Hans-Wolfgang von Herwarth

Hans Wolfgang Herwarth von Bittenfeld. Photo from 1901.

Hans-Wolfgang Herwarth von Bittenfeld (born May 23, 1871 in Berlin , † December 25, 1942 ) was a German colonel , military attaché , publicist and ministerial official .

Life

family

Katharina von Herwarth Bittenfeld, b. Car driver Photo from 1901.

Hans-Wolfgang was the second of six children of the later Prussian Lieutenant General Hans Herwarth von Bittenfeld (1835-1894) and his wife Anna, née Freiin von Wimpffen (* 1850).

On December 15, 1897, Hans-Wolfgang married Katharina Wagenführ (* 1879). From the marriage, which was divorced on May 13, 1914, the sons Hans Eberhard (* 1898) and Heinrich Wolfgang (1901–1968) and the daughter Renata (1908–1982) emerged. On December 9, 1916, Herwarth married Baroness Julie von Degenfeld-Schonburg (1871–1942), the widow of Baron Jan Wendelstadt. The daughter Rosemarie, born in 1917, emerged from this marriage and died in childbirth. This marriage ended in divorce in 1923. Herwarth married Frieda Johanna Schneider (* 1889) in her third marriage.

Empire (1871 to 1918)

Following his training in the cadet schools Bensberg and large light field Herwarth came on 24 March 1890 as Portepeefähnrich in the 2nd Guards Regiment walk the Prussian army one. In the same year he was promoted to second lieutenant and on June 15, 1898 to prime lieutenant . After completing his training at the War Academy , he was attached to the General Staff in 1902 and promoted to captain in 1904 . The following year he joined the staff of the VIII. Army Corps and in autumn 1905 Herwarth was transferred to the General Staff for the first time . From 1904 he also appeared as one of the co-founders of the Central Office for German Personal and Family History. From September 1906 to August 1909 he was the company commander in the infantry regiment "Hamburg" (2nd Hanseatic) No. 76 .

Subsequently transferred to the Great General Staff and promoted to major on July 25, 1910 , Herwarth was sent to the German Embassy in Washington, DC two days later, while remaining in this command, as a military attaché . There he was responsible for maintaining the military-political relations of the German Reich with the United States of America and - in personal union - with neighboring Mexico . The German ambassador and thus his direct superior in the USA at that time was Paul Graf von Metternich (1853–1934). Chargé d'affaires in Mexico was Karl Gottlieb Bünz (1843–1918). While he was still on duty in Washington, Herwarth campaigned for the formation of a press department at the Prussian War Ministry in Berlin. In December 1913, his successor as military attaché, Captain Franz von Papen (1879–1969), arrived in Washington and replaced him in March 1914 as agreed.

On his return, Herwarth took over briefly in the general staff of the German commander in Brussels after the beginning of the First World War in August 1914 . While serving as a battalion commander, he was wounded that same month. As a result, he was dismissed from the Prussian army as an invalid with the rank of colonel. From September 1914 he again took on tasks in the General Staff, this time as head of the war press office within Section III b. Head of Section III b was Walter Nicolai (1873–1947), to whom the war press office was subordinate until mid-1916. The war press office was primarily responsible for evaluating the foreign press, issuing its own publications, press releases and leaflets to influence the public in a way that was friendly to Germany and the war. It launched articles in foreign newspapers or even issued, in covered form, publications abroad in which the opposing armies were denigrated, sometimes in the worst form. In addition, she was responsible for censoring the domestic press. After a restructuring and redistribution of tasks in the summer of 1916, which also concerned the war press office, he took over the management of the military office of the Foreign Office in October . The tasks that were previously the responsibility of the war press office were passed on to them. These were supplemented by photographic documentation and film media. Writers, journalists and war correspondents were used in a covered form for publication assignments, but also working with secret liaison officers abroad or on critical military issues were among the working methods of the military office. When the Great General Staff, during the precipitous events in autumn 1918, took over some of the tasks again and, on the other hand, passed into the responsibility of Department IV (News) of the Foreign Office, Herwarth withdrew from this area. The awards he received during the war included the Iron Cross for both classes.

