Gerhard von Prosch

Carl Ernst Wilhelm Erdmann Gerhard von Prosch (born January 30, 1895 in Obersohland , † July 16, 1937 in Istanbul ) was a German paramilitary activist and SA leader.

Live and act

Youth and First World War

After attending school, Prosch registered as a volunteer with the Saxon Army in October 1914, shortly after the beginning of the First World War , and joined the army as a flag junior . After he came to the front in February 1915, he served as a non- commissioned officer , platoon and company commander and as an orderly officer . In 1917 Prosch, who had been promoted to lieutenant in September 1915 , signed up for the air force, with whom he stayed until the end of the war. For his achievements as a pilot and as a survivor of a kill, Prosch was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes.

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, Prosch was initially a regimental adjutant before he joined the Saxon State Police as a lieutenant and was transferred to Dresden . Due to his activities in illegal formations and the smuggling of irregular combatants to Upper Silesia , where border fighting was raging at the time , with his support, the Saxon state parliament held hearings on the Prosch matter, which it took as an opportunity to serve with the Saxon police to acknowledge. Instead he went to Munich , where he made himself available to Franz von Epp , one of the leading representatives of the parliamentary right in southern Germany. Epp introduced Prosch to his adjutant Ernst Röhm and also got him a job with the Bavarian State Police , to which he was reassigned in February 1922, with the rank of lieutenant. After working as a trainer for police trainees in Fürth , Prosch was transferred to Munich in December 1922, where he took on duties as a police intelligence officer.

At that time Prosch met Hermann Göring , Adolf Hühnlein and, last but not least, Adolf Hitler in Munich . For this he trained the so-called shock troop Adolf Hitler , a forerunner of the later SS , in the spring of 1923 , which he also led at the lift of the Völkische Associations on Munich's Oberwiesenfeld on May 1, 1923. On the occasion of an attack by political opponents in September 1923, Prosch, who had since been promoted to lieutenant in the state police, suffered a fractured skull, which meant that he had to spend six weeks in the Nymphenburg military hospital.

On November 8, 1923, Prosch was called to Munich to take part in an appeal by the national military associations in the Bürgerbräukeller . When this led to the call for a violent overthrow, Prosch made himself available to the leaders of the company known as the Hitler Putsch while still in the Bürgerbräukeller . In the context of the putsch, Prosch did some assignments for Göring before he was arrested on his way back to Nymphenburg shortly before the collapse of the coup d'état: He was first placed in custody in Stadelheim prison and then as a protective prisoner in Landsberg prison before he left in February 1924 was released.

In the so-called Little Hitler Putsch Trial , Prosch was finally sentenced on April 16, 1924 by the Munich I People's Court for aiding and abetting high treason to one year and three months imprisonment and a fine of 100 gold marks . Since the prison sentence was suspended, Prosch did not have to serve it. Instead, he took part in the development of the defense organization Frontbann founded by Röhm , which is why he was briefly detained again.

At the end of 1924 Prosch, who had now "had enough of sitting [...]" emigrated to Turkey , where he worked in railway construction. From Turkey he kept in constant contact with Germany: Among other things, he was in correspondence with Elsa Bruckmann and Röhm, with whom he had been on the go since 1923.

time of the nationalsocialism

A few months after the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Prosch was appointed to the Supreme SA leadership (OSAF) by Röhm in June 1933 , and he personally picked him up by plane in Turkey for this purpose.

In the OSAF, Prosch received the function of a Sturmbannführer for special use when he took up his service on July 1, 1933. After taking on tasks in the adjutant's office for a while, he was transferred to the Reichsführer -School and then entrusted with a command in Dortmund . In the autumn of 1933 he was also retrospectively retired captain of the state police. D. promoted. At Röhm's instigation, Prosch was also accepted into the NSDAP.

Since March 1934, Prosch was due to illness - he had problems with the climate in Dortmund - in Mittenwald . When the news of an alleged attempted coup by Röhm against the Reich government reached him on June 30, 1934, he traveled to Munich to get an idea of ​​the situation on site. In Munich, where the alleged Röhm putsch turned out to be a wave of political cleansing by the Reich government directed against the SA and other forces, Prosch was taken into protective custody on July 2 . As the subsequent investigations revealed that Prosch, who stated that he was bisexual , had had homosexual relationships with several adolescents with Röhm after his return from Turkey, he was married in autumn 1934 with three others, including Karl Leon Du Moulin -Eckart , charged with same-sex fornication and pimp before a Munich lay judge. At the end of the trial, he was sentenced to eight months in prison. Prosch had already been expelled from the NSDAP in September 1934 by Rudolf Hess .

Archival tradition

• Institute for Contemporary History: Gm 07.95: Proceedings against a defendant for pimp and unnatural fornication before the Munich lay judge's court on September 13, 1934 (vii 3343-53 / 34 Munich I) (Investigation report of the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office 1 Js Gen 1ff / 49 of January 28, 1952 ).
• State Archives Munich: Police Directorate (PD) 15540: Police files on Prosch

literature

• John Dornberg: Munich 1923. The Story of Hitler's first Grab for Power , 1982.
• Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the postage aristocratic houses 1907. First year, p.620

Individual evidence

1. ^ Adalbert Brauer: The Upper Lusatian canvas dealer family Christoph von Linnenfeld and his relatives (continuation and conclusion) . In: Johann Christoph Gatterer, the founder of scientific genealogy . In: Archives for kin research and all related areas with practical research assistance . 39th year, issue 51 (1973), CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1973, p. 197.