Hans Brosius (politician, 1891)

Hans Wilhelm Gustav Max Brosius (born July 27, 1891 in Thorn , † November 18, 1969 in Hamburg-Harburg ) was a German journalist and political functionary ( DNVP ). He became known, among other things, as the head of the press office of the DNVP (1929-1933).

Life

Youth and First World War

Hans was the son of the later Prussian Lieutenant General Karl Brosius (1855–1920) and his wife Lonny, née Wittke (* 1866). In his youth he was placed in the care of the Hauptkadettenanstalt for training , where he passed his school leaving examination in 1910. In 1911 he was transferred to the Magdeburg Jäger Battalion No. 4 as a lieutenant . In the First World War , Brosius initially participated as a battalion adjutant and company commander. In 1915 he became a fighter pilot, most recently as leader of Kampfstaffel 42 and Schutzstaffel 17. Brosius was wounded several times during the war: in 1918, after a plane crash, he was sent to the General Staff of Army High Command 8 as an orderly officer . During the war he was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes and the pilot's commemorative badge.

Weimar Republic

After the war, in which two of his brothers were killed, Brosius joined the Lützow Freikorps . In 1920 he resigned as a captain from the army. This was followed by a one-year internship at the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung in Erfurt . In the following years, Brosius, who was also an active member of the Stahlhelm, acted as regional manager of the DNVP - which he joined in 1920 - in Thuringia. He then came to the Niederdeutsche Zeitung in Hanover as a political editor , of which he was editor-in-chief from 1926 to 1928. In Hanover, Brosius also took over the chairmanship of the local DNVP district association. In this way he got to know the DNVP politician Otto Schmidt-Hannover , who lived in Hanover and had been a member of the Reichstag for Brosius' party since 1924.

Schmidt-Hanover brought Brosius to work at the DNVP party headquarters on Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse in Berlin in 1928. There Alfred Hugenberg appointed him, at the suggestion of Schmidt-Hanover, a few months after his, Hugenbergs, election as party chairman, Reich press chief of the party, d. H. to the head of the press office of the DNVP. In this capacity, Brosius, who became one of Hugenberg's closest collaborators - as his unconditional follower - was responsible for coordinating the party's propaganda work in its own press as well as influencing the other domestic and foreign press in its favor. In 1929, Hugenberg also got Brosius to head the Reich Propaganda Committee, which was founded that year as part of the joint efforts of the DNVP, NSDAP and other legal forces to combat the Young Plan . Within the leadership of the DNVP, Brosius formed a clique with Schmidt-Hanover and the head of the party headquarters Hans Nagel , which is why Reinhold Quaatz ironically referred to these men as "the three musketeers". In addition, Brosius attracted attention in the late 1920s and early 1930s through extensive journalistic activity - above all publishing articles on domestic and foreign policy - and through frequent appearances as a speaker, especially at election campaign events of his party.

Nazi and post-war period

According to the Goebbels diaries, during the negotiations on the formation of the Hitler government in January 1933, Hugenberg temporarily called for the appointment of Brosius as head of the Reich Press, which Goebbels described as "outrageous" along with other demands made by Hugenberg. After the formation of the Hitler government Brosius still played a role in the campaign efforts of the battlefront black, white and red in advance of the parliamentary elections of March 1933. When the DNVP few weeks during the later DC circuit of the parties by the National Socialist was forced government to dissolve itself , Brosius retired from politics.

In 1935 Brosius undertook a six-month trip around the world, which took him through Siberia and Japan , to Korea and China and finally to the South Seas. He described his experiences and travel impressions in the book Far East , published by the German publishing company in 1936, form his new shape . The book was reissued in 1942, slightly expanded.

In 1937 Brosius became managing director and production manager at UFA -Werbefilm. He had previously been a member of the UFA Supervisory Board. In August 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II , he was reactivated as a lieutenant colonel in the reserve and assigned to the air force command staff, where he was responsible for troop support issues.

At the end of 1947, Brosius returned to Berlin to work in the theater of the French Zone under Werner Fuetterer . He later went to Hamburg , where he joined the German Party , for which he ran unsuccessfully for the German Bundestag in 1957 .

marriage and family

Brosius married Elisabeth (Else) Marie Friederike von Hinckeldey on August 22, 1919 (born June 20, 1897 in Karlsruhe).

The son Ernst-Günther Karl Walter Brosius (born September 16, 1920 in Erfurt; August 24, 1944 near Tiraspol in Bessarabia) and the daughter Jutta Auguste Irma Brosius left the marriage, which was divorced on August 9, 1936 before the Berlin Regional Court (* June 2, 1923 in Hamburg-Rahlstedt).

In his second marriage, Brosius married on August 24, 1938 in Berlin-Charlottenburg Berta Julie Charlotte Müller, divorced Erxleben, widowed Borsdorf (born February 17, 1894 in Berlin; January 6, 1949 in Berlin-Charlottenburg).

In his third marriage, Brosius married Erika Lüders, formerly Leichsenring (born April 5, 1913 in Hamburg) in Hamburg on October 30, 1953.

Fonts

• The share of the German press in the struggle for the German spirit. 1930.
• The Far East is shaping its new shape. Berlin 1936. (2nd edition 1942)

literature

• Chun Shik Kim: East Asia between fear and admiration. 2001.
• Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures . First volume, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, ISBN 3-598-30664-4 , p. 222

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the Harburg registry office No. 2234/1969.
2. ^ Kurt von Priesdorff : Soldatisches Führertum . Volume 9, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg, undated [Hamburg], undated [1941], DNB 986919780 , p. 296f., No. 2891.
3. ↑ Elke Fröhlich: Joseph Goebbels. The diaries. Part 1. Records 1923 - 1941, July 1939 - March 1940 , 1998, p. 117.