Fritz Wertheimer

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Fritz Wertheimer (born September 12, 1884 in Bruchsal ; † September 6, 1968 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German journalist and general secretary of the German Foreign Institute from 1918 to 1933.

Life

Beginnings

Fritz Wertheimer came from a merchant family. After attending high school in Bruchsal, he studied economics at the universities of Heidelberg , Berlin and Freiburg , and law at the University of Munich . He was awarded Dr. rer. pole. PhD . In Freiburg he was a fellow student of Elly Knapp . In Friedrich Naumann's magazine Die Hilfe he met Theodor Heuss . He joined the editorial staff of the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1907 and, as its correspondent, made two long study trips to Japan, Korea and China in 1908 and 1912.

War correspondent

During the First World War , Wertheimer was accredited as a war correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung at Hindenburg's headquarters and wrote front reports from which he published eight war books. So he wrote on May 16, 1915 in the Frankfurter Zeitung in the article Bei der Deutschen Südarmee from the advance near Zwinin about "Special days of the German Southern Army, as the history of war only few know." in the history of war one day. ”Wertheimer later emphasized that he had proven his German, national sentiments from the start.

Germanness

On October 1, 1918, Wertheimer was appointed General Secretary of the German Foreign Institute (DAI), founded in Stuttgart in 1917, by Theodor Wanner . In this function he was also the editor of the magazine “Der Auslandsdeutsche. Half-monthly publication for Germans abroad and foreign customers ”, for which he wrote various articles.

In his book about the "parties and party leaders of the Germans Abroad", he described their activities programmatically as mediating activities in safeguarding the interests of their countries , which corresponded to the official program of the DAI. That the interests of the other countries had to be subordinate to the hegemony of the most populous state in Central Europe was the unofficial line of German politics advocated by Wanner and Wertheimer.

As royal Swedish consul general, Wanner mediated an office for Wertheimer as consul of the United Mexican States for the people's state of Württemberg .

Wertheimer became a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP).

Pre-war period under National Socialism

The headquarters of the DAI on Stuttgart's Charlottenplatz since 1925, until 1945 the House of Germanism , was flagged with swastika flags on March 7, 1933.

On March 8, 1933, Wertheimer was prevented from entering the workplace because of his Jewish descent by the SA guard that had been posted in front of the Haus des Deutschtums the day before . In the ten days that followed, Wertheimer was on a planned lecture tour during which he spoke routinely about Germanness , this time in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel to admirals of the Reichsmarine . During this time, his mentor Theodor Wanner was attacked in his apartment on March 13, 1933 and suffered a concussion. Wertheimer was forced to take a vacation after his return.

The Reich Foreign Ministry under Konstantin von Neurath and the Reich Ministry of the Interior , from whose house most of the DAI's funding came, commissioned the Austrian National Socialist Hans Steinacher , chairman of the Association for Germanness Abroad (VDA) since April 1933 , and the National Socialist chairman of the Schutzbund in mid-June for the border and foreign Germans Robert Ernst to reorganize the DAI with a small reorganization committee. Some of the DAI employees were intimidated by the threat of layoffs, while the National Socialists were banking on Germany's “renewal” . Wanner was urged to resign on June 20, Wertheimer's name was no longer mentioned, Ernst reported to the Württemberg Prime Minister Christian Mergenthaler on June 21, 1933 the successful, provisional transfer of the institute's management to Steinacher, Ernst and a "Dr. Krehl". Wertheimer's successor was Richard Csaki as managing director, the National Socialist Lord Mayor Strölin succeeded Wanner as chairman and made Stuttgart the “City of Germans Abroad” .

Meanwhile, among others, had Theodor Heuss the Reichstag in Berlin on March 23 for the " Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and Reich opened" (Legislative) voted and the way to legalize the terror and in 1933 with the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , the To drive Jews out of public places.

On March 30, 1933, Wertheimer sent a personal letter to Legation Councilor Conrad Frederick Roediger , with whom he had worked for years in the State Department. Wanner, too, tried to mobilize his friends in Berlin such as Foreign Minister Neurath and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen . Wilhelm Solf no longer had any influence . Wertheimer received no support from Friedrich Stieve , head of the cultural policy department of the Foreign Office , and the State Secretary Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow , who was praised for his Prussian sense of duty , stayed out. The chairman of the supervisory board of HAPAG Emil Helfferich , "who I know is close to Hitler, wanted to stand up for me in Berlin". The Rotarians , whose co-founder Wertheimer was in Stuttgart, dropped him and forced him to resign.

