Herbert von Bose

Herbert von Bose (early 1934)

Carl Fedor Eduard Herbert von Bose (born March 16, 1893 in Strasbourg , Alsace , † June 30, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German officer, intelligence officer, civil servant and resistance fighter against National Socialism . From 1932 to 1934 he was a close collaborator and advisor to the Reich Chancellor and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen . From 1933 to 1934 von Bose, as press chief, prepared Papens for a coup d'état directed against the Nazi government behind his back, which is why he was shot on June 30, 1934.

Life

Berlin memorial plaque on Neuchateller Strasse 8 in Berlin-Lichterfelde

Von Bose came from the old Saxon noble family of the same name . His father was Carl Fedor Bose (1856-1919), who as imperial Government as well as upper and Secret Baurat a department of the Imperial General Directorate of Railways in Alsace-Lorraine board. Bose's mother, Gertrud Römer, a daughter of the building councilor Eduard Römer and Vally Schwartz, was his father's second wife.

After attending a humanistic grammar school in Strasbourg, von Bose joined the Prussian army in 1911, where he was assigned to the 51st Field Artillery Regiment in Strasbourg.

Herbert von Bose (2nd from right) at the Kapp Putsch in Berlin, together with Hermann Ehrhardt in 1920.

From 1914 to 1918 von Bose took part in the First World War, in which he last reached the rank of first lieutenant and general staff officer in the cavalry brigade rifle division. With this unit he took part in the suppression of the November Revolution in the winter of 1918/1919 , where he was one of Waldemar Pabst's closest collaborators . In the fall of 1919 he reached the rank of captain and left the army shortly afterwards.

At the end of 1919, von Bose settled in Kassel . From late 1919 to early 1921 he was a member of the security police. In 1921 he changed as a (formally) civilian employee to the Abwehr , the intelligence service of the Reichswehr . From 1921 to 1928 he was in charge of a news office in Kassel that operated behind the facade of the commercial company Deutscher Überseedienst . In 1928 von Bose moved to Berlin, where he worked in the Berlin headquarters of the German Overseas Service from 1928 to early 1931 . In April 1931 he moved to the press department of the party headquarters of the German National People's Party (DNVP), where he was the so-called "information center", d. H. headed the party's private intelligence service. In this position, von Bose was one of the organizers of the Harzburg conference in October 1931, a meeting of the leaders of the DNVP, NSDAP and the Stahlhelm Front Soldiers, as well as a number of prominent conservative personalities in Bad Harzburg, for a rally directed against the Reich government under Heinrich Brüning. The aim of the negotiations, which were accompanied by a symbolic framework program, which was supposed to underline the claim to power of the assembly, was to form the possibility of a right-wing united front against the Brüning government and to focus on a common candidate for the March / April 1932 election of the Unite the presidents of the Reich .

In the Weimar Republic , von Bose achieved a certain prominence as a young conservative critic of the republic. Similar to other young conservatives, he strove for a " conservative revolution " that was supposed to reverse some of the "undesirable developments" of the time since 1918. In addition to the restoration of elements of the imperial state before 1918, the main focus was on the integration of new, fascist elements in the real sense: In contrast to the mass movement of National Socialism with its populist state ideas, which the young conservatives showed a certain elitist disdain, these intended to create one To create the rule of law of the elites, which should be tailored above all to the class and intellectual legal leaders.

In July 1932, von Bose was appointed to the press department of the Reich government, where he was employed as an assistant officer until February 1933. Unofficially, he acted as the personal news agent of Chancellor Franz von Papen during these months. In February 1933, at the instigation of Papen, who, as Reichskommissar delegated by the Hitler cabinet, exercised the duties of Prime Minister of Prussia , von Bose was appointed press chief in the Prussian State Ministry and at the same time served as a senior councilor.

In April 1933 von Bose and other young conservatives came to the chancellery of Franz von Papens , the vice-chancellor of the government of national concentration formed in January 1933, headed by Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor. Together with other young conservatives - especially Edgar Julius Jung , Fritz Günther von Tschirschky , Friedrich-Carl von Savigny , Wilhelm Freiherr von Ketteler , Walter Hummelsheim , Kurt Josten and Hans von Kageneck - von Bose tried the vice chancellery as a platform for the following fourteen months to use a conservative restructuring of the Nazi state. This grouping was later called the Edgar Jung Circle . Based on Papen's trust in the aged Reich President von Hindenburg, who was in command of the armed forces, it was hoped that the Reichswehr and civil servants could be involved in order to bring about a second, conservative revolution for the National Socialist revolution - which was the transfer of power to Hitler downstream, which should realize their state ideals.

When the leaders of the Nazi regime came into conflict with these plans, they took advantage of the events of the so-called Night of the Long Knives - a political cleansing operation in June 1934, in the course of which Hitler had his rivals within his party army, the SA, murdered also to smash the "Papenclique". While his colleagues were either arrested or went into hiding, von Bose was taken into custody by several SS men on June 30, 1934 in the premises of the Borsig Palace, which housed the Vice Chancellery, and led into his office where he was shot several times. Before that he had handed over his signet ring and his wallet to Ketteler and Josten. In the official government statement, his death was subsequently excused as an accident and presented as a regrettable side effect of the state emergency that the government should have carried out to ward off the alleged SA uprising - which was subsequently declared the purge. The most likely originator of the order to kill von Bose is Heinrich Himmler , whom von Bose described as his “personal enemy” shortly before his murder. Edgar Julius Jung was also murdered.

