Harnier Circle

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The Harnier-Kreis was a resistance group against National Socialism founded in 1933 , which was active throughout Bavaria until 1939. His resistance was Catholic and monarchist motivated.

In the years 1933 to 1939 there was a lot of advertising and gathering activity, thousands of leaflets were distributed. The movement was crushed by the Gestapo in early August 1939 . In addition to its founder Heinrich Weiß and his successor Adolf von Harnier , Wilhelm Seutter von Lötzen , Josef Zott and Franz Xaver Fackler as well as Gebhard Fahrner, Heinrich Pflüger and Karl Schuster were leading members.

motivation

The purpose and aim of the organization was to act as a catching organization to hold together the elements loyal to the king in Bavaria and to wait for a suitable point in time to restore the monarchy . Instead of the “Greater German Reich”, federal states were to be created again and the House of Wittelsbach reinstated. A restoration of the imperial dignity by the Hohenzollern people was opposed to it. Since the spring of 1937 there have been contacts with Catholic-legitimist circles in Austria as well as with Catholic-separatist forces in the Rhineland .

Members

The association saw itself as a rescue organization for like-minded people, in which people of various origins and backgrounds came together. 75% of the members belonged to Catholic organizations, 10% were clergy, u. a. I was in contact with Father Rupert Mayer . Violence was rejected in principle. In August 1939 the Gestapo was able to prove 130 members, most of them in Upper Bavaria . Members were even found in Berchtesgaden "under the eyes of the dictator".

The sale of this postcard with the Crown Prince couple Rupprecht and Antonia von Bayern also helped the Harnier district to finance its activities.

activities

In 1933, the garden manager of Nymphenburg Palace , Heinrich Weiß, built up a circle of monarchist-minded people, including the sculptor Margarethe Elisabeth Freiin von Stengel . She designed a pin with the Patrona Bavariae as a harmless identification mark. Stengel, who came from the Oldenbourg publishing dynasty , took over the costs as well as the purchase of a duplicating machine for the production of leaflets. Postcards showing Crown Prince Rupprecht and his wife Antonia were available to finance the activities . They were sold to like-minded people at prices ranging from 50 pfennigs to 1 Reichsmark. The group met, disguised as a regulars' table, alternately in Munich beer cellars such as Mathäser . In addition, Heinrich Weiss' living room in the former kitchen wing of Nymphenburg Palace was often used as a meeting place.

In 1935, alongside Wilhelm Seutter von Lötzen, Josef Zott also joined the group. The work was interrupted when Stengel was arrested by the Gestapo on November 14, 1935. Her subsequent surveillance forced her to leave the group. In 1935/1936 Josef Zott came into contact with the KPD , which tried to form a united front against the National Socialists. However, the contact did not produce any results. Zott did not inform other members of the group about this.

In 1936/37 the movement was systematically expanded, the goals clearly defined and an action fund founded. The grown group was divided into cells with ladders at local, district and district level. On April 20, 1936, the group considered how one could disrupt the opening of the Haus der Deutschen Kunst with an action "in order to attract attention and to prove that one can get to the Führer."

At the latest during this time, the lawyer Adolf von Harnier joined the group around Heinrich Weiß. Margarethe von Stengel and Harnier knew each other from their youth. He and her brothers were schoolmates. In the spring of 1939, in addition to the four private cars in use, a separate “company car” could be purchased for carrying out propaganda trips.

The most important means of propaganda were multi-page leaflets that were distributed via liaison officers from autumn 1937. One began with the headline: "A madman has usurped power in Germany, he is in the hands of criminals". This was followed by the reasons, murders and other atrocities committed by the Nazi government were listed. The circulation of the leaflets was up to 30,000 copies. The population in rural areas served as the target group. They were always signed with "Schmied von Kochel" , who is considered a symbolic figure for the liberation of Bavaria.

Tearling lead story from a leaflet by the monarchist-separatist resistance fighters around Heinrich Weiß / Harnier-Kreis.

Questions of constitutional and political nature were regularly discussed, with different views on social law issues. One expected an end to National Socialism through domestic or foreign political events. A "state political and legal vacuum as a result of some foreign policy crisis or a war could lead to the liquidation of the current system", as Adolf von Harnier put it to the Gestapo.

Other program items consisted of a mixture of different ideas, such as the "introduction of the 36-hour week, reduction of social security contributions, introduction of maximum salaries, safeguarding work, reorganization of youth education, strict application of Christian moral laws ...". For the agricultural sector, the legally guaranteed total purchase of agricultural products, import controls, a closed cooperative structure of the peasant class and the construction of cooperative houses for each community were planned.

At the beginning of December 1937 Heinrich Weiß left the group when it became known that he had an illegitimate child, which was considered unsustainable in the conservative group. Adolf von Harnier succeeded him.

