Hans Otto Roth

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Hans Otto Roth (1924)

Hans Otto Roth (born April 29, 1890 in Schäßburg ( Romanian Sighișoara ), Transylvania , Austria-Hungary ; † April 1, 1953 in Ghencea , Bucharest , People's Republic of Romania ) was a Romanian-German politician .

life and work

Hans Otto Roth was born as the son of the lawyer Karl Roth (1846–1901) and Louise Roth, b. Isinglass (1855-1915); his grandfather Karl Roth served as city Hann leading official in Sighisoara. After attending elementary school from 1896 to 1900 and the Protestant grammar school in Schäßburg from 1900 to 1908, he studied law between 1908 and 1912 at the universities of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin and Zurich. He received his doctorate in Budapest in April 1913. In 1907/08 he held the office of Rex Chlamydatorum in the Coetus (student organization) of the Schäßburger Gymnasium, and between 1910 and 1912 he was chairman of the “Bund Sächsischer Hochschüler”. After receiving his doctorate, he worked in a Budapest law firm until 1915 and then did military service until 1917. From 1917 to 1918 he was editor of the “Transylvanian-German Tageblatt” in Sibiu.

Roth began his political career after the unification of Transylvania with Romania in 1918 . As a lawyer and secretary of the “Central Committee” and the “German People's Council for Transylvania”, he worked towards the political integration of Romanian Germans in the new political environment. Roth was one of the main speakers at the People's Day in Mediaș in January 1919 and a member of the "Delegation of the Saxon People", which brought the "Anschluss von Mediaș" to the king and government in Bucharest. As a member of the steering committee (the so-called “five-man committee”) of the “German-Saxon National Council for Transylvania”, he prepared the program of the “4th Sachsentag ”in November 1919 in Schäßburg, for which he wrote the new“ Saxon People's Program ”. In the same year Roth was elected as a member of the Romanian parliament, to which he belonged until 1938. Due to his many years of parliamentary activity, he became a senator by law and enjoyed great esteem in both German and Romanian political circles, having led the German parliamentary group as chairman of the German party in parliament since 1922 .

In contrast to his opponent Rudolf Brandsch , who campaigned for an alliance with the National Party of Transylvanian Romanians and with whose help he sought to realize the political program of the Romanian Germans, Roth took the position that the German minority should not be bound to any party but must try to work with the respective government. This position prevailed; it secured the Romanian Germans a certain number of seats in parliament in advance and a benevolent treatment of some of their demands. Nevertheless, the German parliamentarians had to accept a lot of setbacks, since the numerous governments of the interwar period, once they came to power, often did not adhere to the agreements made beforehand and did not want to accept an ethnic group law for national minorities. The approval of schools, churches and associations in the German mother tongue was seen as a success, which offered Romania's Germans certain opportunities to develop.

From 1921–1923 Roth was chairman of the “Deutsches Theaterverein”, 1928–1932 president of the “Hermannstädter Allgemeine Sparkasse”, 1938–1942 second president of the “Siebenbürgische Elektrizitätsgesellschaft”, 1939–1941 chairman of the board of directors of the “Hermannstädter Elektrizitätswerk”, 1939–1942 its chairman of the board of directors of the “Transylvanian-German Publishing House” (editor of the Transylvanian-German daily newspaper ). He held church offices in 1927 as principal attorney, 1926–1932 as a member of the regional consistory and 1932–1949 as regional church curator of the Evangelical Church AB in Romania . 1935–1948 he also worked as a lawyer in Bucharest. Between 1931 and 1934 he was chairman (president) of the Association of German Ethnic Groups in Europe . In this capacity he protested on June 15, 1933 during an audience with Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler against the persecution of the Jews that was beginning in Germany and pointed out the potential damage to the German minorities in Europe.

Roth followed the growing influence of the National Socialist- oriented “renewal movement” in Romania under Fritz Fabritius with concern and dislike . At the height of his political career, he wrote on September 11, 1939, ten days after the outbreak of World War II , in the Transylvanian-Deutsches Tageblatt :

" " It is our destiny to lead a double existence in a certain sense. We are Germans and want to be Germans. At the same time, we are citizens of the Romanian state, to which we are loyally linked [...]. With our work in non-German countries, we serve a major task to unite people [...]. " "

On July 4, 1940, Roth was appointed Minister for Minorities in the Ion Gigurtu cabinet , but he refused. In a conversation on September 8, 1940, the new Prime Minister Ion Antonescu asked him to join the cabinet as Minister of Justice. When Roth refused this, he offered him the Ministry of Education and, after another refusal, gave him a ministry of his choice.

