Gustav von Kahr

Gustav von Kahr in 1920

Gustav Kahr , knight of Kahr since 1911 , (born November 29, 1862 in Weißenburg in Bavaria , † June 30, 1934 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a German lawyer and politician . From 1917 to 1924 he was regional president of Upper Bavaria . He served as Bavarian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister from March 1920 to September 1921 . From September 1923 to February 1924 he was Bavarian State Commissioner General with dictatorial powers. In autumn 1923 he openly opposed the Reich government, but contributed to the suppression of the Hitler putsch . From 1924 to 1930 he was President of the Bavarian Administrative Court . Kahr was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp in June 1934 after the so-called Röhm Putsch .

Life

Early years

Kahr was the son of the President of the Bavarian Administrative Court Gustav von Kahr (1833-1905) and his wife Emilie, née Rüttel (1839-1911).

After attending the Latin school in Landshut , Kahr was taught at the Maximiliansgymnasium in Munich from 1877 to 1881 , which he left with the Abitur. From October 1881 to September 1882 he belonged to the 2nd Bavarian Infantry Regiment "Crown Prince" as a one-year volunteer .

From the winter semester of 1882 to 1885, Kahr studied law in Munich . During his studies he was a member of the student association Akademischer Gesangverein München . After passing the first state legal examination, Kahr completed his legal preparatory service at the District Court of Munich I (from October 1, 1885), at the Munich Regional Court (from October 1, 1886) and at the Munich District Office (from April 1, 1887) as well as with the lawyer Gmeinhardt in Munich (April 1 to September 30, 1888). At the same time, he volunteered at the Munich I District Office from April 1 to November 15, 1888.

On January 12, 1889, Kahr entered the civil service as an accessist in the government of Upper Bavaria , for which he worked at the Chamber of the Interior. On May 16, 1890, he moved to Erding as a district office assessor . On October 1, 1895, Kahr was appointed to the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior . There he was promoted to government assessor on November 16, 1897. Kahr's main field of activity in the decade before the turn of the century was the organization of the preservation of folk art and endangered architectural monuments. Together with curate Frank and the sculptor Wadere, Kahr co-founded the Bavarian State Association for Homeland Care .

After almost five years in the State Ministry, Kahr was transferred to Kaufbeuren as a district official on July 16, 1900 . Together with curate Christian Frank and architect Franz Zell, von Kahr organized the exhibition “Folk Art in Allgäu” in Kaufbeuren in 1901, which took place parallel to the agricultural exhibition. The two-week show was so successful that a "Museum of Folk Art" was permanently set up in the exhibition building at Kaisergäßchen 12 in Kaufbeuren. The Stadtmuseum Kaufbeuren still presents parts of this exhibition and introduces the exhibition organizers. In 1902 Gustav von Kahr returned to the State Ministry of the Interior. From then on he quickly went through the stations of the ministerial service up to the state council: he was promoted successively to the government council (November 1, 1902), senior government councilor (December 1, 1904) and ministerial councilor (August 1, 1907). On February 1, 1912, he was granted the title and rank of a Privy Councilor (Excellency). On October 1, 1912, Kahr was appointed State Councilor in the senior service and Ministerial Director.

Even during his years in the State Ministry, Kahr devoted himself primarily to the preservation and protection of endangered cultural assets.

District President and Prime Minister

In the First World War , Kahr did not take part as a reserve officer , because his minister Max Freiherr von Soden-Frauenhofen did not want to release him as an employee working to secure food. In 1916/17 the Protestant Kahr was scheduled to be the senior consistorial president .

1917 Kahr was from the Bavarian King Ludwig III. appointed regional president of Upper Bavaria . In this position, Kahr was one of the first men in a leading position to recognize the impending revolution in Bavaria and throughout Germany.

The overthrow of the monarchy in the November Revolution of 1918 shook Kahr, but at the same time enabled him to campaign for a new regulation of the relationship between the now Free State of Bavaria and the state as a whole. This concern inevitably led the actually apolitical Kahr into politics.

