Karl Leopold von Möller

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Karl Leopold Edler von Möller (born October 11, 1876 in Vienna , † February 23, 1943 in Jimbolia , Romania ) was an Austrian national socialist national politician , author and journalist in the Banat .

Live and act

The origin of the von Möller family points to the Lüneburg Heath . Karl von Möller's grandfather took part in the wars of liberation as a volunteer and was disarmed in Sibiu ( Transylvania ). His father came to Vienna from Sibiu. Karl von Möller was born in Vienna, where he attended cadet school and war school after high school. During World War I he moved to the Serbian and then to the Galician front as Major and Chief of Staff of the 34th Infantry Division, Banat Division . From 1916, von Möller led the Hungarian Infantry Regiment No. 65 on the Eastern Front as a lieutenant colonel and later as a colonel . He was awarded the Leopold Order.

Politician

After the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918, he took his leave of the army as a colonel and went to Timișoara , where he campaigned for political and cultural equality for Romanian Germans in national politics . Von Möller was a co-founder of the German-Swabian Cultural Association on May 9, 1919 , of which Johann Junker was chairman . Michael Kausch was the managing chairman . In 1919, von Möller was elected the second mayor of Timișoara. From 1919 to 1926 he was a senator in the Romanian upper house in Bucharest, representing the Banat Swabians . Karl von Möller joined the “Volksgemeinschaft” in 1920 together with Josef Gabriel .

From 1920 he made trips to Germany, gave lectures in Saxony, Westphalia, Baden, Württemberg, Thuringia, Berlin and Munich. In 1923 he had contacts with National Socialist circles; he is considered an early supporter of Adolf Hitler . After his return home he became editor-in-chief of the "Banater Deutsche Zeitung". He was one of the members of the "German People's Council".

Von Möller is considered to be one of the pioneers of fascism in the Banat. In 1931 he founded the first Banat local group of the "National Socialist Self-Help Movement of Germans in Romania" (NSDR) in Jimbolia (German: Hatzfeld), which was supported by the ideas of the innovators . Shortly thereafter, von Möller became the first Gauleiter of the Banat in 1932 and in the same year founded the National Socialist newspaper “Der Stürmer” in Timișoara. In the spring of 1933 he was deposed as Gauleiter. In the same year he was head of the “Office for Philosophical Education and Cultural Policy” in Sibiu as “Head of Culture ”. After his application for admission to the Wehrmacht had been rejected because he had exceeded the maximum entry age, he wrote to Karl Schworm on September 7, 1939 : “ How happy I would be if fate put me at the front, whether in West or West East! I can think of no better end to my fighting life than ending for the Fiihrer and the Reich. ”In 1941 he was appointed the“ Cultural Council ”of the German ethnic group in Romania .

author

According to his biography on the “Kulturportal West-Ost”, von Möller developed in addition to his political “a lively writing activity, which was based on the great novels of Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn (1852–1923) and the intellectual and political development of Southeast Germany, in particular the Banat Swabians, from the settlement up to their volkish awakening at the turn of the 20th century. As editor-in-chief of the 'Banater Deutsche Zeitung' he put himself at the service of the 'Banater Swabian People's Community'. "

Von Möller's novels attempt to give a concrete picture of the respective events from the perspective of their time. He is one of the most popular authors of historical novels of his time, albeit with a nationalist and anti-Semitic element. Von Möller began publishing ultra-nationalist writings as early as the early 1920s. As an “advocate of völkisch anti-Semitism” he wrote “Der Stürmer” in his gazette. In his two-volume work “How the Swabian Congregations came about” (Timișoara 1923-24), Möller 1924 “openly expressed his chauvinistic ideas and conceptions by including the 'Germanic racial element' (vol. 2, p. 22) of the German superman in the His historical remarks moved to the fore ”.

In the novel “Die Werschetz Tat” (1936) he glorifies the defense of Werschetz on the westernmost slope of the Banat Mountains at the time of the last great Turkish invasion of the Banat in 1788 . Based on the historical events, the author illustrates the rural life of the first generation of German settlers in the midst of a colorful mix of peoples and people. In doing so, he draws on Nazi ideologems such as B. Glorification of struggle, peasantry and leadership personality, superiority of the “ Aryan race”, inferiority, moral and physical depravity of the “foreign nationals”: ​​The Germans “must be protected from the baring teeth of the foreign army wolf that runs up and down the Danube over there with drooping blood tongue. "

In the novel "Boundaries Wandering: A Banat Novel" (1937) von Möller describes his life and morals of the Banat Swabians from the turn of the century through the First World War and the resulting trisection of the Banat in 1920 using the example of Jimbolia, which is largely inhabited by Germans . The place fell after 1918 first to Yugoslavia and in 1924 in exchange for Jaša Tomić to Romania . As in “Die Werschetz Tat”, the “Aryan” heroes have to assert themselves “against their racial opponents” in this novel.