In his personal letter, Wertheimer proceeded from the Prussian maxim , "Better to die decently than to be looked at wrong," and therefore refrained from going to Berlin to camp there .
Wertheimer pointed out that a number of Stuttgart National Socialists, especially Karl Strölin , appreciated his national work such as "Gesinnung" and even his understanding of the NSDAP and Nazi ideology and only objected to his racial Semitic descent .
Wertheimer noted that he was “not at all of the Mosaic faith”, that his wife came from “an old Protestant family”, that “my children were all baptized Protestants, etc.”.

Conrad Frederick Roediger summed up in a memo on June 15, 1933 , "It has turned out that, despite the great merits, [...], managing director Wertheimer is unthinkable", and put the confidential letter in the file as an attachment . Conrad Frederick Roediger was appointed constitutional judge in the Federal Republic of Germany by Federal President Theodor Heuss on September 7, 1951 .

Wertheimer stayed in Stuttgart as a "freelance" journalist, but had to sell his valuable collection of East Asian art treasures in order to live.

Emigration to Brazil

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II , he and his wife moved to Porto Alegre in Brazil to live with their son Hans Stefan, who had already emigrated . He tried to survive with smaller journalistic assignments for the Swiss newspapers Berner Bund and St. Galler Tagblatt and, after the war, as a Latin America correspondent for the German business newspaper Handelsblatt and the VWD . In the fifties Wertheimer had to litigate for the reparation of the expropriations (Reich flight tax) and for his pension claims in Germany.

In 1958 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from Federal President Theodor Heuss . Wertheimer did not enter the Institute for Foreign Relations , which was renamed after 1945 .

Wertheimer died during a stay in Germany in the Freiburg University Clinic .

progeny

Wertheimer's son Hans Stefan Wertheimer, born in 1915, is a journalist and writer.

Fonts

  • Japanese colonial policy - Hamburg, Friedrichsen 1910.
  • German achievements and German tasks in China - Berlin, Springer 1913.
  • Germany and East Asia Stuttgart German Publishing House 1914.
  • From the Vistula to the Dniester. New war reports. 2nd edition - Berlin, Deutsche Verlags-Anst. 1915.
  • In the Polish winter campaign with the Mackensen Army , with 40 photographs by Ludwig Putz, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anst. 1915.
  • From the Vistula to the Dniester , Stuttgart: Deutsche Verl.-Anst., 1915
  • Journey through Kurland , Frankfurt: Frankfurter Zeitung, 1915–1916
  • Courland and the Daugava Front , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt 1916.
  • Hindenburg's Wall in the East , Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 1916.
  • The heroes of Postawy , Frankfurt a. M.: Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, 1916
  • Through Ukraine and Krim , Stuttgart, Franckh 1918 ( digital copy from the holdings of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research ).
  • Chinese contrasts , Voskamp, ​​Carl J. - Berlin: Buchh. d. Berlin Evangelical Mission Society, 1924
  • Germany, the minorities and the League of Nations , Berlin, Heymann 1926.
  • From German parties and party leaders abroad , Berlin, Zentral-Verlag 1927; 1930
  • Auslandsdeutschtum und Deutschtumsppolitik , in: Bernhard Harms (Ed.). People and empire of the Germans . Berlin, 1929. pp. 207-227 DNB
  • Canadisches Deutschtum , in: Die Neue Zeit , 13, No. 16 (1931), p. 10 ff.

literature

  • Hans Stefan Wertheimer: Lumpazivabundus Himmelreich , Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations IfA, Stuttgart 2007, in it Kurt-Jürgen Maaß , foreword with a short biography on Fritz Wertheimer online (PDF; 39 kB)
  • Ernst Ritter: The German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart 1917 - 1945. An example of German nationality work between the world wars , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1976 ISBN 3-515-02361-5
  • Hans-Adolf Jacobsen Ed .: Hans Steinacher, Federal Director of the VDA 1933 - 1937. Memories and documents . Series: Schriften des Bundesarchivs, Vol. 19. Boldt, Boppard 1970 ISBN 3-764-61545-1
  • Matthias Lienert: On the history of the German Foreign Institute DAI in the period from 1917 to 1933. A study on the “German politics” in the Weimar Republic , Diss. Phil. Humboldt University of Berlin 1989

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The German Abroad. Stuttgart 1919-1938 DNB
  2. ↑ Wertheimer, On the organization of the emigration system , in: Der Auslandsdeutsche. Vol. 4, 1921, March - H. 1, No. 5
  3. ↑ Wanner's assassins were never prosecuted, see: Ritter, Das Deutsche Ausland-Institut , p. 55
  4. ^ Document in Jacobsen, Hans Steinacher , p. 100
  5. ^ Document in Jacobsen, Hans Steinacher , pp. 98-100
  6. ^ Document in Jacobsen, Hans Steinacher , pp. 95–98
  7. ^ Ritter, The German Foreign Institute , p. 149
  8. ^ Hans Stefan Wertheimer DNB
personal data
SURNAME Wertheimer, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Bruchsal
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1968
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau