Gau Franconia

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Gaue of the German Reich 1944

The Gau Franken was an administrative unit of the NSDAP , from 1928/1929 to 1936 it was called Gau Mittelfranken . The Gauleiter was until 1940 the extreme Nazi Julius Streicher , who in the Nuremberg trials in 1946 as major war criminals sentenced to death has been. In addition, there were the Lower Franconia Gau and the Upper Franconia Gau and Bayreuth Gau .

History and structure

Gaue of the NSDAP 1926, 1928, 1933, 1937, 1939 and 1943

A district of northern Bavaria existed with the center in Coburg . The Nuremberg local group leader since 1921, Julius Streicher, led an independent Nazi district of Nuremberg-Fürth from 1925, which became part of the Middle Franconia district in 1929, and gave himself the title of "Franconian Leader" as early as the 1930s. The short-term Gauleiter in the rest of Middle Franconia, the Ansbach district leader Wilhelm Grimm , became deputy in 1929. In the SA Streicher had the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer . In December 1932 he acted with all his might against the SA leader in Franconia, Wilhelm Stegmann , when he criticized his administration. The brutal "shadow of Streichers" Georg Gradl MdR took over the function of the Gau managing director in Nuremberg in 1928.

In 1933, Ritter von Epp was appointed Reich Governor in the Free State of Bavaria , to whom the six Bavarian Gaue were subordinate at the state level. The Gau Franconia included Middle Franconia from the Upper Franconia administrative region and the Middle Franconian administrative region with a little over 1 million inhabitants. The Gauleiter took on more and more governmental tasks and thus became the real power in the regions.

The Gauleitung sat in Nuremberg, the city of the later Nazi party rallies . A Gauführerschule existed in Ermreuth Castle , where Streicher was a frequent guest. His internal party competitor was the Lord Mayor of Nuremberg (since 1933) Willy Liebel , who always kept his distance from Streicher, on whose personal intervention the dismantling of the Neptune Fountain, which he dubbed the “Jewish Fountain ”, took place in 1934. He forced the demolition of the Nuremberg main synagogue on Hans-Sachs-Platz as early as August 1938, a few months before the Reichspogromnacht . After November 9th and 10th, 1938, when eleven people were murdered in Nuremberg alone, the Gauleitung forced the Jewish owners "to subject property, houses and shops to extortionate conditions in favor of the acquirers still to be named by the Gauleitung representative (10% of value) to sell ”. Jewish property went to Streicher's representative and from there to high party comrades. The violation of the requirement of the removal of Jews from the economy exclusively by state agencies on November 12, 1938 led to a commission of inquiry, which found itself "in a wasp nest of corruption". Streicher enriched himself, who was not entitled to this from the Nazi perspective. The commission supplemented its report with a list of other offenses and anomalies of the Gauleiter, which addressed his greed, his excessive aggressiveness even towards leading party comrades and publicly violent behavior towards women. Streicher was not punished by the highest party court, but removed from all offices by a "Gauleiter Honorary Court" meeting in February 1940. Streicher lived outside of Nuremberg on the Pleikershof estate near Cadolzburg . By order of Hitler, Streicher was allowed to keep the title of "Gauleiter" as well as wear the associated uniform. An early confidante of Julius Streicher's, who was seen by party comrades as the “spiritual leader of the Nuremberg Gau”, was Ludwig Franz Gengler . AEG director and Nuremberg Chamber of Industry and Commerce President Otto Strobl was the regional economic advisor. Gaudozentenbundführer was the Erlangen gynecologist Hans Albrecht Molitoris , who advocated a racial biology institute at the University of Erlangen . As a district culture warden, the Gestapo leader Georg Kiessel ensured anti-Semitic censorship.

From 1925 to 1926 Karl Holz ran the office and in 1926 was the local branch leader as a substitute - while Streicher was in custody. In 1929 he was the local district manager and from that year headed the Gau propaganda division of the Central Franconian NSDAP Gau leadership. From 1927 and 1933 he acted as the responsible editor and then until 1938 as the main editor of the striker .

Appointed Reich Defense Commissioner of Franconia since November 1942 , Holz had been entrusted with the Gauleitung on April 4, 1942. In September 1942 he was promoted to NSDAP command leader and in November 1942 to SA group leader. Hitler did not appoint Holz as Gauleiter of Franconia until November 1944, shortly before the end of the war. In addition, he held the functions of a representative of the general agent for the "work assignment", Fritz Sauckel , and the "total war effort". At the end of the war, Holz also led the Volkssturm in Franconia.

Gauleiter were

  • Wilhelm Grimm (September 2, 1928-1929)
  • Julius Streicher (April 2, 1925/1929 - 1945, on leave from February 16, 1940)
  • District manager Hans Zimmermann (provisional with the management, then with the management of the district in charge of February 16, 1940 - April 4, 1942)
  • Deputy Gauleiter Karl Holz MdR (entrusted with the management of the business. March 19, 1942 - November 1944)
  • Karl Holz (Nov. 1944 - April 20, 1945)

Deputy Gauleiter was (temporarily vacant)

  • Wilhelm Grimm (from 1929)
  • Karl Holz (January 1, 1934 - February 1940; March 19, 1942 - November 1944)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from: Peter Hüttenberger, Die Gauleiter. Study on the change in the power structure in the NSDAP, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 201f.
  2. Administration manual