Joseph Rossé

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Joseph Rossé

Joseph Victor Rossé (born August 26, 1892 in Altmünsterol , † October 24, 1951 in Villeneuve-sur-Lot , Lot-et-Garonne ) was a Franco-German politician ( UPR ) and Alsatian autonomist .

Life

Colmar Trial 1928

Joseph Rossé volunteered for military service in 1914, but was postponed after just three weeks due to unfit. In 1916 he was drafted again and promoted to officer in 1918.

Rossé was a teacher at the primary school in Colmar from October 1, 1920 . He was general secretary of the Union des groupements professionnels des membres de l'enseignement d'Alsace et de Lorraine , i.e. the teachers' union. The teachers stood united behind him and formed his domestic power in the political conflict; one of the most radical protesters against French politics in Alsace-Lorraine in the interwar period . On June 7, 1926, " Der Elsässer " published the Heimatbund Manifesto of the Alsace-Lorraine Home League , in which full autonomy for Alsace-Lorraine within France was demanded. One of the 102 signatories was Joseph Rossé.

Since 1919 Joseph Rossé belonged to the Alsatian People's Party ( Union populaire républicaine , UPR). By decree of June 11, 1926, the community and state officials who had signed the manifesto were suspended or removed from office. Rossé was dismissed as a civil servant and a teacher. Four days later, he was demonstratively re-elected general secretary of the teachers' union. He was now a journalist for the Alsatian courier and publisher and co-founder of Volksstimme . The persecution of the autonomy movement has now been intensified. On Bloody Sunday in Colmar , the French police refused to protect the Autonomists, and at the end of 1927 the French government began openly suppressing them. On November 26, 1927, Rossé's house was searched and on December 1 he was arrested. It was not an isolated incident: over 100 searches and over 20 arrests followed in the next few days.

From the custody out Rossé, competed Eugen Ricklin , Paul sound , René Hauss and Karl Baumann to a mandate in the French Chamber of Deputies . In the first ballot on April 22, 1928, Ricklin, Rossé and Hauss were so well in the running that their choice seemed certain. In the second ballot, the runoff election, Rossé was elected to the chamber for the Union populaire républicaine in the constituency of Colmar on April 29, 1928 with 11,268 votes (his opponents were Richard with 7,353 votes and Murschel with 2,912) . Rossé was sentenced in the subsequent Colmar conspiracy trial on May 24, 1928 to one year in prison and a five-year "residence ban" for conspiracy against the security of the state. On July 14, 1928, he was amnestied and released by the French President . On November 8, 1928, he and Ricklin were stripped of their seats on account of the conviction. The chamber canceled the seats with 195 to 29 votes and set new elections on January 13 and 20, 1929.

Election poster for Joseph Rossé

The by-election was influenced by the assassination attempt of the butcher journeyman Georges Benoit on December 21, 1928 on the Attorney General Fachot, who had carried out the trial against the Autonomists. In Colmar, Rossé named the board member of the Alsatian party and radical autonomist René Hauss as his successor. The People's Party renounced its own candidate, thereby also honoring the fact that Hauss had withdrawn his candidacy in April 1928 in favor of Michel Walter .

He was pardoned by the law of December 24, 1931 and was able to resume his political work.

In the chamber elections in 1932 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the second ballot with 11,156 votes (his opposing candidates Bisch and Arschbacker had received 8,869 and 1,626 votes, respectively). There he founded the Républicains du center parliamentary group consisting of only six members from Alsace and Lorraine . In Parliament he was a member of the Alsace and Lorraine Committees and the Committee on Liberated Areas. In 1936 he was re-elected to the Chamber with 12,420 votes. His opponent Richard received 9,952 votes.

