Heinrich Foerster

This article deals with the party leader Heinrich Foerster. For other people see Heinrich Förster .

Heinrich Foerster (born June 12, 1902 in Gemmingen ; † August 28, 1964 in Mannheim ) was an old fighter of the NSDAP and was considered a "loyal fighter" of the Rhineland-Palatinate Gauleiter Josef Bürckel .

Life

Foerster attended grammar school in Mannheim and passed the one-year exam there in November 1918 . At the age of 17 he was already involved in the German National Guard and Defense Association . In spring 1921 he was a co-founder of the Mannheim NSDAP local group. From 1922 to 1923 he was a member of the SA . In June 1925 he became head of the NSDAP local group in Ludwigshafen am Rhein . After the bans by the Rhineland Commission , he rejoined the NSDAP on January 1, 1926 (membership number 29.174). He later portrayed it as if the re-admission of the NSDAP and the Völkischer Beobachter were due to his negotiating skills. From 1926 to 1932 Foerster was editor (editor) of the Gau newspaper Der Eisenhammer . On November 24, 1931, he was sentenced to four months' imprisonment for continuing defamation against the Dirmstein mayor Richard Römer.

In 1929 Foerster became the youngest member of the city council of Ludwigshafen am Rhein. From 1930 he was head of the NSDAP parliamentary group there. Within the Ludwigshafen NSDAP, Foerster was the leader of a populist tendency that represented the "interests of socially declassed petty-bourgeois middle-class strata and the often unemployed activists of the Nazi military associations". It competed with the “academics wing” around district leader Wilhelm Wittwer, dominated by academics employed by IG Farben who sought an alliance with the old bourgeois elite. For internal party irritations caused an end in 1929 by the Social Democratic Palatine Post published application letter Foerster to a Mannheimer banker from 1925 in which the Foerster nationalist ideas as "heresy" had called.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, Foerster was second mayor of Ludwigshafen am Rhein from 1933 to 1934 . In January 1933 Foerster was appointed authorized commissioner of the NSDAP for the Saarland in Saarbrücken. From July 1934 until the end of the Nazi regime he was head of the Gaupresseamt ​​Rheinpfalz.

After the end of the war, Foerster lived in Neckarsteinach . In 1950 a preliminary investigation against Foerster for crimes against humanity was dropped. The subject of the proceedings was the looting and destruction of the premises of the social democratic newspaper Pfälzische Post as well as the deportation of functionaries of the workers' parties to the Dachau concentration camp in March 1933.

literature

• Franz Maier: Biographical organization manual of the NSDAP and its structures in the area of ​​today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate (=  publications of the commission of the state parliament for the history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate . No. 28 ). 2nd Edition. Zarrentin v. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 2009, ISBN 978-3-7758-1408-9 , pp. 218-220 .

Web links

• Entry on Heinrich Foerster in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Schepua: "Socialism of Action" for the "Bulwark in the West": Development and characteristics of National Socialism in the Palatinate . In: Heinz-Günther Borck and Wolfgang Laufer (eds.): Yearbook for West German State History . 25th year. Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, 1999, ISSN  0170-2025 , p. 565 .
2. ↑ Michael Schepua: " Seizure of power" and establishment of the Nazi system in an industrial center: Ludwigshafen and Oppau. In: Hans-Georg Meyer, Hans Berkessel: “A National Socialist Revolution is a thorough matter.” (= The time of National Socialism in Rhineland-Palatinate , Volume 1) Schmidt, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-87439-451-4 , pp. 82–97, here pp. 83f.
3. ^ Hans Fenske: The Palatinate NSDAP 1921-1932. In: Communications of the Historical Association of the Palatinate. Volume 85 (1987), ISSN  0073-2680 , pp. 347-381, here p. 363.
4. ↑ Maier, Organization Handbook , p. 220.