On November 23, Romania entered the war on the side of Germany. Three days earlier, the "German ethnic group" and leadership of the new "NSDAP of the German ethnic group in Romania" was recognized as an official body and was given the right to issue "mandatory provisions for their members to maintain and consolidate their national life". People group leader was Andreas Schmidt . Schmidt referred to Roth as a "divider of the renewal movement and a complainer". In his speech of September 28, 1943, during a speech about Roth, Schmidt said:

“ “ You are one of the rare exceptions who still do not want to understand the National Socialist revolution in the fifth year of the war. That reveals your attitude towards the ethnic group. You will be deprived of the honorary right to render national services, which means that you are relieved of all duties in our ethnic group. " "

In this speech, Schmidt referred to Herbert Roth, Hans Otto Roth's son, as a “slacker” and “coward” because of his refusal to leave the Romanian army and join the Waffen SS . Because of this insult, both Herbert and Hans Otto Roth had Schmidt challenged to a duel (two Romanian-German generals delivered the demand as seconds). Schmidt refused to give satisfaction . Roth initiated an insulting process that ended after the end of the Second World War with the imposition of a fine on Schmidt, who was staying in an unknown location.

After the royal coup d'état and the resulting change of sides in Romania on August 23, 1944, Roth and other former parliamentary colleagues tried to represent the Romanian Germans who had become leaderless. He called on Romanian Germans to be loyal to the Romanian state. His efforts to prevent the deportation of Romanian Germans to the Soviet Union in early 1945 were unsuccessful. All German organizations were banned by the subsequent governments. After the Second World War, Romania came under Soviet influence. Under the Romanian Communist Party regime , the elites of the old system and political opponents were expropriated, abducted or murdered. Roth was arrested for the first time as an " enemy of the people " in the spring of 1948 and held for about eight weeks in the Bucharest Ministry of the Interior. In 1952 he was arrested again by the Securitate and died a year later on April 1, 1953 in the camp for political prisoners in Bucharest-Ghencea as a result of severe prison conditions. Hans Otto Roth left behind two children, Maria Luise and Herbert Roth, and his widow Paula Roth, nee Copony. His family was not notified of his death.

Roth was in contact with some members of the German resistance against National Socialism . His friends and acquaintances included Hans Bernd von Haeften from the German embassy in Romania, Ulrich von Hassell and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , who were all involved in planning the assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944 and who were later executed .

literature

  • Klaus Popa : The Romanian Germans between democracy and dictatorship. The political estate of Hans Otto Roth 1919–1951 , Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2003, ISBN 978-3-631-50978-4 , p. 821
  • Anton Schwob: Roth, Hans Otto . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 4. Munich 1981, p. 57 f.
  • Eduard Eisenburger : People and State Loyalty - Hans Otto Roth. In: They recognized the signs of the times , by the same, Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg), 1979, pp. 205–226
  • Alfred Honig: Dr. Hans Otto Roth +. In: Südostdeutsche Heimatblätter , Heft 2, 1953, pp. 43–46
  • Hans Beyer: Rudolf Brandsch and Hans Otto Roth. In: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter , No. 14, Munich, pp. 223–228
  • Rudolf Schuller: Last meeting with Dr. Hans Otto Roth. In: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter , No. 24, 1975, pp. 308-310
  • Herbert Roth: Not a year has been in vain. Behind barbed wire and bars. 1958-1964. Munich, 1987, pp. 151-158.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sabine Bamberger-Stemmann: The European Nationalities Congress 1925 to 1938. Herder Institute, 2000, p. 266.
  2. ^ Michael Kroner : Roth, Hans Otto . In: East German Biography (Kulturportal West-Ost)
  3. ↑ Florian Roth: Dr. Hans Otto Roth (1890–1953) - His grandson's reflections on the most important Romanian-German politician of the 20th century , May 13, 2009
  4. ^ Immo Eberl, Konrad G. Gündisch, Ute Richter, Annemarie Röder, Harald Zimmermann : Die Donauschwaben. German settlement in Southeast Europe. Exhibition catalog, ed. from the Ministry of the Interior of Baden-Württemberg, Sigmaringen 1987; 2. verb. and exp. Edition Sigmaringen 1989, → online
personal data
SURNAME Roth, Hans Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian German politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Sighișoara , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1953
Place of death Ghencea , Bucharest , People's Republic of Romania