Hans Neuwirth

Hans Neuwirth (born May 16, 1901 in Joslowitz , Znaim district ; † April 6, 1970 in Munich ) was a Sudeten German politician ( DCSVP / SdP / NSDAP and CSU ), lawyer and expellee functionary.

Origin, studies, work as a journalist and lawyer

Hans Neuwirth came from an established Catholic and nationally minded family, his father was a middle school teacher. One of his ancestors was the Redemptorist Klemens Maria Hofbauer . Neuwirth studied law at the universities of Vienna, Kiel and Prague. During his studies in Vienna he heard Othmar Spann , whose lectures aroused his interest. He was involved in the VdST Vienna and was awarded Dr. jur. PhD . At times he worked in the German Political Labor Office in Prague and for the working group of German business associations. As a journalist, he worked as an editor for, among other things, the Wiener Neuesten Nachrichten in Prague and the Scherlpresse, as well as later Nazi papers such as the newspaper The Attack . He was a reporter for the Völkischer Beobachter at the national sports trial in Brno , which was carried out in 1932 against a paramilitary and SA-like organization. He was also an unskilled worker for a lawyer in Nikolsburg. Finally he settled as a lawyer first in Znojmo and from 1934 in Prague. There he worked for the VDA and appeared as a criminal defense lawyer in political trials.

Political activity in the First Czechoslovak Republic

Politically, he was active during the First Czechoslovak Republic, initially with the German Christian Social People's Party , whose city councilor he was in 1931 in Nikolsburg. At the party he acted as a foreign policy advisor and in this function was also in contact with the German Chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher as well as Othmar Spann in Vienna. Within the party he maintained contacts with Erwin Zajicek , but after the popular sports trial he gradually turned away from the party. In 1935 he switched to the Sudeten German Party , of which he was a member of the Prague House of Representatives from spring 1935 to October 1938. During his parliamentary term, he was a member of the club board, the joint parliamentary club and the political committee of the main leadership of the party. During the worsening Sudeten crisis in autumn 1938 he was a member of the negotiating delegation that met with Czechoslovak government representatives on the future of the Sudetenland . At the height of the crisis, as part of the mobilization of the Czechoslovak forces, he was taken into custody for ten days in Asch on September 23, 1938 . After the Munich Agreement , he continued to work as a lawyer in Prague.

Turning to National Socialism

After the occupation of the rump Czech state on March 15, 1939, he became a member of the NSDAP at the end of May 1939 retrospectively to the beginning of April 1939 ( membership number 7,077,679). In 1941, he had to answer for the allegation that “he sided with the so-called Comradeship Association during the internal party disputes between the National Socialist break-up circle and the tension supporters ” in 1941, in proceedings before the Sudetenland district court. Furthermore, he was probably also suspicious because of his previous contacts with Czechoslovak government representatives.

From the beginning of April 1942 until the end of the Second World War he was a member of the board of directors of the Aryanized Mining and Industrial Works AG in Unter Reichenau , of which he was also director general. Shortly before the end of the war, he tried unsuccessfully to transfer the works to Czechs he knew by means of a general power of attorney. When Czechs came to the plant after the end of the war, he is said to have introduced himself as a former Czech MP. He is said to have put on a red armband and is said to have been an "honorary communist".

Imprisonment, release to Bavaria, functionary for expellees

However, Neuwirth was arrested by Czech partisans in May 1945 and deported to Central Bohemia. He was then imprisoned in Pankrác Prison. A people's court sentenced him to 17 years of forced labor, which he had to do mainly in the Joachimsthal uranium mines. Released early in 1956, he moved to Bavaria. He found his family in Waldkraiburg , where his wife worked as a worker. In Munich he took over the management of the Collegium Carolinum and eventually returned to work as a lawyer. He was a member of the Federal Assembly of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft , the Sudeten German Council and the Witikobund .