After the Kapp Putsch in 1920, the Protestant monarchist Kahr was elected successor to Prime Minister Johannes Hoffmann on March 16, 1920 . Kahr, a member of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP), headed a civil right-wing government and operated Bavaria's independent position within the German Empire. Supported by his resident defense, he had the workers 'and soldiers' councils dissolved and established Bavaria's reputation as the “ regulatory cell of the empire”. In the same year, as part of a nationwide anti - Semitic campaign based on a suggestion by Rupprecht von Bayern , Kahr ordered the mass expulsion of so-called Eastern Jews for the first time . After the adoption of the Republic Protection Ordinance following the murder of Matthias Erzberger by anti-republican extremists, he resigned in protest on September 12, 1921, as he could not prevent the dissolution of the Resident Guard. He returned to his previous post as District President of Upper Bavaria.

State Commissioner General

The Bavarian state government of BVP Prime Minister Eugen von Knilling appointed Kahr as General State Commissioner with dictatorial powers under Article 64 of the Bamberg Constitution on September 26, 1923 . In doing so, she protested against the breaking off of the Ruhr War by the Reich government under Gustav Stresemann . On the same day, Kahr declared a state of emergency in Bavaria. In response, Reich President Friedrich Ebert declared a state of emergency throughout the entire Reich and transferred executive power to Reichswehr Minister Otto Gessler . However, Kahr refused to carry out his orders, for example the ban on the NSDAP newspaper Völkischer Beobachter . On September 29, he suspended the implementation of the Republic Protection Act in Bavaria.

With Lieutenant General Otto von Lossow , state commander of the Reichswehr in Bavaria and commander of military district VII (Munich) , and Hans von Seißer , commander of the Bavarian police, Kahr formed a " triumvirate ". Their goal, however, was not to separate Bavaria from the Reich, but rather to eliminate the republic in all of Germany from the "Ordnungszelle" of Bavaria and to establish a "national dictatorship". This was to be done by means of a “March on Berlin” - following the example of Benito Mussolini's march on Rome a year earlier . From mid-October, Kahr again had several hundred Jewish families who had immigrated from Eastern Europe decades earlier (so-called Eastern Jews ) expelled from Bavaria. With this he wanted to consolidate his support with the extreme right, the supporters of Adolf Hitler and the German Combat League . Kahr and Hitler rivaled for leadership in the right-wing camp.

On October 20, 1923, there was an open break with the Reich government: When Reichswehr Minister Geßler von Lossow removed his offices for refusing to give orders, Kahr reinstated him as Bavarian state commander and entrusted him with "leading the Bavarian part of the Reichsheer". Two days later he had the 7th Reichswehr Division sworn in on Bavaria and his government - as "trustee of the German people". Despite these openly hostile acts, the Reich government did not impose an execution against Bavaria because the Reichswehr under General Hans von Seeckt would not have been prepared to implement them. Seeckt advocated the principle "Troops do not shoot at troops" and also pursued dictatorial efforts on a national level. At the beginning of November, Kahr banned the publication of several left-wing liberal newspapers and the social democratic Munich Post .

Hitler-Ludendorff putsch

Gustav von Kahr (front left) with Erich Ludendorff (center) in 1921

When Kahr gave a speech on November 8, 1923 in front of around 3,000 listeners in the completely overcrowded hall of the Munich Bürgerbräukeller , the meeting was stormed by Adolf Hitler , Erich Ludendorff , Hermann Göring and other National Socialists . Hitler fired a revolver into the ceiling to get the audience's attention, proclaimed the “national revolution” and invited Kahr, Lieutenant General Otto Hermann von Lossow and Colonel of the Police Hans Ritter von Seißer to a meeting. In a back room he urged Kahr and the others, gun in hand, to join the proclaimed national uprising. When they returned to the hall, they asked those present to support Hitler's coup d'état , which was planned for the next day. Given the word of honor she had given her not to do anything against Hitler's plan, Ludendorff refrained from imprisoning Kahr, Lossow and Seisser. The latter two immediately initiated countermeasures to put down the coup. After a few hours of the inner struggle also Kahr turned against Hitler and spread to 2:55 on the radio a ban on the NSDAP , Freikorps Oberland and Bund Reichskriegsflagge .