In the novel "Die Salpeterer: A freedom struggle of German farmers" (1938) Möller describes the freedom struggle of the Hotzenwald saltpeterers in the Black Forest against the prince-bishop of St. Blasien and their eventual exile in the Banat . He describes their homesickness and their defiance of the injustice they see and only allows them to become “real Banat farmers” after generations.

In his last years, von Möller was very active as a writer. Above all, he published in the Eher publishing house of the NSDAP .

On October 11, 1941, the author's 65th birthday, Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels expressed his thanks to the nation.

Awards

Works

  • The Hundred Days 1815, Vienna
  • The young wine, Vienna 1921
  • Swabia. Drama in one act from the early days of the German Banat, Temesvar 1922
  • How the Swabian communities came into being, Temesvar 1923
  • The Banat. A picture of German nationality and German creativity in southeastern Europe. A memorial to the bicentenary of the German settlement in the Banat of Temesvar
  • Michel, who drove out the swamp devil, Leipzig 1926
  • The Werschetz deed. A novel by farmers and riders, Braunschweig 1936
  • Wandering boundaries. A Banat novel, Vienna 1937
  • Swabia. A Volksdeutsches game, Munich 1938
  • The saltpeter. A struggle for freedom by German farmers, Munich 1939
  • The scout. A novella, Vienna 1939
  • The Savoy. A Prinz Eugen novel, Munich 1939
  • Horsemen in the borderland. Story, Reutlingen 1939
  • German fate in the Banat, Vienna 1940
  • Hotspurs. An equestrian story about Prinz Eugen, Munich 1940
  • The stone chess board. Roman, Braunschweig 1941
  • The marquise's corset. A soldier's story from Flanders, Munich 1940
  • Late summer. A story from Vienna, Munich 1941
  • The Lorraine woman. Novel of a woman's life between two nations and two ages, Munich 1942
  • In the shadow of excellence. Novelle, Munich 1942
  • The way across the border. Novella, Vienna 1943

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Anton Peter Petri : Biographisches Lexikon des Banater Deutschtums , Marquartstein, 1992, ISBN 3-922046-76-2
  2. ↑ a b c d e Möller, Karl von. In: "Kulturportal West-Ost", author unknown.
  3. ↑ a b Stephan Olaf Schüller: For faith, leaders, people, fatherland or motherland? The struggles for German youth in the Romanian Banat (1918–1944) . LIT Verlag, Münster 2009. ISBN 3-8258-1910-8 . Pp. 84, 85, preview in Google Book search
  4. ^ A b Rudolf Vierhaus : German biographical encyclopedia, Menghin - Pötel . Entry Möller, Karl von. Walter de Gruyter, 2007. ISBN 3-11-094026-4 , p. 143, preview in the Google book search
  5. ↑ a b Blood and Soil - Sînge şi glie . In: Semi-annual journal for Southeast European history, literature and politics from February 4, 2018
  6. ^ Mads Ole Balling: From Reval to Bucharest. Statistical-Biographical Handbook of the Parliamentarians of the German Minorities in East-Central and Southeastern Europe 1919-1945 . Ringsted / Denmark: Documentation 1991, p. 651.
  7. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Karl von Möller - the racist Danube Swabian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 292f.
  8. ↑ Karl Schworm: “Memories of Karl von Möllerl. OO: N / A [1943]. Quoted in Deppe (2018), p. 293.trpralWs-O "
  9. ↑ wla-online.de , Buried Literature
  10. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Karl von Möller - the racist Danube Swabian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, pp. 286–291.
  11. ^ Karl von Möller: The Werschetzer Tat. A novel by farmers and riders . Braunschweig: Westermann 1936, p. 103. Quoted in Deppe (2018), p. 286.
  12. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Karl von Möller - the racist Danube Swabian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 292.
  13. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Karl von Möller - the racist Danube Swabian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 293.
  14. ↑ Patrick Deppe: Karl von Möller - the racist Danube Swabian . In: Rolf Düsterberg (Ed.): Poets for the "Third Reich". Volume 4. Biographical studies on the relationship between literature and ideology . Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2018, p. 293f.
  15. ^ A b Anton Scherer :  Möller, Karl von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 646 f. ( Digitized version ).
  16. ^ Helga Mitterbauer: Nazi literary prizes for Austrian authors: a documentation , Böhlau, Vienna 1994, p. 86, preview in the Google book search
personal data
SURNAME Möller, Karl Leopold von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Möller, Karl Leopold Edler von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian folk politician, writer and journalist in the Banat
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1943
Place of death Jimbolia , Romania