Heinrich Trambauer

Heinrich Trambauer (1923).

Heinrich Wilhelm Trambauer (born August 21, 1899 in Nuremberg , † October 16, 1942 in Munich ) was a German National Socialist . As a standard bearer during the Hitler putsch in 1923, after the exchange of fire at the Munich Feldherrnhalle, he took the flag of his SA unit, contaminated with the blood of a fellow putschist who had been killed . As the “blood flag ”, this flag became one of the strongest symbols of National Socialist propaganda . Trambauer himself was so badly mistreated by an SS superior in a dispute in 1932 that he suffered permanent brain damage and died mentally deranged in a psychiatric institution.

Life

Before 1923

Trambauer was a son of the mirror manufacturer Gottfried Trambauer and his wife Emilie, nee. Depth. Trambauer was admitted to a nursing home immediately after his birth. At the age of two he came into the family of a forester. He attended the Flurschule, the Winthierschule and the Klenzeschule. He completed the holiday school in the last school mentioned.

After his discharge from public holiday school, Trambauer worked for a gardener and eventually as a casual worker, mostly as a hotel servant. He worked in the Munich hotels Reichsadler, Deutscher Kaiser, Regina-Palast, Königshof, Senefelderhof and the European Court. He also worked in the Lindenschlößchen Hotels in Kohlgrub and Hotel Fest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, as well as in the Sonnenbickl Hotel in Sonnenbickl.

After he volunteered for military service in 1917 , Trambauer joined the 7th Field Artillery Regiment (2nd replacement battalion) on February 14, 1917. On June 6, 1917 he came to the Western Front with the Bavarian Reserve Field Artillery Regiment No. 6 . Trambauer did not suffer any wounds during the war, but was assigned to a convalescent company due to illness, so that he spent little time in the front line. During the November Revolution of 1918 he was a member of a soldiers' council .

On March 2, 1919, Trambauer was subsequently promoted to NCO because of his bravery in the face of the enemy. He also received the Iron Cross 2nd class. On June 12, 1919, he was finally released from military service by the Munich II district command.

In May 1919 Trambauer took part in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic with the Epp Freikorps . He stayed in Munich as a member of the Munich Military Regiment and then switched to the Bavarian State Police . However, he did not pass the exam for permanent employment in the police force and from then on earned his living doing odd jobs, primarily as a hotel servant.

Trambauer joined the NSDAP in 1922 at the latest , where he became secretary of a local NSDAP group . He was also one of the first members of the SA, which was founded in 1921 . In early 1923 he became the permanent standard bearer of the 6th Company of the Munich SA Regiment.

Participants in the Hitler Putsch

During the march to the Feldherrnhalle, Trambauer carried the first swastika flag. When the column of putschists disbanded after an exchange of fire with units of the state police at the Feldherrnhalle, Trambauer fled with his flag. According to Georg Wiborg, group leader of the 6th company of the NSDAP SA, and Waldemar Greyers, Andreas Bauriedl , who was shot in the stomach, was partially on the flag. According to the report by Trambauer's superior Karl Eggers , the blood on the flag must have come from Anton Hechenberger . Trambauer hid the flag, pole and end piece in his apartment and handed the parts over to Eggers around April 1924. He in turn handed the flag over to Hitler in February 1925.

Carrier of the "blood flag"

Party congress on the occasion of the re-establishment of the NSDAP in February 1925. The blood flag hangs on the wall behind Hitler.

Hitler had a new rod and point procured for the flag and a cuff attached to the shaft with the names of the three men of the 6th Company of the SA who were killed in the putsch. At the meeting for the re-establishment of the NSDAP in 1925, the flag was placed in the spotlight as a wall decoration. Trambauer was one of the first members of the new NSDAP ( membership number 5.011). At the First Reich Party Congress of the NSDAP in Weimar in 1926 , he was the bearer of the flag, which Hitler symbolically handed over to the then leader of the SS, Joseph Berchtold , as trustee at the opening and referred to for the first time in his speech as the "blood flag".

In the following productions of the "Blood Flag", with which the flag consecration was carried out from 1926, Trambauer, who had also been a member of the SS since 1926, was initially the trunk carrier.

According to a report by the Munich Police Department on May 9, 1927, Trambauer and Karl Ostberg were suspected of planning and carrying out an attack on Munich's main synagogue at 7 Herzog-Max-Straße.

When Trambauer moved to Königs Wusterhausen in Brandenburg in February 1927 , the SS man Jakob Grimminger took over the task of standard bearer. Grimminger held this position almost continuously until 1945. Trambauer moved to Braunschweig and in 1928 to Blankenburg in the Harz Mountains , where he founded the SA of the local NSDAP group there. In 1929 he returned to Munich.