CSU functionary and press scandal

From 1957 the expellee functionary became involved in the CSU and became a board member of the Union of Expellees in the CSU. He ran unsuccessfully for the state election in Bavaria in 1962 . In the autumn of 1963 he was commissioned by Franz Josef Strauss to win sympathizers and members of right-wing parties for the CSU. Neuwirth's comment in Bayernkurier , entitled “Daring Tactics or Mistakes”, drew special attention on April 11, 1964, in which he criticized Foreign Minister Gerhard Schröder's attitude towards detente towards Eastern bloc states and claimed that Schröder “did not represent the basic attitude of the majority of the German people on questions of foreign policy ”. The Federal Chancellor Ludwig Erhard issued a declaration to reject the article and chairmen of state associations of the CDU , FDP and SPD also stood on Schröder's side. However, the CSU state management saw no reason to distance itself from Neuwirth's comment. Neuwirth himself drove in view of the turmoil around his person after the publication of the article to the CSU state management, where he said: "I'll bring you my head, where is the scaffold?"

After the press reported in 1967 about a “brown mafia” in the vicinity of Strauss, and the name Neuwirth was also mentioned in this context, Strauss said on March 20, 1967 in the CSU state executive as follows: “We all know Neuwirth well. The man is sick and poor. His political importance is as great as his income from the law firm. [...] With all the respect I have for Neuwirth, his influence on the top committees of the party and my opinion-making is not even as high as his income, but zero. "

Neuwirth is listed as an "Aryanization specialist" with an entry in the GDR Brown Book .

Fonts

• Fight or understanding? : 2 fundamental Speeches at d. Kundgebg d. Sudetendt. Party on February 17, 1938 in Dt. Home in Prague , Karl H. Frank, Karlsbad / Leipzig 1938 (together with Wilhelm Sebekovsky )

literature

• Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest. Statistical-biographical handbook of the parliamentarians of the German minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945. Volume 1: Introduction, systematics, sources and methods, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia. 1st – 2nd Edition. Documentation-Verlag, Copenhagen 1991, ISBN 87-983829-3-4 , p. 321 f.
• Walter Brand : Dr. Hans Neuwirth in memoriam. In: "Witiko-Brief" from May 1970

Web links

• Hans Neuwirth in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest. Statistical-biographical handbook of the parliamentarians of the German minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945. Volume 1: Introduction, systematics, sources and methods, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia. , Copenhagen 1991, p. 321 f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Paul Stein: "Where is the scaffold?" Hans Neuwirth cannot understand the excitement . In: Die Zeit of April 24, 1964
3. ↑ Tobias Weger : “Volkstumskampf” without end? Sudeten German Organizations, 1945-1955 (= The Germans and Eastern Europe. Volume 2). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57104-0 , p. 274
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} CDU / CSU Almost animal hatred. In: Der Spiegel , issue 17 of April 22, 1964, pp. 19-20.
5. ↑ Jaroslav Šebek: Sudeten German Catholicism on the Way of the Cross: Political Activities of the Sudeten German Catholics in the First Czechoslovak Republic in the 1930s . Lit, Berlin / Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-8258-9433-7 (= Church and Society in the Carpathian-Danube Region, Volume 2), p. 131
6. ^ Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest. Statistical-biographical handbook of the parliamentarians of the German minorities in East Central and Southeastern Europe 1919–1945. Volume 1: Introduction, systematics, sources and methods, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia. , Copenhagen 1991, p. 322
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Joachim Lilla: The representation of the "Reichsgau Sudetenland" and the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" in the Grossdeutsche Reichstag . In: Bohemia. Journal of History and Culture of the Bohemian Lands , Volume 40, Issue 2, 1999, p. 451
8. ↑ Tim Geiger: Atlanticists against Gaullists: Foreign policy conflict and intra-party power struggle in the CDU / CSU 1958-1969 , Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2008, p. 281
9. ^ Franz Josef Strauss on March 20, 1967 in front of the CSU state executive. Quoted from: Tim Geiger: Atlantiker gegen Gaullisten: Foreign policy conflict and intra-party power struggle in the CDU / CSU 1958-1969 , Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2008, p. 281
10. ↑ Brown Book of the GDR, Berlin 1968, p. 387 f.