Josef Count von Soden-Fraunhofen

Josef Maria Anton Ludwig Karl Felix Graf von Soden-Fraunhofen (born May 30, 1883 in Neufraunhofen , † March 9, 1972 in Gauting ) was a German lawyer, diplomat and politician. From 1923 to 1933 he was head of the cabinet of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria .

Life

Count von Soden-Fraunhofen's father, Maximilian von Soden-Fraunhofen , was the royal chamberlain and imperial councilor . After graduating from the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , Count Joseph Soden-Fraunhofen began his military service as a one-year volunteer with the 1st Field Artillery Regiment on October 1, 1901 . He then studied law in Munich and Grenoble . In 1911 he joined the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior for a short interlude , then he became legation secretary in the Bavarian legation in Berlin . During the First World War , he initially served as an orderly officer in the 2nd Bavarian Infantry Brigade . After being injured and ill, he was released from active service on October 25, 1915 and transferred to the Bavarian embassy in Berlin. As a result, he was postponed from military service five times. On October 5, 1917, he was appointed royal chamberlain. In January 1918 he accompanied Count Clemens von Podewils-Dürniz as an unskilled worker to the peace negotiations with Russia and Ukraine in Brest-Litovsk .

On January 1, 1919, Count Soden-Fraunhofen became a government assessor in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. After the proclamation of the Munich Soviet Republic , he went to Bamberg with the Bavarian government Hoffmann , where he became head of the police department. Back in Munich, he took over the police station for Northern Bavaria, which was dissolved in October 1921. At this point in time, Count Soden-Fraunhofen was already in close contact with the Crown Prince. He was first political advisor to the federal government of Bavaria and Reich under Otto Pittinger and in 1923 head of cabinet to the Crown Prince.

In this function, Count Soden-Fraunhofen led the correspondence of the Crown Prince and endeavored to restore the Bavarian monarchy . To this end, he made contacts with Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber , Oswald Spengler and Ernst Röhm, among others . He worked on concentrating the monarchist movement in the umbrella association Bayerntreue , founded in 1925 , which, however, did not develop as hoped.

In 1929 Count Soden-Frauenhofen got into a public controversy with Adolf Hitler , who wanted to force Crown Prince Rupprecht and his cabinet to speak out in favor of the referendum against the Young Plan . During National Socialism he lived in seclusion in Munich and from 1937 in Gauting. He said that Rudolf Hess had held his protective hand over him. During the Hitler putsch , Count Soden-Frauenhofen, like most cabinet members of the state government, took part in the meeting in the Bürgerbräukeller on November 8, 1923 and was taken hostage there, along with other prominent personalities, and guarded by Hess.

literature

• Alfons Beckenbauer: How Adolf Hitler was brought to an outburst by a Lower Bavarian count. in: Negotiations of the Historisches Verein für Niederbayern 103 (1977), pp. 5–29
• Werner Bräuninger: Hitler's opponents in the NSDAP 1921–1945. Herbig, Munich 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Annual report on the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich 1900/01.