Gerhard of Tevenar

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Gerhard von Tevenar (* 1912 in Banin near Danzig ; † 1943 in Oberschaeffolsheim , Bas-Rhin department ) was a German lawyer and political scientist.

Life

Von Tevenar was the younger son of a farmer and landowner who died as an officer in 1917 during World War I. The widowed mother and the two children repeatedly changed their place of residence and work in order to support the inflation- impoverished family on their own. Gerhard von Tevenar, however, benefited from the democratic reforms in the education system of the twenties : he enjoyed free school fees and also received Reich education allowance. In 1927 von Tevenar became a member of the Wehrjugendbund Schilljugend under the former Freikorpsführer Gerhard Roßbach . In 1930 he passed the Abitur in Goslar . After hesitating between studying theology and a career in the navy, he finally decided to study history and foreign political studies as well as law , which was financed entirely by the German National Academic Foundation . Study locations were Berlin , Frankfurt am Main , Königsberg , Breslau , Hamburg , Göttingen and Vienna . He joined the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) early on and joined the circle around Friedrich Hielscher . During his studies he was also in contact with other members of the Hielscher group such as Arno Deutelmoser and Rolf Kluth . From 1929 he regularly undertook “national political” trips to Hungary, Italy, France, England, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland. These served both to establish contact with the ethnic German minorities as well as with the autonomist or separatist movements in these countries. Von Tevenar completed his studies in July 1934 with a doctorate 'magna cum laude' from Ernst Forsthoff on the Bolshevik one-party state . Unfit for military service due to a heart defect and also rejected by the SA , he went to Paris (1934/35) and Brussels (1935/36) as a scholarship holder of the NSDStB . From there he wrote reports for the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht under Wilhelm Canaris . Since 1934 he was demonstrably in contact with the Breton nationalists Olier Mordrel and Célestin Lainé ; he also introduced the latter to Friedrich Hielscher. He probably owed his position as a foreign correspondent for the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten and the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung (BBZ) from 1936 to 1938 to his secret service relations. During this time he was also an informant for the Gestapa's own Abwehr Police (Department III of the Political Police), whose head Werner Best he reported regularly.

In 1937 Tevenar became a founding member and first managing director of the German Society for Celtic Studies (DGKS) . In this position he was in close contact with Wolfram Sievers , another member of the Hielscher circle. Sievers obtained literature for him at the expense of the German Ahnenerbe Research Association, which he directed, and also ensured that the Ahnenerbe paid membership fees to the DGKS and provided organizational and financial support from Tevenar's trips to the DGKS in Alsace and Brittany. Because of a false passport, Tevenar was arrested by SS men on the Dutch border in June 1938 . Best denied knowing him and having obtained the passport in question - presumably to keep his activities secret from other organizations for reasons of competition. Since Tevenar could not prove any espionage activity for a foreign nation, he was sentenced to four months in prison "as a substitute" according to § 175 for "fornication with a man in two cases". The alleged witness is said to have been forced to testify. He told his future wife that he had been tortured by the Gestapo in the Lehrter Strasse cell prison . During his imprisonment, a college friend also received a card from him from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp .

Tevenar's admission to the NSDAP was rejected in 1939 and a “warning card” was drawn up about him. Since that year he has also worked as a research assistant for the German Institute for Foreign Policy Research and the German Foreign Office . In December 1940 Tevenar married the journalist Erika von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, a stepdaughter of General Otto von Stülpnagel . The couple had 2 daughters together and moved to Oberschaeffolsheim in Alsace in July 1942 , where the DGKS had its new location. From there he was to establish a chair for Celtology, which was planned by the Ahnenerbe with the support of Werner Best for the newly founded Imperial University of Strasbourg . While traveling to occupied France, he tried to use the financial means of the ancestral inheritance to procure books for a planned central Celtic library . In Oberschaeffolsheim he received a. a. Visits from Fritz Heinsheimer and Hermann Bickler . Célestin Lainé lived there with the family for 3 months. Tevenar, along with others, kept in touch with Ernst Jünger on behalf of Hielscher while he was stationed in Paris. As a member of the Hielscher Circle, he lived in constant fear of renewed arrest and torture. This contributed to the continual worsening of his heart disease, and he eventually died at the age of 31 in April 1943. Hielscher conducted the funeral ceremony.

