Heinrich von Gleichen-Sootworm

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Raimund August Heinrich Freiherr von Gleichen-Rußwurm (born July 14, 1882 in Dessau ; † July 29, 1959 in Göttingen ) was a manor owner , conservative publicist , founder and organizer of numerous associations, organizations and clubs of the Conservative Revolution after 1918.

Life

Heinrich von Gleichen was the owner of two manors in Tannroda and Birkigt in Thuringia and a cousin of the last great-grandson of Friedrich Schiller , the writer Alexander von Gleichen-Rußwurm , whom he provided with a life annuity until old age .

After graduating from high school and doing military service as a one-year volunteer , he studied law and political science in Lausanne, Leipzig, Kiel and Berlin. Despite a brilliant legal exam, von Gleichen turned down a job as a civil servant and administered his property. In 1912 he leased it and moved to Berlin to devote himself exclusively to his political interests.

A group of conservative thinkers formed around Gleichen-Rußwurm during the First World War , including Ernst Troeltsch at times . In October 1918 von Gleichen founded the association for national and social solidarity (the so-called solidarians ), which later headed Stadtler , together with the publicist Eduard Stadtler , the bankers Karl Helfferich and Simon Marx and the Christian trade unionists Franz Röhr and Adam Stegerwald . In April 1919, this group founded the weekly newspaper Das Gewissen , in the first edition of which Stadtler published the programmatic lead article “German Socialism Against East and West”. Von Gleichen was an active contributor to the magazine.

In March 1919 von Gleichen and Hans Roeseler organized the merger of solidarians with other associations. This resulted in the June Club and in May the Association for Non-Party Politics . Arthur Moeller van den Bruck played an important role as the chief ideologist in both groups . Von Gleichen's private apartment in Berlin also functioned as a meeting place for the June club at the beginning, while the association met in the Prussian mansion. When the June club dissolved in 1924, von Gleichen founded the German men's club in December 1924 with Bodo von Alvensleben and Walther Schotte . In 1925 he took over the editing of the magazine Das Gewissen (from 1918) from Eduard Stadtler and in 1928 changed the name to Der Ring . The June club also wore the ring as a symbol. Von Gleichen founded branches in other cities that were called rings and copied the model of British clubs and Masonic lodges . The gentleman's club became known when its members Heinrich Brüning in 1930 and Franz von Papen in 1932 became Chancellor of the Reich; the member Wilhelm von Gayl became Minister of the Interior in 1932.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 Gleichen-Russwurm was one of the 88 German writers who in October 1933, the vow faithful allegiance to the Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler signed. The gentlemen's club was renamed "Deutscher Klub" and existed in this form until 1944. In 1933 the club set up the Dirksen Foundation , which was supposed to promote contacts between the traditional elites and the National Socialists . Nazi figures such as Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Röhm sat on the foundation's board of trustees . In July 1934, foreign media erroneously reported that von Gleichen and Alvensleben had been arrested or even executed in the course of the so-called Röhm Putsch . In fact, Alvensleben's younger brother, Werner von Alvensleben , was arrested for a few days on June 30, 1934. These rumors prompted von Gleichen to publish a denial in the club magazine Der Ring on July 7, 1934 , in which he announced that he and Alvensleben were healthy and were at large.

After the Second World War Heinrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces and interned for several months. As " Junkerland " his goods were expropriated in the Soviet occupation zone. After his release from custody, von Gleichen fled the Soviet zone to Göttingen, where he died in 1959.

Heinrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm was married to the painter Helene Kutsche for the first time and had two children, including Kurt von Gleichen-Rußwurm . His second marriage to Maria Mannhardt remained childless.

Role and ideas

In his work on the “ Conservative Revolution ” of the 1920s, the conservative journalist Armin Mohler characterized Arthur Moeller van den Bruck as the heart , Eduard Stadtler as the drummer and Heinrich von Gleichen-Rußwurm as the organizer of the so-called ring movement . Von Gleichen's political ideas were therefore largely identical to those of Moeller van den Bruck. A specialty of Gleichens was his attempt to overcome the boundaries of ideologically oriented parties and trade unions in the “solidarity” movement, in the sense of Kaiser Wilhelm II's famous sentence on the outbreak of war in August 1914: “I don't know any parties anymore, I do I only know Germans. "

The central basic idea of ​​Moeller and thus of the Ring Movement was summarized by Kurt Lenk : The Germans once had a primitive “democracy” rooted in family “blood ties”, which was characterized by “leadership” and “allegiance”. It had been destroyed by the liberalism of the 19th century, a political movement of "upstarts" who slipped between the people and the elite . The "fall into sin" of this class and its "democracy" is their reason-driven reflection, which they have put in place of "natural feeling". But the people are called to restore the “original democracy” in a “national revolution”.

Publications

  • Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Heinrich von Gleichen, Max Hildebert Boehm (ed.): The new front . Gebr. Paetel, Berlin 1922 (programmatic collection of young conservatives).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Opitz : Fascism and Neo-Fascism . Publishing house Marxist sheets. Frankfurt / M. 1984, p. 98
  2. ^ R. Opitz: Faschismus und Neofaschismus, p. 99
  3. ^ R. Opitz: Faschismus und Neofaschismus, pp. 99f 105
  4. ^ R. Opitz: Faschismus und Neofaschismus, p. 105
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 185.
  6. ^ A denial , in: Pariser Tageblatt of July 8, 1934.
  7. ^ Jürgen Gruhle: Land reform as a purely arbitrary act. Heinrich von Gleichen was of good repute. Thuringian newspaper, November 14, 2008
  8. ^ R. Opitz: Faschismus und Neofaschismus, S. 98f
  9. ^ Kurt Lenk: German Conservatism . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M., New York 1989, pp. 146–158.
personal data
SURNAME Same-sootworm, Heinrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gleichen-Rußwurm, Raimund August Heinrich Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German young conservative publicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau
DATE OF DEATH July 29, 1959
Place of death Goettingen