Joseph Bendix

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Joseph Bendix

Joseph Bendix , also Josef Bendix (born September 1, 1874 in Dülmen ; died March 13, 1904 in Owikokorero , German South West Africa ) was a German government builder and lieutenant in the reserve .

biography

Youth and education

Joseph Bendix probably attended the Jewish school in Dülmen, on whose board his father sat for many years. In 1885 he switched to the Dülmen Rectorate School Auf dem Bült, where he consistently received top grades. From 1889 he attended a grammar school in Münster and passed the Abitur there in 1893 . He then took up studies at the Technical University of Hanover , from 1895 to 1899 he attended the Technical University of Charlottenburg until he graduated as a qualified engineer . During this time, from 1896 to 1897, he did a year of military service and was promoted as one of the few Jews to reserve officer with the pioneers of the Royal Bavarian Army , an important step for social advancement. The reason for joining this army and not the Prussian one can be assumed that Bavaria was more open to Jewish reserve officers than in Prussia, which is why Bendix was not the only one to take this path.

In 1903, Bendix passed his state examination as a government master builder in railway construction . As such, he was briefly involved in the construction of the train stations in Dortmund and Hörde . In the same year, however, he took a leave of absence for an initial six months in order to work as an employee of the Arthur Koppel AG company on the construction of the Otavibahn in German South West Africa . The railway was intended to transport the copper ore from the mines from Tsumeb to Swakopmund .

In German South West Africa

On September 27, 1903, Joseph Bendix reached Swakopmund with Ernst Woermann . On the way from Monrovia he wrote to his family: "Negro villages indescribable [...] stench unbearable" and on his arrival: "Sand, sand, sand up to 150 km into the country, along the whole coast no tree, no bush, no blade of grass ”. At that time there were around 350 Germans and 1,000 native Herero living in Swakopmund, who had been brought to the coast from the inland and who often died of lung diseases due to the unfamiliar climate. Bendix: “The negroes here are a rotten rabble in general, they lie and steal. [...] If they don't parry, they get 25 over counted. ”He made positive comments about the Germans, including Jews, whom he met (“ extremely nice ”compatriots), as well as about the fact that there was German beer before Place gave.

At first, Bendix was dissatisfied with the tasks assigned to him, and he complained by letter to his family: He had been told in advance that he should inform the German settlers about the construction of the railway, but would be employed as a line engineer. Soon he spoke of his return trip after the planned six months, and then on January 6, 1904, to commit himself for a further three years, after he had been offered a post with better pay.

Community grave of fallen soldiers near Owikokorero

A few days later, on January 12, the Herero uprising broke out and Reserve Lieutenant Bendix was drafted into the Schutztruppe (or volunteered). Together with other soldiers from the crew of the SMS Habicht , who had been hurriedly ordered by ship from Cape Town , he was sent in the direction of Karibib to repair the railway that had been damaged by the Herero and to protect it from further destruction. Because of the rainy season, large parts of the route were also undermined. An evasion of the Herero with their cattle to Botswana should also be prevented: "Every now and then we take some Herero prisoners who are then hung from a tree in Karibib," wrote Bendix to his family. The march turned into a strain, and among the German soldiers - including the marines from the Habicht without knowledge of the country who had never seen a Herero - there was such nervousness that there were three victims in their own ranks by self-fire .

The "Eastern Department" with Bendix covered 450 kilometers in 18 days and reached the Onjatu waterhole on March 12, 1904 . The next day, a 36-man reconnaissance patrol under Lieutenant General Franz Georg von Glasenapp with Bendix in their ranks set out to explore the Owikokorero waterhole . The patrol fell for false information from the Herero who had stayed behind, was ambushed and suddenly had "the entire war people of the tribe facing each other". 24 soldiers were killed during the retreat, including Joseph Bendix. "Chivalrous [...], it has to be said here, has hardly ever been fought." Among the dead was the officer Hugo von François , whose tendency to underestimate the Herero is said to have been partly responsible for this defeat. The mutilated and animal-eaten bodies of the dead were recovered on March 28 and buried in a communal grave.

Honors and aftermath

War memorial in Dülmen with the name of Joseph Bendix added later

The work of Joseph Bendix was recognized from several sides, including the commander of the Imperial Protection Force, Theodor Leutwein , and the commander of the Royal Bavarian 3rd Pioneer Battalion. Leutwein certified Bendix among other things as "excellent efficiency" and a "pleasant, amiable nature". The newspaper Der Israelit wrote that Bendix had “rushed to the flags” to “die an honorable death for the fatherland at the side of so many comrades”. In May 1905 the family received a memorial sheet designed by Kaiser Wilhelm from the High Command of the Schutztruppen to keep alive “the memory of the brother who fell for the Kaiser and Reich”.

In September 1904, the name of Joseph Bendix was added to the war memorial in Dülmen in memory of the twelve dead in the wars of German unification in 1864, 1866 and 1870/71. The Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums commented on this honor: "In view of the exceptional position held by the 'Jewish one-year-olds' in the Prussian army, this honor for a Bavarian Jewish officer deserves special emphasis."