The next day, November 9, 1923, the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch escalated when, in a scuffle, the rebels advancing in rows of twelve - armed men in front, flags behind, the leaders in the third row - at the end of Residenzstrasse at the level of the Feldherrnhalle a shot went off (whether it was fired by a coup leader or a state police officer could never be determined). In the subsequent exchange of fire, 16 coup plotters, four police officers and one bystander were killed. Hitler blamed Kahr for the failure of the putsch.

Kahr took part as a witness in the high treason trial against Hitler and the other putschists, testifying on February 26, 1924.

On February 17, 1924, Kahr resigned from the post of State Commissioner General. From October 16, 1924 to December 31, 1930, he was President of the Bavarian Administrative Court . On January 1, 1931, he was retired.

Assassination in the Dachau concentration camp

On the evening of June 30, 1934, in the course of the Röhm affair , Kahr was arrested by an SS detachment in his apartment in Munich. On the way to the Dachau concentration camp , he was badly mistreated by two SS men. When it arrived at the camp, the car in which Kahr was being transported was surrounded by an angry mob of more than a hundred SS men: they started shouting with joy when the car arrived in the square in front of the headquarters and shouted repeatedly in threatening chants Wise “Kahr, Kahr!”. On the orders of the commandant of the camp, Theodor Eicke , Kahr was taken to the detention building of the camp, the so-called "bunker", and there handed over to the detention supervisor. Shortly afterwards, he was shot dead in the detention building. The supervisor of the bunker at the time, Johann Kantschuster, is the most likely shooter . Soon after Kahr's murder, the legend emerged - which has also found its way into specialist literature - that shortly after June 30th, his body was found mutilated with pickaxes outside in the Dachauer Moor .

In July 1934, the chief public prosecutor's office at the Munich II Regional Court began investigations into Kahr's death, which ultimately ended with the Bavarian Political Police officially announcing the shooting that took place in Dachau on June 30th at the end of July. Previously, on July 14, the Reich Ministry of Justice had informed the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, in response to a collective request from the latter how to deal with the killing acts that occurred in the Munich area on June 30 to July 2, that the Kahr case, like a number of others Cases taken up by the Munich public prosecutor's offices were to be regarded as "legal". As a result, the Bavarian Ministry of Justice described the killing of Kahr to the Public Prosecutor in Munich as "a measure carried out to suppress attacks that were highly treasonable and treasonous", which fell "under the law on measures of state emergency services of July 3, 1934 (RGBl. I p. 529)" . Thereupon the responsible senior public prosecutor at Munich Regional Court II closed the proceedings for the killing of Kahr on the grounds that “there is no criminal act”.

The news of Kahr's death - which was kept secret in the German press - caused a sensation abroad. It was generally believed that Kahr was murdered in revenge for his behavior in 1923 and not because he posed a threat to the Nazi system in 1934. On top of that, he had completely withdrawn from politics. That is why many press reports and contemporaries condemned the murder as particularly repugnant. This was linked to the press and contemporaries mostly correspondingly devastating judgments about the people who were believed to be responsible for the killing of Kahr. The writer Thomas Mann noted in his diary on July 6, 1934 about the murder that the Nazi government had carried out in the preceding days:

“Perhaps most characteristic of it was the hideous murder of old Kahr in Munich, which represents a politically completely unnecessary act of revenge for the statute-barred. It shows what a Kujon this man [Hitler] is, whom many consider to be better than his gang, what a beast with his hysterical paws, which he takes for artist hands. "

On July 7, 1934, the Nazi chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg wrote in his diary that the “traitors of 9. XI. [19] 23 ”had been brought to Dachau so that they could now“ do honest work ”. And: “So the 9th XI. [19] 23 but u still expiated. [ie and ] Kahr has met his long-earned fate. ”Whether Theodor Eicke had Hitler's Kahr murdered with or without orders has never been clarified.

