Hermann Rauschning

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Hermann Rauschning (1933)

Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning (born August 7, 1887 in Thorn , † February 8, 1982 in Portland , Oregon , USA ) was a German politician and author. From 1932 he was a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), but soon rejected its methods, resigned from the party in 1934 and became a critic of the Nazi regime and a fascist theorist . 1933/1934 Rauschning was Senate President (head of government) of the Free City of Danzig . In 1935 he had to leave Danzig and lived in the USA from 1939/41. His book Conversations with Hitler , which later turned out to be largely an invention, caused a sensation : Rauschning had hardly ever spoken to Hitler .

Live and act

The son of an officer studied in Berlin history, German and musicology and graduated in 1911 with the promotion of Dr. phil. from. He describes himself as a student of the Munich composer and music professor Ludwig Thuille . Until the First World War he worked as a farmer and made it to lieutenant during the war . After the resurrection of the Polish state in 1918, Rauschning stayed in Posen , where he directed the cultural work of the German ethnic group . On May 21, 1924, he was accepted into the Masonic Lodge at the Temple of Unity .

After moving to the Free City of Danzig in 1926, Rauschning joined the NSDAP in 1932 and became chairman of the Danzig Landbund . From June 20, 1933 to November 23, 1934, Rauschning was President of the Senate (head of government and de facto head of state). In a dispute with the Danzig NSDAP Gauleiter Albert Forster , he resigned from office and at the same time resigned from the NSDAP. In 1935 he had to leave Gdansk, first went to his hometown of Thorn , which had been under the Polish government since the Treaty of Versailles , then to Switzerland , moved to France in 1938 and the following year to Great Britain until he settled as a farmer in Portland in 1941 settled in the United States.

For a long time, historians quoted extensively from Rauschning's dramatizing book Conversations with Hitler . In 1983/84, the Swiss history teacher Wolfgang Hänel published, in addition to a content analysis, the confession of the press agent and publisher Imre Révész ( Emery Reves ), who persuaded the exile Rauschning in Zurich in the summer of 1939 to write down his encounters with Adolf Hitler with as many verbatim quotations as possible, and granted him an extensive advance payment. Rauschning, who was penniless at the time, followed suit, and a bestseller was created that appeared in several languages ​​from 1939. Rauschning claimed to have spoken privately and at length to Hitler more than a hundred times by 1934. In fact, he had met Hitler four times at most; there was no one-on-one encounter. The book contains many quotations, the credibility of which is disputed.

Historians like Theodor Schieder had already noticed that Rauschning was by no means close friends with Hitler. The tamper-evident remained however long little attention, since the book as one of the key evidence for early war and World Domination was Hitler's plans. Most historians today follow Hänel's thesis that the conversations are fake and cannot claim to be authentic.

More important was Rauschning's attempt at a fascism theory from a conservative-bourgeois point of view ( Die Revolution des Nihilismus , 1938), in which he explained National Socialism in its essence nihilistically as a result of the de-Christianization of society. The historian Golo Mann ruled in 1963 that this book made Rauschning a “great political writer” and placed it in a row with Edmund Burke's reflections on the French Revolution .

In 1956 Rauschning was one of the founding editors of the papers for German and international politics .

Fonts

  • Music history of Gdańsk. Dissertation University of Berlin, Berlin 1911.
  • History of music and music care in Gdansk. From the beginning to the dissolution of the church chapels. Danzig Vlgsges. Rosenberg, Danzig 1931 (sources and presentations on the history of West Prussia; 15).
  • as editor: Posener Drucke, first print: Nicolaus Coppernicus from Thorn. About the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. From his writings and letters. Poznan 1923.
  • The de-Germanization of West Prussia and Poznan. Ten years of Polish politics. Berlin 1930. New edition / reprint in 1988 by Hobbing, Berlin udT: The emigration of the German population from West Prussia and Posen 1919–1929 .
  • The revolution of nihilism. Setting and Reality in the Third Reich. Europa Verlag, Zurich / New York 1938.
  • Hitler Speaks. A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims. Thornton Butterworth, London 1939.
  • Conversations with Hitler . Europa Verlag, Zurich / New York 1940.
  • The conservative revolution. Trial and break with Hitler. New York 1941 (translated as The Conservative Revolution , Putnam, New York 1941, and Make and Break With the Nazis: Letters on a Conservative Revolution , Secker and Warburg, London 1941).
  • The Beast from the Abyss. William Heinemann, London 1941.
  • The redemption of democracy. The coming Atlantic empire. Literary Guild of America, New York 1941.
  • Men of Chaos. Putnam's Sons, New York 1942.
  • The time of delirium. Amstutz Verlag, Herdeg & Co, Zurich 1947.
  • Germany between West and East. Christian publishing house, Berlin / Hamburg / Stuttgart 1950.
  • Is Peace Still Possible? The responsibility of power. Vowinckel-Verlag, Heidelberg 1953.
  • Masks and Metamorphoses of Nihilism - The Nihilism of the XX. Century. Humboldt-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1954.
  • ... straight to the heart - about politics without fear (with H. Fleig, M. Boveri, JA v. Rantzau). Karl H. Henssel Verlag, Berlin 1954.
  • German unity and world peace. Holsten, Hamburg 1955.
  • Call across the threshold. Considerations. Katzmann Verlag, Tübingen 1955.
  • The acidic way. Käthe Vogt Verlag, Berlin 1958.
  • Courage for a new policy. Käthe Vogt Verlag, Berlin 1959.

literature

  • Wolfgang Hänel: Hermann Rauschning's "Conversations with Hitler" - a falsification of history. Publication of the contemporary history research center Ingolstadt, 7th volume 1984.
  • Jürgen Hensel, Pia Nordblom (ed.): Hermann Rauschning. Materials and contributions to a political biography . Fiber-Verlag, Osnabrück 2003, ISBN 3-929759-61-6 .
  • Hans Wolfram von Hentig:  Rauschning, Hermann Adolf Reinhold. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 212 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Theodor Schieder : Hermann Rauschning "Conversations with Hitler" as a historical source. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1972.
  • Fritz Tobias : Counterfeits also have long legs. The Senate President Rauschning “Talks with Hitler” . In: Karl Corino (Ed.): Forged! Fraud in politics, literature, science, art and music . Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-8218-1131-5 .
  • Albrecht Hagemann: Hermann Rauschning. A German life between Nazi fame and exile. Böhlau-Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2018, ISBN 978-3-412-51104-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marek Andrzejewski: Hermann Rauschning (PDF; 123 kB), Danzig Natural Research Society
  2. ↑ For example Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 872.
  3. ↑ Ian Kershaw : Hitler 1889-1936 . Hubris, London 1998, p. Xiv.
  4. ^ Henning Köhler : Germany on the way to itself. A history of the century . Hohenheim-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, p. 338.
  5. ↑ Richard Steigmann-Gall: The Holy Empire. Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 . Cambridge University Press, p. 29.
  6. ^ Golo Mann: Hermann Rauschning. In: same: twelve attempts . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1973, pp. 169–185, here p. 185. First published under the title Das Werk Hermann Rauschnings. For the new edition of his 'Revolution of Nihilism' . In: Neue Rundschau , 1963, issue 4, pp. 577-589.
personal data
SURNAME Rauschning, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rauschning, Hermann Adolf Reinhold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist and politician (NSDAP)
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Thorn
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1982
Place of death Portland , Oregon , USA