Political ideas

In his doctoral dissertation published in 1934, Tevenar had already highlighted the federal elements of the USSR , which in his opinion enabled many peoples to enjoy relative cultural autonomy. In it he met with ideas from Friedrich Hielscher , but also from other contemporaries such as Werner Best and Alfred Toepfer of a future design of Europe. This also explains Tevenar's interest in autonomist movements in other Western European countries (France, Ireland, Great Britain). Ultimately, however, all of these ideas ran counter to the Nazi regime's European plans and attempts to make National Socialism usable for their own plans ultimately only led to an entanglement in his crimes (this applies to the most extreme of Sievers from the circle around Hielscher and for the Breton nationalist Lainé ).

Publications

  • The Bolshevik one-party state: attempt to assess the political structure of Soviet Russia (USSR) under constitutional law . Sporn, Zeulenroda 1934 (dissertation, University of Frankfurt / M. 1934).
  • Breton bibliography . Niemeyer, Halle (Saale) 1940 (series of publications by the "German Society for Celtic Studies", no.8; special print from: Journal for Celtic Philology and Folk Research , Vol. 22, no.1).
  • The Volkish character of the Isle of Man . Enke, Stuttgart 1941 (special print from: Volksforschung 5.1941, no. 4, pp. 280–290).
  • To found the 'German Society for Celtic Studies' . In: Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP) XXIII (1942), pp. 440f.
  • The Celtic Studies in Ireland. Establishing the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies . In: Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP) XXIII (1942), pp. 441f.
  • A Celtic institute in Brittany. To found the 'Framm Keltiek Breizh' in Rennes. In: Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie (ZCP) XXIII (1942), p. 443.
  • The basics of Scottish nationalism . Yearbook of the Institute for Border and Foreign Studies , Berlin 1943.

Translations:

  • Léon Degrelle : I was a prisoner. Dungeon diary from Belgium and France . Hesperos, Nuremberg 1944 (together with Erika von Tevenar, Fritz Heinsheimer and Célestin Lainé ).
  • J. Dezitter: Mills in South Flanders . Westphal, Wolfshagen-Scharbeutz (Bay of Lübeck) 1953.

literature

  • Joachim Lerchenmueller: "Celtic explosive": a study of the history of science on German Celtology from 1900 to 1945 . On the biography of Tevenars in v. a. Pp. 385-389. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1997. ISBN 3484401427 .
  • Ina Schmidt: The Lord of Fire. Friedrich Hielscher and his circle between paganism, new nationalism and resistance against National Socialism . On the biography of Tevenars in v. a. Pp. 85-93. SH-Verlag, Cologne 2004. ISBN 3-89498-135-0 .
  • Bernadette Schnitzler: Gerhard von Tevenar (1912-1943). Secrétaire de la German Society for Celtic Studies . Pp. 289-302 in: Jean-Pierre Legendre, Laurent Olivier, Bernadette Schnitzler (eds.): L'archéologie nationale-socialiste dans les pays occupés à l'ouest du Reich. Actes de la Table Ronde Internationale "Blood and Soil" tenue à Lyon (Rhône) in the cadre du Xe congrès de la European Association of Archaeologists (EAA), les 8 and 9 September 2004 . Infolio Éditions, CH-1124 Gollion 2007. ISBN 978-2884748049 (in French).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ina Müller 2004 , p. 87; Joachim Lerchenmueller 1997 , p. 387 names a "Fallen Memorial Foundation" as the grantor
  2. ↑ Possibly through the mediation of Friedrich Hielscher; s. Ina Schmidt 2004 , p. 87.
  3. ↑ Another possible explanation is provided by Joachim Lerchenmueller 1997 , p. 297 (footnote 229): von Tevenar may have warned the "non-Aryan" Celtologist Julius Pokorny of the Reichspogromnacht on November 9, 1938 , so that he could flee to Brussels in time .
  4. ↑ on the sexual orientation of the circle around Hielscher see also Ina Schmidt: Hielscher, Friedrich (May 31, 1902 - March 6, 1990) , especially the section on private pages (last checked January 9, 2010)
  5. ↑ A reason for this is not apparent from the available sources, but his imprisonment or concentration camp imprisonment and his conviction according to §175 are assumed to be the cause. Ina Schmidt 2004 , p. 91.
  6. ↑ s. F.-R. Hausmann: English and American studies in the "Third Reich" . V. Clostermann, Frankfurt / M. 2003, p. 260, footnote 123. ISBN 978-3465032304
  7. ↑ Bickler was NSDAP district leader in Strasbourg until spring 1942. According to Erika von Tevenars' information to Ina Schmidt, her husband relied on Bickler's protection from the ongoing investigations by the Gestapo ; Ina Schmidt 2004, p.91
personal data
SURNAME Tevenar, Gerhard von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Banin , near Danzig
DATE OF DEATH 1943
Place of death Oberschaeffolsheim , Bas-Rhin department