Werner Best , who as head of SD-top portion was carried out in Munich on 30 June and 1 July arrests on the basis of commands that were sent to him from Berlin making, South in Munich and coordinated, admitted after the Second World War to the In the event of Kahr, that Kahr's arrest was arranged by him, Best, or his deputy Carl Oberg on the instructions of the SS / SD headquarters in Berlin. He denied, however, that he was aware of an order to shoot the former State Commissioner General. Instead, he was only given the order to arrest Kahr and have him placed in the Dachau concentration camp. If there was an order to kill the prisoner, it was not communicated to his office but was sent to the camp management in Dachau by other means without involving the Munich SD upper section. During his own research into the circumstances of Kahr's death, he was told that he had been killed in an unauthorized manner by members of the Dachau security team. According to the reports he received, Best, this happened in such a way that the arrival of the "traitor" Kahr had so excited the SS crew that they spontaneously shot him shortly after his arrival at the camp. The SD boss Heydrich had him best, "angry sincere" in reporting the shooting Kahrs appeared so that he believed "that it was really him [Heydrich] not wanted."

family

In 1890 Kahr married Ella Schübeck (1864–1938), a daughter of the Upper Government Council Gustav Schübeck and Louise Vocke. The marriage resulted in four daughters, one of whom died early. The daughter Ella married Anton Kerschensteiner , who later became president of the regional labor court in Munich.

Awards

Like his father, Gustav Ritter von Kahr received the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown in 1911 for his services to the care of folk art . This order was - like the Military Max Joseph Order - associated with the personal, non-inheritable Bavarian knighthood , and Kahr received the addition of "Knight of".

In 1913, the Technical University of Munich awarded Kahr the honorary degree of Dr.-Ing. and the Munich University the title of Dr. med. hc

After him and his father, the former Müllerstraße in Munich- Untermenzing was renamed Von-Kahr-Straße in 1947. In 1964 the street was rededicated to his father alone.

See also

• History of Bavaria
• Weimar Republic

Fonts

• Bavarian municipal code for the parts of the country on this side of the Rhine, explained and with the implementation regulations published by Gustav von Kahr , CH Beck, 2 vols., 1896 and 1898.

Sources and literature

Source material

• Gustav von Kahr: Speeches on Bavarian politics. Selected speeches by the Bavarian Prime Minister Dr. from Kahr. In: Politische Zeitfragen 2 (1920), H. 22–24.
• State committee of the SPD in Bavaria (ed.): Hitler and Kahr. The Bavarian Napoleon greats from 1923. A judicial scandal uncovered in the investigative committee of the Bavarian state parliament. Georg Birk, Munich 1928.

literature

Monographs related to Kahr :

• Hans Hinterberger: Non-political politicians? The Bavarian “Prime Minister of Officials” 1920–1924 and their joint responsibility for the Hitler coup. Diss. Phil. University of Regensburg 2016, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 355-epub-356493 .
• Walter Schärl: The composition of the Bavarian civil service from 1806–1918 (Munich historical studies, Department Bavarian History 1), Kallmünz / Opf. 1955.
• Elina Kiiskinen: The German National People's Party in Bavaria (Bavarian Central Party) in the government policy of the Free State during the Weimar period. Munich 2005.
• Karl Rothenbücher : The Kahr case. Mohr, Tübingen 1924 (= Law and State in Past and Present, Vol. 29).

Articles related to Kahr :

• Martin Weichmann: “Peace and order at any price.” Weißenburger and Weißenburg between the Soviet Republic and the Hitler coup. Part II: Gustav von Kahr and the resident services. In: Villa nostra, 2008, no. 1, pp. 5–21.

