Fritz Tobias

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Fritz Tobias (born October 3, 1912 in Charlottenburg ; † January 1, 2011 in Hanover ) was a German author and ministerial official. Most recently he was Ministerialrat in the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior , where he belonged to the Lower Saxony Constitutional Protection Department . In the 1960s he became known for his statements about the Reichstag fire .

Life

Tobias grew up in Berlin as the son of a social democratic porcelain painter. In 1926 he moved to Hanover. In the 1920s he completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller. In 1933 he lost his position as an assistant at a social democratic people's bookstore and then worked from 1934 to 1940 as head of the law firm in Hanover . In April 1940 Tobias was called up for military service. He then took part in the Second World War until 1945 , in which he claims to have suffered several wounds, most recently in April 1945 in northern Italy. From various quarters - for example from Harry Schulze-Wilde - the claim was later made that Tobias had belonged to the Secret Field Police during the war , which Tobias dismissed as "fictitious". The judicial complaints he had announced because of "defamatory accusations" were just as unrealistic as the prospect of publication of his military files at the German office.

In 1946 Tobias entered the public service . In the first post-war years he was involved in the denazification in Lower Saxony, among other things . The minority report of the 4th Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry of December 7, 1954 states that in 1946/1947 he was deputy chairman of a main committee for denazification and that in 1947 he came to the Lower Saxony Ministry for denazification as a consultant.

In 1951 Tobias was accepted as a consultant (TO. A III) in the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior. In 1952 he was proposed to the government council on the basis of civil service. However, the State Chancellery initially postponed this appointment due to civil servant concerns, as his previous education did not seem suitable to give him a leading position in a ministry. By 1954 at the latest he was head of an important police department in the ministry. According to Hersch Fischler , Tobias was the speaker responsible for setting up the Lower Saxony intelligence police. After working in various departments, he came "1959 State Protection Lower Saxony ", in Lower Saxony temporarily as the State Office for State Protection was organized and more than Department of the Interior. In the administrative service he was finally promoted to the ministerial council. According to the journalist and former editor of the Spiegel, Peter-Ferdinand Koch , the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) had recommended Tobias to the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior at the end of 1945, because he had interrogated high-ranking SS officers on behalf of the English. The aim of these interrogations was to name competent Nazi intelligence officers for the SIS, as Tobias did with Horst Kopkow, for example .

Tobias became publicly known as the author of the eleven-part series "Stand up, van der Lubbe!" , Which appeared in the Spiegel in 1959/60 . In it and in his 1962 book on the Reichstag fire , Tobias advocated the still controversial thesis that the Dutch anarcho-communist Marinus van der Lubbe was the sole perpetrator in the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933. Tobias u. a. to the statements of the investigative detective and later SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Zirpins as well as own investigations. Tobias' Spiegel series on the Reichstag fire was edited by Paul Karl Schmidt , the former press chief at the Nazi Foreign Ministry . Peter-Ferdinand Koch claims that Tobias established Paul Karl Schmidt's contact with Spiegel .

On his 95th birthday on October 3, 2007, Tobias was honored, among other things, with a large article in the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , which emphasized that Tobias “divides the German historians into two camps” with his single perpetrator thesis. Tobias died on New Year's Day 2011 at the age of 98 in Hanover. “All his life he scolded his adversaries,” wrote Der Tagesspiegel in his obituary.

More recently, the journalist Anton Maegerle has criticized Tobias for having "contacts with right-wing extremist circles", for example having been in contact with the Holocaust denier David Irving . In 1998 he contributed to the commemorative publication “ Risk Truth. Historians in handcuffs? “In honor of Irving and made himself available for an interview with the right-wing extremist Austrian magazine Die Aula in 2007 .

estate

After Tobias' death, his private archive was initially managed by his partner. After this also died in 2013, Tobias 'son agreed, as it became known in July 2013, with the Federal Archives to transfer Tobias' documents to them.

From 2015 to autumn 2017, the Federal Archives organized and systematized Tobias' estate. After sorting out and collecting duplicates and material not worth archiving, such as e.g. For example, newspaper cuttings and material on scientifically uninteresting topics that have been handed down elsewhere have formed a contemporary history collection with 723 file units, which has been available for use in the Federal Archives since 2018 as Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung 163 (Zsg 163).

In July 2019, a copy of an affidavit by SA man Martin Lennings was found in Tobias' estate , which seems to refute the thesis of the individual perpetrator in the Reichstag fire. According to the editorial network Germany , Tobias ignored this document in order not to endanger his theory of individual perpetrators and thus to protect the careers of former Nazis.