At the beginning of the Second World War , he and numerous other Alsatian autonomists were arrested by the French security forces in October 1939 and charged with “espionage for the enemy”. However, a trial never came about. As part of the armistice negotiations, the release of the prisoners was agreed and Rossé was handed over to the German troops on July 17, 1940 in Chalon-sur-Saône . On July 17, 1940, together with the Nanziger group, he signed the Manifeste des Trois Épis prepared by Robert Ernst , a declaration of annexation by Nazi Germany. Rossé became head of the compensation office for “champions of Germanness” in Alsace and finally director general of Alsatia publishing in Colmar . Most of the “Nanziger” were convicted by French courts of collaboration and treason in the post-war period . Rossé was arrested in February 1945 and sentenced to 15 years of forced labor in 1947 as a collaborator and for alleged espionage for Nazi Germany. He died in 1951 in the Center de détention d'Eysses prison .

Quotes on Rossé

Clemens August Graf von Galen , Bishop of Münster, wrote on January 21, 1946:

"In any case, I can testify from my own experience that the books of Alsatia Verlag have effectively supported our resistance against neo-paganism of the Nazis right into the last years of the war. So it corresponds to the facts that Mr. Joseph Rossé to an excellent degree belongs to the fighters against Nazism. "

The writer Reinhold Schneider also wrote in 1946:

"If today I learn with great emotion from foreign broadcasters such as London and the Vatican that my voice is valued with one other than the only voice of the caller in the desert and the voice of truth, I thank in large part for my bravery and Mr. Rossé's willingness to make sacrifices. I have always learned to adore him more than a man who has done an infinite amount of good without speaking of it. "
Joseph Rossé's grave in Colmar

Fonts

  • Foreword in: In the service of the Church and the people. Festschrift for the 60th birthday of H. Abbé Dr. Xavier Haegy . Editions Alsatia, Colmar 1930.
  • (Ed.): Alsace from 1870–1932 . 4 volumes, Alsatia publishing house, Colmar 1936–1938.

literature

  • Jean Jolly (ed.): Dictionnaire des parlementaires français, notices biographiques sur les ministres, sénateurs et députés français de 1889 à 1940 . PUF, Paris 1960-1977.
  • Karl-Heinz Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine home and autonomy movement between the two world wars . Lang, Bern 1975, ISBN 3-261-01485-7 .
  • Christian Baechler: Rossé, Joseph . In: Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne , Faszikel 32, 1998, p. 3292ff.
  • Gabriel Andres: Joseph Rossé - itinéraire d'un Alsacien ou le droit à la différence . Bentzinger, Colmar 2003, ISBN

2-84629-071-7.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine Home and Autonomy Movement , pp. 113–114.
  2. ^ Alsace-Lorraine communications . Complete volume 1928. Elsaß-Lothringischer Hilfsbund-Verlag, Berlin 1928, p. 356.
  3. ^ Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine Home and Autonomy Movement , p. 172.
  4. ↑ Rupert Gießler , Joseph Zemb: Witness in dark time. Joseph Rossé and the Catholic Alsatia publishing house 1940–1944. In: Christ in the Present . No. 43 dated October 28, 1979; Jean-Jacques Ritter, Lucien Sittler : An Alsatian in the resistance against National Socialism. Joseph Rossé and the Alsatia publishing house. In: Book trade history. 1982/2, p. B62.
  5. ^ Philip Charles Farwell Bankwitz: Alsatian autonomist leaders 1919-1947 . The Regents (University) Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1978, ISBN 0-7006-0160-0 , pp. 77-80 and pp. 101f.
  6. ↑ Quoted in: Jean-Jacques Ritter, Lucien Sittler: An Alsatian in the resistance against National Socialism. Joseph Rossé and the Alsatia publishing house. In: Book trade history. 1982/2, p. B 65.
  7. ↑ Reinhold Schneider. Life and work. Edited by Franz Anselm Schmitt. Olten 1969, p. 174.
personal data
SURNAME Rossé, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rossé, Joseph Victor (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-German politician (UPR) and Alsatian autonomist
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Altmünsterol
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1951
Place of death Villeneuve-sur-Lot , Lot-et-Garonne