Gray Order
The Gray Order was a federation of the Catholic youth movement founded on Easter 1934 , which was able to continue its work until 1945 despite the prohibitions of the Bundestag youth issued by the Gestapo .
The Gray Order was created in early 1934 from groups of the Deutschmeister-Jungenschaft (originally from Quickborn ) and the Bund New Germany . Under the leadership of Fritz Leist , the federal government included several hundred members throughout southern and western Germany. Since one of the federal centers was located in Saarbrücken , he was able to continue his work largely unmolested until the reintegration of the Saar region into the German Reich on March 1, 1935, but members of the Freiburg group were already taken into protective custody by the Gestapo in the spring of 1934 . During his imprisonment, Günther Schmich wrote the small script Masters of the Order . The Freiburg group also included the forest assessor at the time, Hansjörg Oeschger , who, as the federal leader of the Catholic Quickborn movement, helped to organize the founding meeting. He was under Gestapo surveillance, was temporarily arrested and was supposed to be sent to a concentration camp , which was only prevented by his conscription to the Wehrmacht .
In its groups, the Gray Order dealt with the liturgical movement initiated by Romano Guardini . In the foreground, however, were the activities that are common for allied groups, such as singing together and the big trips that took the groups to Lapland and Montenegro , among other places . Former members described the Gray Order as fundamentally apolitical; political questions had no place in group life.
At the beginning of 1938 the Gestapo arrested 18 leading members of the Gray Order for "group activities", among them Leist and Willi Graf . After about three months, all were due to after the annexation of Austria adopted amnesty dismissed. Although Leist distanced himself from continuing the federal government and the Bundestag youth after his release, the Gray Order continued as a circle of friends until 1945.
After Graf had joined the White Rose in 1942 , he asked Leist for the support of the activities of the members of the Gray Order. Leist refused.
In the second half of World War II , the activities of the Gray Order largely came to a standstill, only contact by letter was maintained. This was due, on the one hand, to the persecution of the Bundestag youth, which began again from 1942, and, on the other hand, to the declining number of members, as a large number had already died in the war.
literature
- Peter Goergen: Willi Graf - A path to resistance . Röhrig-Verlag, St. Ingbert 2009. ISBN 978-3-86110-458-2
- Heiko Haumann , Dagmar Rübsam: Resistance . In: History of the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. Vol. 3: From the rule of Baden to the present. Theiss-Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, pp. 339-351, here p. 342f. ISBN 3-8062-0857-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Matthias von Hellfeld : Bündische Jugend and Hitler Youth. On the history of adaptation and resistance 1930-1939. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-8046-8683-4 , pp. 140ff