atheistic speeches that in other regions shaped the agitation that nothing to be gained ”had been. A religiously toned appearance was appropriate here.

National Socialism

After the regional transfer of power to the National Socialists, Lord Mayor Alfred Fissmer , a supporting member of the SS , had his opponent Fries arrested on April 7, 1933, because he had insulted the Siegen SA and SS. Fries did not deny that the SA and SS had been insulted, but that he himself was involved. He asked unsuccessfully to be released because of his military awards and poor health. He was then imprisoned in Siegburg for six weeks and, after intervention by the district inspector Walter Heringlake , a Siegener with whom he was personally well known, released. He had been working as an independent master craftsman since 1933. In 1939 he was placed in the UK and commissioned by the National Socialist Lord Mayor, who had him arrested, with extensive installation contracts for seven large bunkers and two hospital bunkers. After July 20, 1944, he was appointed "Bunker Commissioner" for the city of Siegen. According to his own statements, he owed this function, which made him unassailable, to several old party comrades who stood up for him, including the district leader and the National Socialist Lord Mayor. The former district inspector, who had already stood up for him in 1933, had "helped him on business [...] wherever he could", Fries later announced in the denazification process of the district inspector.

Fries' biography in National Socialism accompanies unresolved issues. So it was said

  • there had been an intention - as to the originator and content not specified - to have Fries "shot while fleeing" after his release from Siegburg. In 1949, for example, the chief defendant in the "SA Trial" was the leader of a notorious Siegerland SA thugs detachment ("Rollkommando Odendahl"). He then made sure that Fries was "spared". He did not provide any evidence for the validity of the overt protection claim. It still doesn't exist today.
  • Fries worked with the Gestapo. In fact, he had been in constant contact with the Siegen branch of the Dortmund Gestapo . He himself had declared that he was under guard. In a proceeding before the district court of Siegen , the allegation of cooperation was rejected and one of its distributors was convicted of defamation. Meanwhile in 1949 the Gestapo officer Wilhelm Bültmann, who was responsible for Fries after an end- stage crime (shooting of a forced laborer) and who were regular interlocutors, turned to him in confidence during the summons to discuss the possibilities of a return to the old identity and the prospects for the trial.

After the end of National Socialism

In April 1945 the US military government appointed Fries district administrator for the district of Siegen . A little later he was briefly (until the end of May 1945) appointed Lord Mayor of Siegen by the subsequent British military government . As such, he was involved in the establishment of the Westphalian District Council.

From June 1, 1945 to July 31, 1949, Fries was the first president of the Arnsberg administrative district after the end of the Nazi regime. He played a key role in the reconstruction of administration, traffic and other areas. Among other things, he dealt with the integration of war invalids , expellees and returnees . He also dealt with the problems of denazification . In 1945 he was briefly chairman of the supervisory board of Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen . In 1949 he was also a member of the first Federal Assembly that elected Theodor Heuss as Federal President .

Always striving for a popular Siegerland tone, he kept his distance to the outside world from the British military as well as from immigrants from the east. In a keynote speech in 1946 he lamented the loss of “the much-vaunted German pride” among women who got involved in relationships with members of the occupation forces. You should be wondering how deep they went. He warned her and the Siegerland partners of migrants from the east of syphilis , which had already become a "popular epidemic" on the way from the east. In general, there is a risk that immigrants from the Soviet occupation zone , Austria and the Eastern European countries will bring in epidemics.

At the same time, in his description of the transition to the situation after the collapse of the Nazi regime, he emphasized how much the regional population "expected and welcomed the appearance of the occupation troops as a liberating act" "far into active Nazi circles", a reading that is very different from the reality of the final phase.

On March 22, 1950, Hubert Biernat replaced Fries as regional president in Arnsberg, who was now primarily managing director of his company, Fritz Fries KG. However, he remained a member of the supervisory board of Stahlwerke Südwestfalen (previously: Hüttenwerke Geisweid).

On March 3, 1957, Hubert Biernat Fries, who had meanwhile risen to the position of Minister of the Interior of North Rhine-Westphalia, awarded Fries the Great Cross of Merit . The laudation was given by the Siegerland entrepreneur Bernhard Weiss , nephew of Friedrich Flick , who is known far beyond the region and who was sentenced in 1947 for slave labor and deportation to slave labor in the Nuremberg case V / "Flick Trial" and president of the Siegen Chamber of Commerce.

literature

  • Manfred Zabel : Fritz Fries - a religious socialist from Siegen . In: Bernd Faulenbach et al. (Hrsg.): Social democracy in change. The district of Western Westphalia 1893–2001. Essen 2001, p. 180 f.
  • Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries. Siegen 1990, ISBN 3-923483-03-1 .
  • Bernd Haunfelder : North Rhine-Westphalia. Country and people. A biographical manual. Düsseldorf 2006, p. 158 f.
  • Alfred Bruns (Ed.), Josef Häming (compilation): The Members of the Westphalia Parliament 1826–1978 (= Westphalian source and archive directories, Volume 2). Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, Münster 1978, p. 277.
  • Karin Jaspers / Wilfried Reinighaus: Westphalian-Lippian candidates in the January elections in 1919. A biographical documentation , Münster: Aschendorff 2020 (Publications of the Historical Commission for Westphalia - New Series; 52), ISBN 9783402151365 , pp. 73f.