Contacts with the nobility and royalty

Members of the nobility should also be won over to the cause. In 1937 Heinrich Weiß commissioned his colleague Wilhelm Seutter von Lötzen to contact Prince Waldburg-Zeil . Adolf von Harnier's numerous contacts with aristocratic houses such as the Arco , Spreti , Venningen, Brentano , Guttenberg , Lobkowitz , Thun , Schönborn , Trauttmansdorff and the like were also valuable for the organization . a.

Although Crown Prince Rupprecht was always cautious about monarchist associations, there were points of contact. In July 1938, Adolf von Harnier used his contacts with Rupprecht. “At the expense of the movement” he had “a dozen chrysanthemum sticks in white and blue sent to Leutstetten ” in July 1938 after Hans von Pechmann, a mutual acquaintance, had asked him “to help decorate the converted Leutstetten Castle.” 1938 was also the year in which Harnier had “introduced his friends Zott, Fackler and Pflüger” to the Crown Prince. The purpose was to "bring the concerns of ordinary people closer to the Crown Prince." This is said to have been reserved. The existence of the illegal group was not directly addressed either. In the hours of interrogation of the Crown Prince by the Gestapo in August 1939, no constructive cooperation could be proven.

Busting

The Gestapo was informed in detail about the group's activities at an early stage. As early as 1936, the Gestapo had smuggled the former communist Max Troll, known as "Theo", into the Harnierkreis. In 1937 he managed to smuggle in more informers into the group.

From August 4, 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II , the Gestapo arrested 125 members of the group in the first two weeks alone. Other accused were questioned and houses and apartments all over Bavaria were searched. "In total, the number grew to over 500 men in the course of the interrogation." The court proceedings were delayed, although a 219-page report was drawn up. The minor accused also had to serve up to 44 months in prison. The accused were the preparation for high treason, the production and distribution of written material and pictorial representations. In June 1944, the People's Court in Munich sentenced Adolf von Harnier to 10 years in prison and lost his civil rights . Seven other leading members were sentenced to several years in prison and prison, some of which had already been compensated for by the long pre-trial detention.

Josef Zott was sentenced to death by the People's Court in Berlin in October 1944 for preparation for high treason and executed on January 15, 1945 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison. Adolf von Harnier died a few days after the end of the war on May 12, 1945 in the Straubing prison of typhus .

literature

  • Heike Bretschneider: Resistance to National Socialism in Munich 1933–1945. Miscellanea Bavarica Monacensia, No. 4. Stadtarchiv Munich, 1968.
  • Marion Detjen : Appointed an enemy of the state. Resistance, resistance and denial against the Nazi regime in Munich. Buchendorfer Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-927984-81-7 .
  • Christina M. Förster: Der Harnier-Kreis (= Publications of the Commission for Contemporary History Series B, Research Volume 74) Schöningh, Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-506-79979-7 .
  • Doris Fuchsberger, Albrecht Vorherr: Nymphenburg Palace under the swastika. Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86906-605-9 .
  • Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , 6th, expanded and restructured edition Paderborn u. a. 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78080-5 , Volume I, pp. 489-491 (Harnier) and pp. 516-517 (Zott).
  • Gustl Müller-Dechent : Resistance in Munich - The Forgotten. Salzgitter 2004, ISBN 3-9809058-2-9 ( mueller-dechent.de PDF; 833 kB).
  • Jean Louis Schlim: Antonia of Luxembourg. Bavaria's last Crown Princess. Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7844-3048-1 .
  • Wilhelm Seutter of Lötzen: Bavaria's loyalty in resistance - memories 1933 - 1964. Feldafing 1964 ISBN 3-921763-57-6 (with a list of functionaries f on page 112 and the directory. Arrested ff on p.114.)
  • Dieter J. Weiss: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. A political biography. Regensburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7917-2047-0 .
  • Merlin Ergert-Gillern, Bavaria's resistance to Hitler. Der Harnier-Kreis , In: Weiß-Blaue Rundschau , No. 5 - 62nd year, Rosenheim 2019, pp. 14–15.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Merlin Ergert-Gillern, Bavaria's Resistance to Hitler. Der Harnier-Kreis, In: Weiß-Blaue Rundschau, No. 5 - 62nd year, Rosenheim 2019, p. 14.
  2. ↑ StadtAm Police Headquarters 1091
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Seutter von Lötzen: Bavaria's allegiance to the king in the resistance. Feldafing 1964, ISBN 3-921763-57-6 .
  4. ↑ StadtAm Polizeidirektion 1091 (interrogation protocol from September 16, 1939)
  5. ↑ StadtAM Police Directorate 1098 Typewriter manuscript of the Gestapo: The illegal monarchist movement in Bavaria, October 1939 (p. 75)
  6. ↑ StadtAM Police Directorate 988
  7. ↑ StadtAM Police Headquarters 1098
  8. ↑ Wilhelm Seutter von Lötzen: Bavaria's allegiance to the king in the resistance . Feldafing 1964, ISBN 3-921763-57-6 .
  9. ↑ StadtAM Police Headquarters 1098