Private

Tobias was married and had a son. After the death of his wife, he lived with the widow of the journalist Hans-Jürgen Wiehe in the last years of his life . In 2002 he left the SPD.

Fonts

Article series
Monographs
Essays
  • The alleged "positive proof" of the Nazi arson through the "scientific documentation", Volume 2. In: Uwe Backes , Karl-Heinz Janßen , Eckhard Jesse , Henning Koehler , Hans Mommsen , Fritz Tobias: Reichstag fire - clearing up a historical legend . Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-03027-0 , pp. 115-166.
  • Counterfeits also have long legs. The Senate President Rauschning's "Talks with Hitler". In: Karl Corino (Ed.): Forged! Fraud in politics, literature, science, art and music . Greno, Nördlingen 1988, pp. 91-105.
  • Ludendorff, Hindenburg, Hitler. The fantasy product of the Ludendorff letter of January 30, 1933. In: Uwe Backes, Eckhard Jesse, Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The shadows of the past. Impulses for the historicization of National Socialism . Propylaeen, Frankfurt am Main 1990, pp. 319-343.

literature

  • Alexander Bahar , Wilfried Kugel : “Who is Fritz Tobias?” In: Dies .: The Reichstag fire. How history is made. edition q, Berlin 2001, pp. 778-785.
  • Leonhard Schlueter: The big agitation. Lower Saxony's ministerial fall. A factual report on the Schlueter case. 1958, p. 143.
  • Klaus Wallbaum: The old man and the big fire. Fritz Tobias will be 95 years old on Wednesday - someone who divides the historians into two camps. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , October 2, 2007.
  • Heinrich Zankl : Political Fire. Historians' dispute over the Reichstag fire. In: Heinrich Zankl: Fighting cocks of science. Controversy and enmity. Wiley-VCH-Verlag, Weinheim 2012, ISBN 978-3-527-32865-9 , pp. 257-265.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A fire in the Reichstag and a perpetrator from Holland . In: FAZ , January 7, 2011, p. 34.
  2. ^ The Month , July 1962, Issue 166, p. 90.
  3. ^ The Month , October 1962, Issue 169, p. 90.
  4. ↑ Hersch Fischler: News on the Reichstag fire controversy. In: Dieter Deiseroth (ed.): The Reichstag fire and the trial before the Reichsgericht . Tischler, Berlin 2006, p. 115.
  5. ↑ Christian Bartels: Search for Truth. The troublemaker . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 31, 2010.
  6. ↑ a b Peter-Ferdinand Koch: Unmasked - double agents. Names, facts, evidence . Ecowin Publishing House. Salzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7110-0008-8 , p. 219.
  7. ↑ First episode: "Get up, van der Lubbe!" The Reichstag fire in 1933 - the story of a legend . In: Der Spiegel 43, October 21, 1959, pp. 45-60.
  8. ^ A b Anton Maegerle : From Obersalzberg to NSU. The extreme right and the political culture of the Federal Republic 1988–2013. Nazi glorification, racist murders of migrants, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial . Edition Critic, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-981-45486-4 , pp. 304ff.
  9. ^ Christian Plöger: From Ribbentrop to Springer. On the life and work of Paul Karl Schmidt alias Paul Carell. Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-82882-136-1 , pp. 322–336 (also Diss. Phil. University of Münster 2009); Wigbert Benz: Paul Carell. Ribbentrop's press chief Paul Karl Schmidt before and after 1945. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-86573068-X , pp. 69–75.
  10. ↑ Klaus Wallbaum: The old man and the big fire. Fritz Tobias will be 95 years old on Wednesday - someone who divides the historians into two camps . In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , October 2, 2007.
  11. ↑ The arguable Reichstag fire researcher. On the death of Fritz Tobias . In: Der Tagesspiegel Online , January 8, 2011 (obituary).
  12. ↑ Who was the real arsonist ?, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, July 26, 2019, pp. 2–3. With the four-page affidavit from Lennings
  13. ^ N-tv : Declaration discovered by SA man. Were Nazis involved in the Reichstag fire?
  14. ↑ : Deutschlandfunk : The “legend” of the individual perpetrator wobbles considerably
  15. ^ Kölner Stadtanzeiger : Reichstag fire statement by SA man suggests Nazi involvement . He has therefore pushed the explanation aside in order to maintain his sole perpetrator thesis
personal data
SURNAME Tobias, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Ministerialrat and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2011
Place of death Hanover