Hans Knauth (SA member)

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Johann "Hans" Knauth (born May 2, 1892 in Bamberg ; † 1935 ) was a German paramilitary activist . He was best known as a defendant in one of the trials following the Hitler putsch in November 1923.

Life

Knauth was a son of Karl Knauth and his wife Katharina, geb. Baader. From 1914 to 1918 Knauth took part in the First World War. At the end of the war he retired with the rank of lieutenant.

After the war Knauth worked as a bank clerk.

In 1923 Knauth took over the leadership of the 3rd battalion of the SA regiment in Munich. In addition to the commander of the SA regiment, Wilhelm Brückner , and the leaders of the other two battalions of the regiment, Edmund Heines and Karl Beggel , he was one of the four highest SA leaders in Munich in 1923. At that time, about 600 men were subordinate to him .

In his position as leader of the 3rd Battalion of the Munich SA Regiment, Knauth took part in the Hitler Putsch on November 8th and 9th, 1923, an attempt to overthrow the existing state by force by the organizations of the extreme ethnic groups that were grouped together in the Working Group of Patriotic Associations Right.

In 1924 Knauth was a defendant in one of the Hitler Putsch trials that were held in the spring and summer of 1924 before the People's Court in Munich I. He was held responsible for the theft of newly printed banknotes with a face value of several billiards Reichsmarks by the SA subordinate to him during the occupation of the Munich Reichsbank printing works on the morning of November 9th. The later Prime Minister Hoegner spoke of "28,000 trillion paper marks" that Knauth had acquired "to pay off the Hitler troops" under threat of armed violence. The author Dornberg even quantifies the sum of the banknotes stolen by Knauth's people (in the English numerical nomenclature) as "quadrillions of marks". In addition, Knauth was charged with storming the St. Anne's monastery, in which larger arsenals were kept. The date of his conviction is just as difficult to find in the literature as the sentence. The later Bavarian Prime Minister Hoegner reports, however, that Knauth was imposed a "fortress penalty" for which the court granted him a "full probation period" (Wilhelm Hoegner, Derpolitische Radikalismus in Deutschland, 1919-1933. Olzog, Munich 1966, p. 138) .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Date and place of birth according to the Munich State Archives: Police Directorate Munich No. 6713, p. 72: Memorandum on Johann Knauth from January 26, 1924 (digitized version) . See also: John Dornberg: Munich 1923: The Story of Hitler's First Grab for Power , 1982, p. 350.
2. ↑ Helmut Heiber (edit.): Files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP. Reconstruction of a lost stock . Regesten, Vol. 1, Munich a. a. 1983, p. 81 refers to a note from the office of the Führer 's deputy on "the death and the funeral date of director Hans Knauth, a' personal acquaintance 'of Hitler" "from February 1935.
3. ^ John Dornberg: Munich 1923: The Story of Hitler's First Grab for Power , 1982, p. 350.
4. ↑ Registered in the Munich address book for 1924 as a businessman with residence at Theresienstraße 78 ( digitized version ).
5. ^ John Dornberg: Munich 1923: The Story of Hitler's First Grab for Power , 1982, p. 350.