Weimar Republic (1919 to 1933)

After the defeat of the First World War and the collapse of the German Empire, Herwarth took over the management of the Rudolf Eisenschmidt publishing house and the wheels publishing house in Berlin in 1919. In addition, he distinguished himself in the 1920s and 1930s primarily through a lively journalistic activity in the field of military and monarchist topics. For German newspapers (e.g. the Vossische Zeitung ) and magazines, he also wrote articles about the tasks of the press and the “achievements of Germanness”. In foreign publications he appeared primarily with disputes on the so-called war guilt thesis (cf. war guilt question ) as well as foreign criticism of the political processes in Germany. For example, in a letter to the editor in Times Magazine on August 1, 1932, he harshly criticized the expressions of opinion that had been published on the occasion of Franz von Papen's appointment as Chancellor.

As early as the early 1920s, Herwarth had connections, which have not yet been fully clarified, to some of the opponents of the young Weimar Republic based in southern Germany , to whom, according to newspaper reports, he made his Schloss Neubeuen near Rosenheim available as a meeting point and planning center. Herwarth was particularly inclined to try to restore the Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria. The putschists Hermann Erhardt (1881–1971) and Waldemar Pabst (1880–1970) as well as the Hungarian general Miklós Horthy (1868–1957) are counted among the people who are said to have been in and out of his house at this time .

Period of National Socialism (1933 to 1942)

On April 1, 1933, Herwarth became a member of the NSDAP . The American diplomat James Grover McDonald described Herwarth at this time as a staunch National Socialist who spoke in almost lyrical tones about topics such as racial purity and the predominance of the Nordic race.

After the outbreak of the Second World War , Herwarth became a special advisor in the department for foreign press of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda , headed by Karl Bömer (1900–1942) . On behalf of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , Herwarth took on the task of writing a brochure on psychological warfare in which the events of the war should be explained based on prophecies of the medieval "seer" Nostradamus . The intention behind this publication, which was distributed in eight languages ​​in 1940, was to stir up superstition in hostile and neutral countries in order to accept the German aggression as "fateful". For this purpose, Nostradamus' predictions - who are often given the gift of predicting the future - were randomly strung together and provided with current comments that were intended to create the impression that the German victory in the war was ultimately an inevitable. Goebbels promptly expressed himself in his diary as very impressed by Herwarth's experience and skills in the field of war propaganda.

On May 23, 1941, Herwarth was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Philosophical and Natural Science Faculty of the University of Münster . The certificate of appointment was handed over on June 14, 1941.

Herwarth died in Berlin in December 1942 after a long illness

Fonts

• Herwarthisches. Compiled for the family members by Hans-Wolfgang Herwarth von Bittenfeld, secretary of the Herwarth Family Association. Berlin 1899. Digitized
• Characteristics of the foreign press. 8 volumes.
• Handbook of the foreign press. 1918.
• Sonnets from Portuguese. 1920. (Adaptations from Herwarth based on Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
• What Will Happen in the Near Future? For an answer we must turn to "Les Vrayes Centuureis et Propheties de Maistre Michel Nostradamus" - The Prophecies of the Ancient French Astrologer Michel Nostradamus and the Present War. 1940. (Brochure; also published in Croatian, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Swedish and Serbian)
• Pedigree of Field Marshal Eberhardt Herwarth von Bittenfeld and his brothers Generals Hans and Fritz Herwarth von Bittenfeld. (= Pedigree of famous German vol. 6) 1944. (posthumously, together with Herbert Herbig)

literature

• Freiherr von Bock: Base list of the officer corps of the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot 19.6.1813–15.5.1913. Verlag R. Eisenschmidt, Berlin 1913, p. 233.
• Eckart Conze , Norbert Frei , Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-89667-430-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Manfred Kehring: The re-establishment of the German military attaché service after the First World War (1919-1933). Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1966.
2. ^ New York Times. April 25, 1915.
3. ↑ The publishing house was founded by Rudolf Eisenschmidt in Berlin in 1880, during the First World War and afterwards the publishing house mainly specialized in the publication of topographical maps and literature on the emerging aviation
4. ↑ From 1919 on, the Fahrrad Verlag GmbH was based in Berlin, Potsdamer Straße 83c, specializing primarily in the publication of publications for the "Technical Emergency Aid" that was created in January 1919. At that time, the “technical emergency aid” hid a pure “military emergency aid”, which acted as a catchment basin for the military personnel that became available as a result of the collapse of the imperial army and navy.
5. ↑ Bavaria Denies Wirth's Charges. In: New York Times. September 17, 1921.
6. ↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Advocate for the Doomed. The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1932-1935. 2007, p. 34.

Web links

Wikisource: Hans Wolfgang von Herwarth  - Sources and full texts