Fritz H. Schnitzer

Fritz H. Schnitzer (born September 8, 1875 in Mannheim , † December 24, 1945 in Wedel ) was a German coffee wholesaler based in Rotterdam and served as a German secret service officer during the First World War. During the First World War he headed the Gazette des Ardennes , a French-language newspaper published by the German military government for northern France.

Life

Fritz Schnitzer came from a family of merchants and also chose the merchant profession for himself. In 1901 he founded together with his very close brother Ludwig, during the First World War as captain d. R. Intelligence officer at the Antwerp War Intelligence Unit, a coffee wholesaler based in Rotterdam. Fritz Schnitzer spent a lot of time in Le Havre through business contacts , so he spoke French well. But he also learned Dutch fluently. After his one-year volunteer service in 1894/95, he gradually moved up on November 20, 1913 to the rank of Rittmeister of the Reserve in the 1st Grand Ducal Hessian Guard Dragoon Regiment No. 23 based in Darmstadt. Rittmeister Schnitzer worked as an informant for the German military secret service for the interests of the army and navy abroad from around 1900 for patriotic motives.

During the First World War, Fritz Schnitzer was active in the military intelligence service IIIb in the "Great Headquarters" and was editor of the Gazette des Ardennes in Section 6 from 1914 to 1918 (see below). After the war he returned to Rotterdam, where he married a Dutch woman. In 1928 the family moved to The Hague , and in 1936 to Hamburg , where he founded a branch of his company. From 1941 he lived again in Rotterdam, where he still traded in coffee. During the Second World War he was a major in the reserve.

Head of the Gazette des Ardennes

The neutrality of this article or section is disputed. A reason is given on the discussion page . You can get more information here .

Schnitzer was a staunch monarchist. For him it was clear that with the First World War Germany was waging a legitimate defensive war against a world of enemies. With his Gazette des Ardennes , Schnitzer wanted to counteract the opposing press lies, just spread facts and convey the German worldview to French-speaking readers. The tone of the newspaper appeared serious and factual, but under its editor-in-chief René Prévot it deliberately accommodated French reading habits (newspaper format, illustrated supplements). In the Gazette des Ardennes , French and Belgians were employed in a remarkably wide range of editorial and technical areas (proofreading, printing, packaging), while the editor-in-chief was in the hands of the French-born Alsatian Dr. Rene Prevot was lying. The newspaper found circulation first in the occupied territories of France and Belgium (Wallonia), in Switzerland and in neutral European countries up to Italy and Greece. However, the newspaper also reached France in various ways (balloons, aircraft dropping, smuggling in via western Switzerland) and had considerable domestic political effects here, e. B. during the trial against the magazine Bonnet Rouge in 1917 and at the trial against the former French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux. At times, almost all French members of parliament even received the newspaper through Swiss middlemen of the German secret service. Because of the rigid French censorship regulations and the family news from the German-occupied territories printed in the newspaper, as well as the detailed lists of French prisoners in German camps, the newspaper was widely read in France. The daily circulation was around 175,000 copies towards the end of the war, although the newspaper, which is very unusual for a propaganda sheet, was financially self-supporting. The French employees of the newspaper were severely persecuted after the end of the war and they were sentenced to long imprisonment and three death sentences, one of which was carried out. Probably because of this, in a trial against Gazette collaborators in 1919 , print shop workers testified that they had been beaten by carvers and made to work.

The Gazette des Ardennes , which Schnitzer directed during almost the entire First World War, played an essential role in German propaganda. According to his published diaries, Schnitzer often met with the German Kaiser, the German Crown Prince as well as leading military, politicians and German editors-in-chief as well as the foreign military attaches in Germany and foreign delegations. Schnitzer reports on conversations with the emperor and the crown prince . In addition to working for the newspaper, Schnitzer wrote propaganda leaflets, took care of the supply of the population of occupied Belgium through American aid organizations and also performed secret service tasks that he only hinted at in his diary. This was mainly about censorship, but also counterintelligence and the analysis of agent reports. From June to October 1917 Schnitzer was deployed at his own request as squadron leader of the 2nd squadron of the Jäger Regiment on Horseback No. 2 on the Eastern Front in the Baltic States and he took part in the development of the Baltic Illustrated Newspaper in 1918 because of his local knowledge he had gained locally and the Maliit newspaper in Estonian. At times from 1915 onwards in Germany it was even considered to publish a counterpart to the Gazette des Ardennes in Russian, in which Rittmeister Schnitzer should be involved because of his experience in this regard. In 1918, Rittmeister Schnitzer also traveled to Switzerland to influence the Swiss press and met the authoritative journalist Hermann Stegemann here . Up until a few months before the end of the war, Rittmeister Schnitzer firmly believed in the German victory, then more and more doubts became apparent. According to his diaries, he saw the causes of the German defeat in the outdated prerogatives of the nobility, and he angrily regarded the German diplomats as the "clique of the greatest failures and the most haughty representatives and the worst representatives of Germany". Rittmeister Schnitzer was a keen and enthusiastic rider and as a cavalry officer, as evidenced by his diaries, he was representative of a knightly officer type. He was sociable and comradely and therefore had an extensive circle of acquaintances among the military, officials at court, civil servants, artists, writers and journalists.

literature

• Jürgen W. Schmidt, Bernd Schnitzer (Hrsg.): Everyday military life and press work in the great headquarters of Wilhelm II. - The Gazette des Ardennes. The war diaries of Rittmeister Fritz H. Schnitzer (September 22, 1914 - April 22, 1916). Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-89574-850-9 .
• Andreas Laska: Presse et propagande allemandes en France occupée: des Moniteurs officiels (1870–1871) à la Gazette des Ardennes (1914–1918) et à la Pariser Zeitung (1940–1944). Herbert Utz, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8316-0293-X . (Biography on p. 407)
• Rainer Pöppinghege: German propaganda abroad 1914–1918: The “Gazette des Ardennes” and its editor-in-chief Fritz H. Schnitzer. In: Francia . Vol. 31, No. 3, 2004, pp. 49-64.
• The diary (11 volumes and appendices) kept by Fritz H. Schnitzer from September 22, 1914 to November 21, 1918 is owned by the family.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Laska: Presse et propagande allemandes en France occupée ... 2003, p. 137.
2. ↑ Pöppinghege: German Foreign Propaganda ... 2004, pp. 51 and 60.
3. ↑ Pöppinghege: German Foreign Propaganda ... 2004, p. 51.
4. ↑ JW Schmidt, B. Schnitzer: Military everyday life and press work ... 2014, p. 11