Another fate

Trambauer was initially unemployed in Munich and around 1930 was employed as a porter at the NSDAP's relief fund in the Brown House . He was briefly dismissed in 1931 on suspicion of theft and, after proving his innocence, employed as a garage attendant for the party. In the Munich SS squadron he also administered the membership fees for the 1st Storm of the Munich SS Standard (1 / I / 1) and, from November 1931, of the Sturmbanns I of the Standard (I / 1).

In the spring of 1932, Trambauer accused the leader of the Munich SS Standard, Heinrich Höflich , of having used standard money for private purposes and of having bought a car from it. Politely asked to hand over the receipts, which Trambauer refused. To clarify the dispute, Trambauer was summoned to see party treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz in the Braune Haus on August 3, 1932 , where he also met Höflich and the party functionary Christian Weber . Trambauer stated that he considered Polite to be a morally unworthy person who was not suitable for carrying an SS standard. The easily excitable Polite then beat up Trambauer, while Schwarz and Weber did not intervene. Trambauer initially fled home and refused hospital admission. Due to the anxiety that soon set in, he was admitted to the psychiatric department of Schwabing Hospital on August 13, 1932 . A triple fracture of the skull, a crushing of the aorta , a fracture of the right frontal bone with crushing of an optic nerve and several knocked out teeth were found. Trambauer stated that he heard voices. Guardianship proceedings were initiated in September 1932 . The doctors diagnosed a "pathological disorder of mental activity" which they attributed to the head trauma they had suffered .

On October 28, 1932, he was politely sentenced to three weeks imprisonment and a monthly pension of RM 100 for dangerous bodily harm . In the appeal process, Höflich's act was classified as "politically motivated" so that it fell under the Reich amnesty of December 1932 . The proceedings were discontinued on January 11, 1933. In an SS court case, Höflich had already been rehabilitated as an SS leader in September 1932. In 1934 Trambauer received the NSDAP's Golden Decoration (No. 511) and the " Blood Order " (No. 660).

Trambauer remained in psychiatric treatment. The white book published in Paris in 1934 on the shootings of June 30, 1934 and Otto Strasser incorrectly reported his death. The treatment costs were paid first by Höflich, then by the staff of the Deputy Leader and the City of Munich, and from 1937 onwards from the NSDAP 's thanks to Adolf Hitler . Trambauer was expelled from the party on February 21, 1938 as an insane person. In a new procedure, membership was restored on June 28, 1939 for reasons of equity and gratitude.

In 1939 Trambauer, whose state of health continued to deteriorate, was briefly transferred to the Gabersee nursing home . On April 3, 1942, he was transferred to the Psychiatric University Clinic in Munich , where he was diagnosed with a " schizophrenic end state" and on April 23, 1942, he was transferred to the Eglfing-Haar institution because of "personal and public danger". Here died Trambauer on a " catarrhal - purulent [n] bronchitis ". He was probably not a victim of euthanasia under National Socialism . The head of the Munich Gauamt, Hans Hackl, and a guard of honor from participants in the Hitler putsch with the "blood flag" took part in the funeral service .

Archival tradition

Two personnel files on Trambauer have been preserved in the Federal Archives in the holdings of the former Berlin Document Center (BDC: DS: Film G 147, images 865–917; BDC: PK: Film R 51, 1255–1524). A file from the main archive of the NSDAP has also landed in the Federal Archives (NS 26/1278).

There are also various personnel files on persons closely related to Trambauer in the Berlin Document Center, which contain documents about him. So to his wife (BDC: OPG-NA: Film A 38, images 297-316; BDC: PK: Film R 51, images 1145–1172; BDC: PK: Film L 405, images 2929-2937), to the second husband his wife (BDC: Film SSO 150-B) and his tormentor Heinrich Höflich (SSO 102-A).

literature

• Jay W. Baird : To Die for Germany. Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon . Bloomington 1990, ISBN 0-253-31125-X .
• Rainer Orth : "Beaten to an intellectual cripple by an irresponsible comrade." The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer . In: "Historische Mitteilungen der Ranke-Gesellschaft" 25 (2012), pp. 208–236.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer . In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), pp. 215f., 218.
2. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer. In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), p. 218.
3. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer . In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), p. 219.
4. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), p. 230.
5. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer . In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), p. 225.
6. ↑ Rainer Orth: "Beaten to a spiritual cripple by an irresponsible comrade". The case of the Hitler putschist Heinrich Trambauer . In: "Historische Mitteilungen" 25 (2012), p. 234.