Afterlife

On July 3, 1934, Bose's body was cremated in the crematorium at the instigation of the Gestapo. The urn was buried on July 17, 1934 in the Lichterfelde park cemetery in the immediate vicinity of the grave of the former Chancellor von Schleicher. In the 1960s, after the right to use his grave had expired, his urn was transferred to the honor grove of the cemetery. The fact that the grave of the Nazi victim von Bose is right next to the grave of the former deputy Gauleiter of Berlin, Artur Görlitzer , caused ongoing controversy . This fact arises from the practice of the city of Berlin, in particular to have bomb victims and other war dead buried in the honor grove, regardless of their political stance. Protests by von Bose's relatives, who declared it unreasonable that a resistance fighter against National Socialism , about the violent end of which Joseph Goebbels expressed satisfaction in his diary , should find his final resting place next to Goebbels' former deputy as Berlin Gauleiter, took place in the 1970s and 1980s, with the thesis that reburial would disturb the peace of the dead and therefore not possible.

marriage

Since October 7, 1919, von Bose was married to Therese Kühne (born November 10, 1895 in Jüterbog , † December 4, 1963 in Schopfloch (Black Forest) ), a daughter of General of the Artillery Viktor Kühne and his wife Maria Kühne, born of Eschwege .

Awards

During the First World War, Bose received the Iron Cross 2nd Class (September 21, 1914) and the Iron Cross 1st Class (June 20, 1915).

As a Protestant, von Bose received the papal Order of Saint Gregory for his contribution to the creation of the Reich Concordat of 1933 .

In 1934 he also received the "Sveti-Sava" order of the Yugoslav king for cultural merit and international understanding

Fonts

• "USA in action", in: Hanns Henning Freiherr Grote (Ed.): Caution. Enemy hears with! , Berlin 1930, pp. 147-166. (published under a different author's name in the 1937 edition)
• "Verdun, Galizien, Somme, Isonzo ... or where?", In: Hanns Henning Freiherr Grote (Ed.): Caution. Enemy hears with! , Berlin 1930, pp. 70-89. (published under a different author's name in the 1937 edition)
• "The intelligence officer at the front", in: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (Ed.): The World War I Espionage. Authentic revelations about the origin, nature, work, technology, tricks, actions, effects and secrets of espionage before, during and after the war based on official material from war, military, court and imperial archives. On life and death, on deeds and adventures , Basel sa [1931], pp. 183–196.
• "Sabotage and Propaganda", in: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (Ed.): The World War I Espionage. Authentic revelations about the origin, nature, work, technology, tricks, actions, effects and secrets of espionage before, during and after the war based on official material from war, military, court and imperial archives. On life and death, on deeds and adventures , Basel sa [1931], pp. 301–311.
• "Veiling and misleading", in: Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (Ed.): The world war espionage. Authentic revelations about the origin, nature, work, technology, tricks, actions, effects and secrets of espionage before, during and after the war based on official material from war, military, court and imperial archives. On life and death, on deeds and adventures , Basel sa [1931], pp. 111–121.

literature

biography

• Rainer Orth : "The official seat of the opposition" ?: Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933–1934 . Böhlau. Cologne 2016, pp. 89–128, 554–571 and passim, ISBN 978-3-412-50555-4 .

Essays that focus on the person:

• Larry E. Jones : "The Limits of Collaboration. Edgar Jung, Herbert von Bose, and the Origins of the Conservative Resistance to Hitler, 1933-34", in: Larry Eugene Jones / James Retallack [Eds.]: Between Reform, Reaction , and Resistance. Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to 1945 , Providence 1993, pp. 465-501.
• Gerhard Rotenbucher : “Herbert von Bose. A son of the city of Strasbourg in the resistance against National Socialism. On the 50th anniversary of his murder ”, in: Blätter für Straßburger Geschichte , 73 Jg. (1984), pp. 25–86.

Entries in reference works:

• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871-1945. 5. T - Z, supplements. , published by the Federal Foreign Office, Historical Service. Volume 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger : Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 412.

More extensive considerations in the context of monographs:

• Norbert Frei : The Führer state. National Socialist rule 1933 to 1945 , CH Beck, 2013.
• Heinz Höhne : Mordache Röhm. Hitler's breakthrough to total power , Reinbek near Hamburg 1984.
• Ian Kershaw : Hitler, 1889-1936 , Stuttgart 1998.

Documentation

In the documentary series The Weimar Republic from 1918-1925 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk from 1963 (production company Ikaros-Film Wilfgang Kiepenheuer), von Bose is discussed.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Klaus Gietinger: The counterrevolutionary: Waldemar Pabst, a German career , Hamburg 2009, p. 69.
2. ↑ Susanne Meinl: National Socialists against Hitler , Berlin 2000, pp. 46 and 277.
3. ↑ Maximilian Terhalle : German National in Weimar , Cologne 2009, p. 280.
4. ^ Fritz Günther von Tschirschky : Memories of a high treason , p. 204.
5. ↑ Uta Lehnert: A voice for the dead. The park cemetery Lichterfelde. Ed. Hentrich, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89468-204-3 , p. 63 f.