Four years later the Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung quoted an article in the Berliner Vossische Zeitung on the occasion of the promotion of the Jewish general Eduard von Schweitzer to field marshal lieutenant by Emperor Franz Josef in Austria : "But there has not been an active Jewish officer in the Prussian army since time immemorial [... ] However, by the time the gruesome fighting broke out in South West Africa, one of the first to be martyred in patriotic duty was a Jewish officer. The government architect Joseph Bendix stayed in the battle of Ovikokorero [...] But he had not received the epaulettes in Prussia. To get it, he had to go to Bavaria. ”According to the Vossische , this violates both an order from the emperor and the law of 1869, which stipulates that all denominations should be treated equally. The “ anti-Semites ”, however, did not shy away from “twisting and guessing at an imperial word”: “Denominations” are only meant to be Christian, they claim.

His name was also mentioned years later in a debate in the Reichstag on April 18, 1913. The day before, Reinhard Mumm , a member of the Christian Social Party and known for his anti-Semitic sentiments, had spoken out against the recruitment of Jewish officers into the army: “I don't know anyone Moment that Jewish gentlemen like to give orders. ” Eugen Hähnle from the Progressive People's Party pointed out that“ the facts speak a different language ”. In his speech he referred to Leutwein's obituary for Joseph Bendix. The MP Ernst Müller-Meiningen from the Free People's Party also quoted this obituary and asked whether the influence of the “supreme warlord” was so small that “he really cannot counter the prejudices that exist against the Jewish reserve officers in this area” .

The name of Joseph Bendix can still be read on the war memorial in Dülmen, which the "Dülmen Nazis" apparently overlooked.

The documents left by Bendix are in the Leo Baeck Institute .

family

Josef Bendix was the oldest of eight sons of a respected Jewish family in Dülmen, where they had been based since the beginning of the 19th century. His parents were Friederike (nee Koppel, 1847-1894) and the merchant Pins Bendix (1835-1915). A second cousin was the textile entrepreneur Paul Bendix .

Three of his brothers - Isaac, Levi and Otto - died at a young age in the 19th century, two of them in the year of their birth, Levi at the age of 18. The brother Max died in 1920 at the age of 39. The brother Leopold (born 1895) emigrated to the USA , where he died on an unknown date; Julius Max (born 1883) was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 . The brother Albert Bendix lived as a bank director in Cologne and fled with his family to the Netherlands in 1939 , where they committed suicide together on May 15, 1940, the day the Wehrmacht invaded. Stolpersteine ​​have been laid for both brothers in Cologne.

Max Bendix, who died in 1920, left behind his wife Regina and three children, Friederike, Bernhard and Walter. After 1933 the sons managed to emigrate to South Africa , mother and daughter fled to the Netherlands, from where they were deported to an extermination camp in 1943 and murdered. Stolpersteine ​​were laid in Dülmen for the four members of the family .

literature

  • Hartmut Bartmuss: Joseph Bendix. Government architect, engineer and officer in German South West Africa (= Jewish miniatures. Volume 168). Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2015.
  • Hartmut Bartmuß: Joseph Bendix. Letters and field postcards from German South West Africa October 1903 to March 1904 . Journal of Namibian Studies, 19 (2016): 109 - 122.

Web links

Commons : Joseph Bendix  - collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 12f.
  2. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 14.
  3. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 14f.
  4. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 20.
  5. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, pp. 20f.
  6. ↑ Michael Berger: Jewish soldiers in German armies: Cruel deception. In: Spiegel Online . January 18, 2008, accessed August 14, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 15.
  8. ↑ a b Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 18.
  9. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 29f.
  10. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 51f.
  11. ^ Gondwana Collection, Namibia: Gondwana Collection: History 11-09-23 Black Cliff. (No longer available online.) In: typo3.p232710.webspaceconfig.de. February 14, 1904, archived from the original ; accessed on August 14, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Kurt Schwabe: The War in German South West Africa . Berlin 1907. p. 174, quoted from: Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix , p. 58.
  13. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix , p. 54
  14. ^ The synagogue in Scheinfeld (Neustadt ad Aisch - Bad Windsheim district). In: alemannia-judaica.de. Retrieved August 14, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, p. 69.
  16. ↑ Klaus Hüls: Dülmener Josef Bendix takes part in the uprising of the Hereros . In: Dülmener Heimatblätter . 2/2014 (pdf)
  17. ↑ Erik Potthoff: The war memorial from 1897 . In: Dülmener Heimatblätter . 1/2014 (pdf)
  18. ↑ Local heritage book Coesfeld: Josef BENDIX * 1874 +1904. In: online-ofb.de. March 13, 1904, Retrieved July 24, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Two other Jewish officers from the ranks of the Bavarian army, Abraham Gutmann and Alexander Lion , were awarded medals for their work in the war against the Herero. See: Christian Davis: Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Germans of Jewish Descent in Imperial Germany. University of Michigan Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-472-11797-0 , p. 137 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  20. ^ Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung , October 22, 1908, p. 1
  21. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix, pp. 73f.
  22. ↑ Bartmuss, Joseph Bendix , p. 80.
  23. ↑ a b c Coesfeld local family book: Pins BENDIX * 1835 +1915. In: online-ofb.de. June 14, 1915. Retrieved July 23, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Stations in detail. In: blog.hls.duelmen.org. November 9, 1938. Retrieved July 23, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Bendix, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bendix, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German government builder and lieutenant in the reserve
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Dülmen
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1904
Place of death Owikokorero , German South West Africa