Hugo Machhaus

Hugo Machhaus (born July 4, 1889 in Haunzenbergersöll , † May 4, 1923 in Munich ) was a German conductor and journalist. From 1920 to 1921 he was editor-in-chief of the Völkischer Beobachter . He was best known as one of the central figures of the so-called "Fuchs-Machhaus-Putsch" of 1923.

Life and activity

Early years and work as an editor at Völkischer Beobachter

During the First World War , Machhaus was captured by the French, from which he was released in early 1920. In March of this year he took part in the Kapp Putsch . After its failure, he moved to Munich, where he joined the Freikorps Oberland and possibly the NSDAP.

Shortly after the NSDAP acquired the Munich newspaper Völkischer Beobachter in 1920 , Machhaus was appointed editor-in-chief on December 25, 1920. He remained in this post until May 1921, when Hermann Esser and shortly afterwards Dietrich Eckart took his place. Machhaus was then the simple editor of the observer until 1922, only to leave the editorial office for good that year.

The Fuchs Machhaus Affair (1923)

In 1922 and at the beginning of 1923, Machhaus, together with Georg Fuchs , the temporary leader of the Blücherbund , who had also previously served as editor in the service of the Völkischer Beobachter , was in a leading way involved in efforts to organize a separatist putsch aimed at Separate Bavaria as an autonomous state from the German Empire ("Fuchs-Machhaus Affair"). These activities were secretly financed by French agencies, especially the Deuxième Bureau , which hoped to weaken the unity of the German Empire politically and militarily by destroying the unity of the German Empire, so that it would finally cease to pose a threat to its neighbors.

In detail, the plans of Machhaus and Fuchs provided for the establishment of a temporary dictatorship in Bavaria, in which the affairs of government were to be led by a Regency Council to which prominent popular figures such as Franz von Epp , Gustav von Kahr and Ernst Pöhner should belong. After a consolidation phase, a referendum should be held on whether the Free State should return to the monarchy or whether a democratic republic should be introduced.

The efforts of Fuchs and Machhaus finally came to the knowledge of the Bavarian government, which they and some other persons involved in the separatist putsch plans (the businessman Johann Munk, the businessman Johann Berger, the student Richard Gutermann and the farmer Rudolf Gutermann) on February 28th Arrested in 1923. In the so-called Fuchs-Machhaus trial, which took place from June 4 to July 9, 1923 under the presidency of Judge Georg Neithardt before the People's Court I in Munich, Fuchs was given a prison sentence of twelve on July 9, 1923 for high treason and treason Sentenced for years. Munk received a year and three months. Berger and Gutermann were acquitted. Machhaus was already dead at this point; he had committed suicide while in custody by hanging himself in his cell. Another defendant, Karl Kühles, had already committed suicide on March 6, 1923. In his book Wir Zuchthäusler , published in 1931, Fuchs expressed doubts that Machhaus' death had been suicide, and he suspected that it might have been a disguised fememord.

The financing of Machhaus' activities in 1922 and 1923 and his connections to the Hitler Circle gave in later years, for example with the early Hitler biographer Konrad Heiden , cause for suspicion that Machhaus acted as a kind of liaison for the NSDAP during these years after France and that he had mediated the NSDAP in its early phase hidden financial support from the French state, which wanted to contribute to the destabilization of the German state by strengthening the radical party. Heiden refers to reports that he had received that French government agencies had sent funds to the NSDAP through 8 or 9 intermediate agencies, which were located in particular in the Saarland. Heiden considers the scenario of Hitler's conscious activity for the French to be extremely improbable: Instead, he puts the possibilities that appear more plausible to him that Machhaus brokered French funds for the NSDAP without Hitler, as a sworn enemy of the French, having known their origin (but had been deceived about it) or that Hitler finally found out about this and therefore rejected Machhaus. Heiden also doubted that Machhaus' death was an authentic suicide. He justified this with the fact that, according to his information, Machhaus hanged himself in his cell with his trouser belt, which is surprising in that it is normally customary to remove belts and the like from prisoners when they are arrested. Accordingly, he thinks it obvious that Machhaus' "strange" suicide was helped.

literature

• Ulrike Claudia Hofmann: "Traitors fall for the distance!": Fememicide in Bavaria in the twenties. Böhlau, Cologne 2000.
• Ernst Rudolf Huber : German constitutional history since 1789. Volume 7: Expansion, protection and fall of the Weimar Republic. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, p. 322 f.
• Bavarian-German or Bavarian-French; a moral image of nationally active neglect; the treason trial against Fuchs and comrades before the Munich People's Court in June 1923 . Munich: Birk, 1925

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry by Hugo Machhaus in the war log of the Bavarian Army Motor Vehicle Column 171.
2. ^ Konrad Heiden: Adolf Hitler. The age of irresponsibility . Europa Verlag, Zurich 1936, p. 264f.