Web links

  • Literature by and about Fritz Fries in the catalog of the German National Library
  • Regional personal lexicon on National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein, personal article Fritz Fries, see: [1]
  • Contradiction and resistance. Opposition to National Socialism in the old districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein, personal article Fritz Fries, see: [2]

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Temporary sub-district secretary of the KPD was still Rudolf Hennig , member of the Reichstag (1930–1933): Communism in Siegerland, Siegener Zeitung, April 5, 1933.
  2. Ulrich Peter: The activation of Protestant lay people in the religious-socialist movement (BRSD). In: Traugott Jähnichen , Norbert Friedrich (ed.) With the collaboration of Christian Illian, Susanne Schatz and Dietmar Wiegand: Protestantism and social question. Profiles in the time of the Weimar Republic (= Bochum Forum for the History of Social Protestantism, Vol. 1), Münster et al. 2000, pp. 230–241, here: p. 232.
  3. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, p. 70.
  4. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, p. 69 f. [there letter to Erwin Eckert ]
  5. Ulrich Peter: Christ Cross and Red Flag. The union of religious socialists in Westphalia and Lippe during the Weimar Republic (= contributions to the Westphalian church history. Volume 24). Bielefeld 2002, p. 40.
  6. Dieter Pfau (Ed.): End of the war in Siegen in 1945. Documentation of the exhibition 2005 (= Siegen contributions. Studies on regional history. Volume 2). Bielefeld 2005, p. 188.
  7. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967) Siegen 1990, pp. 71 f., 150.
  8. a b Ulrich Friedrich Opfermann: "With clinking windows and hooting". Jews and the national community in Siegerland and Wittgenstein in the 19th and 20th centuries. Siegen 2009, p. 135.
  9. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, pp. 137, 150.
  10. ^ For the leader of the Richard Odendahl group see: Regionales Personenlexikon. Article Richard Odendahl .
  11. 10 years in prison for Odendahl. Fries was to be "shot while trying to escape". In: Westfälische Rundschau. March 20, 1948; Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, p. 71.
  12. There is no true word in the rumors. In: Westfälische Rundschau. October 12, 1946; Sentenced for defamation. In: Westfalenpost. October 15, 1946.
  13. For Bültmann see: Regionales Personenlexikon. Article Wilhelm Bültmann .
  14. ^ Ulrich Opfermann: Home, Strangers. “Foreign deployment” in Siegerland, 1939 to 1945: how it happened and what preceded it. Siegen 1991, p. 147.
  15. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, p. 9 ff.
  16. VEW AG (Ed.): More than energy. The company history of VEW 1925–2000. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 978-3-88474-890-9 , p. 391.
  17. Fries, Fritz . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Faber to Fyrnys] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 331 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 253 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
  18. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, p. 90 f .; Ulrich Opfermann: Home, Strangers. “Foreign deployment” in Siegerland, 1939 to 1945: how it happened and what preceded it. Siegen 1991, p. 134.
  19. Dieter Pfau (Ed.): End of the war in Siegen in 1945. Documentation of the exhibition 2005 (= Siegen contributions. Studies on regional history. Volume 2). Bielefeld 2005, p. 189.
  20. Dieter Pfau (Ed.): End of the war in Siegen in 1945. Documentation of the exhibition 2005 (= Siegen contributions. Studies on regional history. Volume 2). Bielefeld 2005, p. 168f .; Ulrich Friedrich Opfermann: Berleburg under National Socialism. In: Rikarde Riedesel, Johannes Burkardt, Ulf Lückel (eds.): Bad Berleburg - The history of the city. Bad Berleburg 2009, pp. 215–246, here: p. 237 f. [Overall representation of the Wittgenstein sub-region]
  21. Manfred Zabel: The native language of enthusiasm. Selected speeches and writings by Fritz Fries (1887–1967). Siegen 1990, pp. 71 f., 151.
  22. Awarded by the Federal President on February 25, 1957, information from the Federal President's Office
  23. U. a. because of events within SIEMAG ( Dahlbruch ).
predecessor Office successor
Lothar Eickhoff District President of the Arnsberg District
1945 - 1949
Hubert Biernat
Alfred Fissmer Mayor of Siegen
1945
Otto Schwarz
Heinrich Jansen District Administrator of the Siegen District
1945
Otto Schwarz