Heinz Rutha

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Heinrich (Heinz) Rutha (born April 20, 1897 in Kunnersdorf ; † November 5, 1937 in Böhmisch Leipa ) was an interior designer and politician of the Sudeten German Party (SdP). He was a leading member of the Sudeten German youth movement after the First World War , a close confidante of Konrad Henlein and co-founder of the Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia .

Youth and First World War

Rutha was born into the family of a master miller, attended secondary school in Bohemian Leipa ( Česká Lípa ) and graduated from a commercial academy in Prague . He took over his father's mill and converted it into a cabinet maker and an interior design office. At a young age he joined the Wandervogel movement, became an active member of the German-Bohemian Wandervogelverein, led their group in Bohemian-Leipa during the war years 1915/16 and became the so-called "Gauherzog" of the Wandervogel. Because of a congenital heart disease, he is said to have been drafted for military service only at the age of 20 in autumn 1917. On the front in northern Italy he was wounded by poison gas in an attack by Italian troops.

After the First World War

After the war, he played a key role in the expansion of the Bohemian Forest movement of the migratory birds, and in 1921 he participated in the “Sudetendeutschen Wandervogel e. V. ". There he developed the idea of ​​a German-national men's union in the sense of an elitist fraternity due to the problems of the Sudeten Germans with the integration into Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918 . Together with Walter Heinrich , he founded a group within the Wandervogels in 1921; she was influenced by the work of the poet Stefan George about lifelong loyalty in male friendships. Numerous Viennese members of the German Academic Guild joined this group . This network initially operated under the name Heinrich-Rutha-Kreis , later the group used the name Kameradschaft or Kammeradschaftsbund (KB) . From 1926 the circle gave itself the official title Working Group for Social Sciences and in 1930 the group officially registered as the “Comradeship Association for National and Social Political Education”, an influential organization of Sudeten German intellectuals who were close to the teachings of Othmar Spann .

Konrad Henlein , who was friends with Heinrich Rutha, also joined this comradeship association . Together with their mutual friend Josef Suchy , Heinrich Rutha and Konrad Henlein campaigned for the German Gymnastics Association, a new physical fitness movement for children, men and women. In 1933, when an economic crisis in Czechoslovakia had led to high unemployment, they, like many comradeship activists, got involved in a Sudeten German home front, from which the Sudeten German Party emerged, of which he was one of the founding members.

In 1934/35 Rutha initiated a voluntary Sudeten German labor service for unemployed young people. In 1935 he became a specialist in matters relating to nationalities and the League of Nations for the Sudeten German Party. As a foreign policy advisor, close colleague and friend of Konrad Henlein, he had a great influence on the reactions of the Sudeten Germans to the programs of the national-Czech government in Prague. He was under pressure from rival Sudeten German party officials. Above all, the National Socialist group of the so-called “Aufbruch-Kreis” wanted to disempower him. Rutha was Vice President of the German League of Nations and delegate of the European Nationalities Congress .

The Rutha Affair of 1937 and its consequences

In 1937 the media in the first Czechoslovakia (1918–1938) published alleged revelations about Rutha's homosexual activities, based on police interrogations of young men who worked in Rutha's interior design office and an associated furniture factory. These publications led to the arrest of Heinrich Rutha and 20 other leading figures of the Sudeten German Comradeship Association by Czech police authorities in October 1937.

On the night of November 4th to 5th, 1937, Rutha hanged himself in his cell in the judicial prison of Bohemian-Leipa. In his farewell letter, Rutha (according to Walter Becher ) warned the SdP: Work for the coexistence of the peoples in our country!

One of the immediate consequences of his death was that Konrad Henlein, as head of the SdP, made concessions to the Aufbruch-Kreis. Members of the Aufbruch-Kreis also used the Rutha affair in the following years as an instrument in order to drive out rivals within the party - especially opponents of the separation of the Sudeten areas from the CSR . This approach reached a climax with the Dresden Trials of 1939, which led to the disempowerment of an entire wing of the SdP around Henlein's secretary Walter Brand . In an article in the SS magazine Das Schwarze Korps in 1940, Rutha figured as the main figure in an alleged "homosexual complex Sudetenland", an alleged conspiracy against the German Reich from 1933 to 1945 .

literature

  • Bohemia - German newspaper, November 7, 1937
  • Walter Becher:  Rutha Heinrich. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 337.
  • Johannes Stauda: The Wandering Bird in Bohemia: Representation, 2, 1975
  • Reiner Franke: London and Prague: Materials on the Problem of a Multinational Nation-State, 1919–1938; Publication of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) , Volume 40, Munich, R. Oldenbourg, 1982.
  • Walter Becher : contemporary witness. A life story . Munich 1990.
  • Mark Cornwall: Heinrich Rutha and the Unraveling of a Homosexual Scandal in 1930s Czechoslovakia . In: GLQ. A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies . 8, 2002, 3, ISSN  1064-2684 , pp. 319-347.
  • Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Man for man. Biographical Lexicon . Frankfurt / M. 2001.
  • Margarete Ikrath-Rutha: Heinrich Rutha. His life's work and his goals for Sudeten Germanism . 1985.
  • Andreas Luh: The German Gymnastics Federation in the first Czechoslovak Republic. From folk club operations to popular political movement . Munich 2006.
  • Ronald M. Smelser : The Sudeten Problem and the Third Reich, 1933–1938. From Volkstumsppolitik to National Socialist Foreign Policy Munich 1980.
  • Ferdinand Seibt , Hans Lemberg and Helmut Slapnicka: Biographical Lexicon for the History of the Bohemian Countries, published on behalf of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) , Volume III, Heinrich (Heinz) Rutha, pages 551 and 552, Oldenbourg Verlag Munich 2000, ISBN 3-486- 55973-7
  • Ludwig Weichselbaumer: Walter Brand (1907–1980). A Sudeten German politician caught between autonomy and union . Munich 2008.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Haag: 'Knights of the Spirit': The Kameradschaftsbund, pp. 133-153, in: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 8, No. 3 (July, 1973), p. 136
  2. ↑ Becher: Zeitzeuge , p. 85.
  3. ↑ Heinz Höhne: "Kohen" cannot be grasped. In: welt.de . August 20, 1999, accessed October 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Rutha, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rutha, Heinrich; Lenk, Richard (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudeten German politician
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Kunnersdorf
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1937
Place of death Bohemian Leipa