Karl Carius

Karl Carius

Karl Heinrich Carius (born June 20, 1902 in Koblenz , † January 18, 1980 in Wiesbaden-Biebrich ) was a German politician ( NSDAP ). In 1933 he was in the German Reichstag from March to November. He was later on the list of nominees again, but did not move in again. In the following years until 1945 he was a functionary of the German Labor Front (DAF).

Live and act

Carius attended elementary school in Koblenz. He then began an apprenticeship as a locksmith, which he had to break off in 1918 after he lost his left arm in an accident at work. Instead of the locksmith's trade, he now learned the trade of a clerk and attended the commercial school in Koblenz from 1918 to 1922. During the occupation of the Rhineland by the French, Carius, who was active in the national youth movement from 1919 to 1928 , was expelled from his home country for fourteen months by the French occupation authorities because he had been active against the occupation forces. Carius married Aenne Keuser in 1930, who had completed an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Koblenz. The marriage had four children.

In 1929 Carius joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). From 1929 to 1933 he was a member of the city council of Koblenz. As part of the takeover, were like everywhere in Germany in Koblenz, the unions dissolved and the government into line . The Lord Mayor of Koblenz, Dr. Hugo Rosendahl was relieved of his office. In this context, Carius was accused of having shown a spiteful attitude towards Rosendahl when the flag was raised in Koblenz in March 1933. In a letter dated August 29, 1947, Rosendahl informed the Hessian State Ministry, Minister for Political Liberation , Spruchkammer Darmstadt-Lager that he “as the then mayor of the city of Koblenz in March 1933 on the occasion of the flag being raised on the Koblenz town hall by the NSDAP The event was forcibly led by an SA group to the open window of the Koblenz meeting room and that the then NSDAP city councilor Carius polemicized me in a filthy manner from the balcony of a house opposite. […] Carius was one of the less significant of 7 or 8 city councilors of the NSDAP who were members of the city council before 1933. As far as I know, I hadn't had any arguments with him beforehand, and he, like the other city councilors of his parliamentary group, rejected well-founded proposals from the administration in principle as a matter of principle. "

In the Reichstag elections of March 1933 Carius was a candidate of the Nazi Party for the constituency 21 (Koblenz-Trier) in the Reichstag voted, where he remained until November of the same year. In June 1933, Carius initially took on the role of district manager of the German Labor Front (DAF), labor associations of Lower Saxony-Hanover and in 1934 the office of Gauwalter of the DAF for the Gau Südhannover-Braunschweig. At the same time he was councilor of the city of Hanover. In the 1938 Reichstag election he was on the list of proposals, but received no mandate. From 1937 to 1945 Carius was Reichsfachamtsleiter for Chemistry at the DAF Reichsleitung in Berlin and head of department in the Rhine-Ruhr Task Force (1943–1945). He received the NSDAP decorations in bronze and silver.

In the application of the Hessian State Ministry of January 14, 1948, Carius was initially to be assigned to Group I of the main culprits of National Socialism due to his functions - especially as a member of the German Reichstag. However, on March 6, 1948, the Darmstadt-Lager ruling chamber classified the person concerned in group II of activists. This verdict was overturned on March 24, 1948 by the Wiesbaden Chamber of Appeals and they finally classified Carius in Group III of the minor offenders. Karl Carius was interned in Darmstadt and Wiesbaden from May 16, 1945 to August 9, 1948. Despite his functions and essential support and promotion of National Socialism, exonerating witnesses attested Carius a humane attitude, “who showed a decent attitude, showed helpfulness and treated employees benevolently as strangers regardless of party affiliation. In air raids he worked hard for others. He has also taken a non-partisan position and z. B. The KPD functionary Max Krause freed from Gestapo imprisonment. He also spoke out against the hate speech against Jews and the anti-church tendencies of the party. "

After he was released from prison, he and his family initially stayed with a niece of his wife in Wiesbaden-Biebrich in her attic apartment on Frankfurter Strasse (now Breslauer Strasse). In the 1950s, Carius initially worked as a commercial clerk in two Adam Opel AG automobile companies in Wiesbaden. He received help from his brother-in-law Willi Schwarz, who at the time was sales manager at Adam Opel AG in Rüsselsheim.

With him he got involved in the Biebrich gymnastics club and was a member of the club's board. Carius was also the editor of the Gymnastics and Sports Echoes and founded the disabled sports department of this club in 1952. Carius was significantly involved in the development of disabled sports and the Hessian Disabled Sports Association. He later became honorary chairman of the renamed disabled sports community. He was considered a “pioneer” and “father of the disabled” in disabled sports. In 1957, he took over the “gym restaurant” as a restaurateur in Wiesbaden-Biebrich. In 1969 he brought the Biebrich clubs together to form the club ring and became its chairman. In addition, Carius worked as an honorary lay judge at the labor court in Wiesbaden.

He died on January 18, 1980 in Wiesbaden-Biebrich. After him, the Disabled District Sports Festival was organized for the first time in 1986 under the name "Karl Carius Memorial Games".

The events surrounding the dismissal of Koblenz's Lord Mayor Hugo Rosendahl led to a meeting on March 7, 2003 between Karl Carius' grandson and the CDU parliamentary group leader in the Koblenz city council, Michael Hört . Achim Carius presented the city of Koblenz with a letter of apology for his grandfather's actions. He wrote there: “The city and its head were not only humiliated, the measures also marked the beginning of a twelve-year dictatorship in this city. Even if I personally reject the inheritance of ancestral guilt, I, as my grandfather's eldest grandson, ask the city and the descendants of Dr. Rosendahl for my apologies. "

literature

• Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform. The members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the ethnic and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924. Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 .

Web links

• Karl Carius in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ^ Document from the main state archive of Hesse
2. ^ Quote from the Wiesbaden Chamber of Justice, March 30, 1949
3. ↑ Wiesbadener Kurier and Tagblatt, January 21, 1980
4. ↑ City Chronicle 2003 in: City Archives Koblenz (PDF, 612 kB)