Biographical sketches :

• Stephan Deutinger: Gustav von Kahr. District President of Upper Bavaria 1917–1924. In: The regional presidents of Upper Bavaria in the 19th and 20th centuries. Edited on behalf of the District President Werner-Hans Böhm by Stephan Deutinger, Karl-Ulrich Gelberg and Michael Stephan. Munich 2005, pp. 218-231.
• Anton Kerschensteiner: Dr. Gustav von Kahr. In: Schönere Heimat 51 (1962), pp. 496–498.
• Anton Mößmer: Gustav von Kahr. A picture of life. In: Friends of the Hans-Carossa-Gymnasium eV Landshut 28 (1988), pp. 34–68.
• Reiner Pommerin : Gustav Ritter von Kahr. In: Kurt GA Jeserich, Helmut Neuhaus (ed.): Personalities of the administration. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1991, pp. 281-285.
• Reinhard Schwirzer: Gustav Ritter von Kahr (1862–1934), his family and Weißenburg. In: Villa nostra 2004, no. 2, pp. 30–43.
• Bernhard Zittel: Gustav von Kahr. In: Gerhard Pfeiffer (ed.): Fränkische Lebensbilder, Vol. 3. Würzburg 1969, pp. 327–346.
• Bernhard Zittel:  Kahr, Gustav Ritter von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 29 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Gustav von Kahr  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Gustav von Kahr  in the German Digital Library
• Gustav von Kahr in the online version of the files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic
• Alexander mill, Arnulf Scriba: Gustav von Kahr. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
• Newspaper article about Gustav von Kahr in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ u. a. with Hans von Faber du Faur , Robert Piloty , Erich Riefstahl (painter; 1862-1920) and Carl von Tubeuf ; see. Annual report on the K. Maximilians-Gymnasium in Munich for the school year 1880/81 .
2. ↑ Eva Bendl: Staged historical images . Museum-like symbolization in Bavarian Swabia from the 19th century to the post-war period. In: State Office for Non-State Museums in Bavaria. (Ed.): Bavarian Studies on Museum History . tape 2 . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin / Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-422-07331-9 , p. 108 ff .
3. ↑ Historical Lexicon of Bavaria Retrieved on February 14, 2020.
4. ↑ Ludger Heid : Eighteenth picture: Der Ostjude . In: Julius H. Schoeps , Joachim Schlör (eds.): Images of hostility towards Jews. Anti-Semitism - Prejudices and Myths. Augsburg 1999, p. 248.
5. ^ Heinrich August Winkler : Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. 3rd edition, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 211.
6. ^ ^{A b} Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. 3rd edition, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, p. 223.
7. ↑ Reinhard Sturm: Kampf um die Republik 1919-1923. Federal Agency for Civic Education, December 23, 2011.
8. ^ Heinrich August Winkler: Weimar 1918–1933. The history of the first German democracy. 3rd edition, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 211-212.
9. ↑ Burkhard Asmuss : Republic without a chance? Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, p. 531.
10. ^ Hans-Günther Richardi: School of violence: the Dachau concentration camp , 1995, p. 235; Otto Gritschneder: The Führer has sentenced you to death ... Munich 1993, p. 136; Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Boppard am Rhein 1991, p. 179.
11. ^ Orth: Der SD-Mann Johannes Schmidt , p. 190.
12. ↑ Heinz Höhne: Mordsache Röhm, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1984, p. 271.
13. ↑ Lothar Gruchmann: Justice in the Third Reich 1933–1940: Adaptation and Submission in the Gürtner era , pp. 440 and 458f.
14. ↑ Thomas Mann: To the moral world: political writings and speeches in exile . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 60.
15. ^ ^{A b} Hans-Günther Seraphim (Ed.): The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg . 1934/35 and 1939/40. Documentation. Munich 1964, p. 47. (The editor was the brother of Peter-Heinz Seraphim .).
16. ↑ IfZ: ZS Best 1, p. 131: Answer to the questionnaire of the attorney general in Munich of June 18, 1951 (1 Js gen 1ff / 49), p. 15 .
17. ^ Martin Bernstein: Von-Kahr-Strasse in Munich: Controversial street name - Munich - Süddeutsche.de. Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 8, 2019, accessed on November 9, 2019 .