Karl Lenz (politician)

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Karl Lenz

Karl Lenz (born July 7, 1899 in Heidelberg , † November 7, 1944 in Freising ) was a German politician (NSDAP).

Live and act

Lenz was born in 1899 as the son of the school clerk Karl Andreas Lenz and his wife Elisabetha, née Ahl. He married his first wife Else, née Ueberle, on April 28, 1922 in Heidelberg. He later married his second wife Hertha, née Gesche. Karl Lenz was a Roman Catholic. After attending primary school , he was trained as a teacher at a seminar.

After the November Revolution of 1918, Lenz was allegedly a communist for a short time. In 1921, Lenz, who was married twice, joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

In the Nazi movement he soon emerged as “one of the most skilful but also most fanatical Nazi agitators in Baden”. In 1927 he was accordingly entrusted with the post of Gau propaganda leader for Baden. Lenz had been deputy to the Gauleiter of Baden Robert Wagner since 1926 . In November 1928, Lenz was dismissed from civil service because of his propaganda activities for the Nazi movement. According to Merz, he was the only official of the Weimar Republic in Baden who was reprimanded in this way as a punishment for his National Socialist commitment. In 1929 Lenz entered the Baden state parliament for the NSDAP , although he only belonged to it for one year until 1930.

In the general election of September 1930 Lenz was 32 (Baden) as a candidate of his party for the constituency in the parliament elected. In the elections of July 1932 his mandate was confirmed, but now as a representative of the constituency 33 (Hesse-Darmstadt), of which he was subsequently without interruption until March 1936th The most important parliamentary event in which he took part during his time as a member of parliament was the passing of the Enabling Act in March 1933. This law, which was also passed with Lenz's vote, formed the legal basis for the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship.

From 1931 to 1932 Lenz sat briefly in the state parliament of Hesse . In the same year he was indirectly responsible for the Boxheim documents becoming known (see below ).

In August 1931 Lenz was appointed Gauleiter in Gau Hessen- Darmstadt. He held this office for almost a year and a half. When he resigned it on December 15, 1932, this was officially justified with health problems as a result of severe pneumonia and pleurisy. In fact, however, his activity in the National Socialist “Notgemeinschaften”, a kind of internal party opposition to the leadership group of the NSDAP, was probably the reason for his resignation. His successor was Jakob Sprenger , the Gauleiter in Gau Hessen-Nassau , who now headed both Gaue in personal union.

Lenz survived further investigations against him, apparently thanks to the advocacy of influential patrons, without major damage. Even after his resignation as Gauleiter, he was allowed to keep his Reichstag mandate for the NSDAP for more than three years, until March 1936. Although he now assumed an outsider position in the party, he was nominated twice (in March and November 1933) as a candidate for the NSDAP for the Reichstag. Even after the “ Röhm Putsch ” in June / July 1934, when Lenz, according to Schnabel, “was one of the people who should be arrested immediately”, he was allowed to keep his mandate.

In 1935 a party court issued a warning to Lenz, in which he was denied the ability to hold a party office for two years. This was justified with “material deliveries” for the “ Felix Wankel who worked against the national s [socialist] movement in Baden, who was excluded from the party ” and through his collaboration in the magazine Alemannische Grenzlandnachrichten published by Wankel's opposition group at the end of 1932 and with Lenz's standing up for Gregor Strasser . All of this violated Article 4, Paragraph 2b of the statutes of the NSDAP. Martin Bormann commented on Lenz's attempts to get hold of Hitler in order to get a party office again, with the remark that he got away with it "lightly" and that a softening of the judgment requested by Lenz is therefore inappropriate. Lenz's petition for clemency to Hitler in September 1935, asking him to keep his seat in the Reichstag, was not granted. At the Reichstag on March 29, 1936, he was on the list of candidates again, this time under number 527, but he was no longer given a mandate.

Publication of the Boxheimer documents

In 1932 Lenz played an important role indirectly in connection with the publication of the so-called Boxheimer documents . Werner Best states in his memoir that Lenz, in his capacity as Gauleiter of Hessen-Nassau, established in 1931 that Wilhelm Schäfer , the economic advisor of the district and member of the NSDAP in the Hessian state parliament, who had been involved in drafting the documents, was his PhD title wrongly led. Lenz also discovered that Schäfer, contrary to a statement made to the party, had a criminal record. Lenz, who himself was not involved in the writing of the Boxheim documents, then expelled Schäfer from the NSDAP and forced him to resign from his state parliament mandate. In order to avenge himself for these measures by Lenz, Schäfer then handed over the Boxheim documents available to him to the Social Democratic Police President of Frankfurt am Main. This is how the documents became known to the public.

literature

  • Jochen Lengemann : MdL Hessen. 1808-1996. Biographical index (= political and parliamentary history of the state of Hesse. Vol. 14 = publications of the Historical Commission for Hesse. Vol. 48, 7). Elwert, Marburg 1996, ISBN 3-7708-1071-6 , p. 241.
  • Klaus-Dieter Rack, Bernd Vielsmeier: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the first and second chambers of the state estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse 1820–1918 and the state parliament of the People's State of Hesse 1919–1933 (= Political and parliamentary history of the State of Hesse. Vol. 19 = Work of the Hessian Historical Commission. NF Vol. 29) . Hessian Historical Commission, Darmstadt 2008, ISBN 978-3-88443-052-1 , No. 528.
  • Hans Georg Ruppel, Birgit Groß: Hessian MPs 1820–1933. Biographical evidence for the estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse (2nd Chamber) and the Landtag of the People's State of Hesse (= Darmstädter Archivschriften. Vol. 5). Verlag des Historisches Verein für Hessen, Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-922316-14-X , p. 172.
  • Erich Stockhorst: 5000 people. Who was what in the 3rd Reich . Arndt, Kiel 2000, ISBN 3-88741-116-1 (unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1967).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hans-Georg Merz: Officials and Official Policy in Baden , 1985, p. 235.
  2. ^ Karl Höffkes : Hitler's political generals. The Gauleiter of the Third Reich , Grabert Verlag , Tübingen 1986, p. 209.
  3. ↑ Thomas Schnabel: The Assumption of Power in Southwest Germany , 1982, p. 21.
  4. ↑ Helmut Heiber: The files of the party chancellery of the NSDAP , p. 86.
  5. ^ Siegried Matlok: Denmark in Hitler's Hand , 1988, p. 122.
personal data
SURNAME Lenz, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1944
Place of death Freising