Karl Meyer (frontist)

Karl Christian Meyer (also Carl ; born September 28, 1898 in Schaffhausen ; † December 19, 1986 there ) was a Swiss teacher and leading member of the front movement .

Life

Karl Meyer, the son of a customs officer, worked as a primary school teacher in Rüdlingen and as a secondary school teacher at the girls' secondary school in Schaffhausen. In 1926 he married a German from Heiligenberg , Baden ; the couple had three children. Meyer was a member of the FDP , Feldweibel and president of the Schaffhausen NCOs. Since its inception, Meyer was a leading member of the front movement in Switzerland. At the founding meeting of the New Front in April 1933, he gave the opening speech - meanwhile resigned from the FDP. Meyer later appeared regularly as a speaker at events organized by the front movement. Through his public speeches, he was repeatedly confronted with defamation lawsuits, and the local and federal authorities debated his dismissal from school.

Because of the lack of success, the front movement leaned more and more towards the NSDAP . Meyer attended the NSDAP party congress in Nuremberg in September 1936 and the following year . After Rolf Henne resigned as leader of the National Front in 1938 , Meyer also worked with his successor Robert Tobler . Together with Ernst Brandenberger and Eduard Rüegsegger , Meyer finally rose to the state leadership of the National Front. After the dissolution of the National Front in March 1940, at which Karl Meyer had given a speech, he also appeared again as ringleader with the successor party, the National Community of Schaffhausen . Due to his work, however, he was finally banned from speaking by the Federal Council in 1941 and also excluded from the Swiss Army in 1942. In March 1943 Meyer was finally suspended as a real-life teacher because of "constant disregard of official references, reminders and instructions".

After his discharge from civil service, Meyer built a mechanical workshop. Through his acquaintance Charles ten Brink , however, he was mainly active as a source of news for the German security service and the Alemannic working group , for which he carried out certain jobs in Switzerland. Meyer worked in this role until the end of the war. Meyer's plan to emigrate to Germany in the autumn of 1944 failed because, as a middleman in Switzerland, he was more useful to the National Socialists.

In the summer of 1945 Karl Meyer was arrested for the first time for illegal intelligence services and sentenced on December 20, 1947 - as part of the large traitor trials before the Federal Criminal Court - to eight years in prison and ten years in civil service . Meyer himself always denied the allegations made against him. After two thirds of his imprisonment, he was conditionally released from the Regensdorf prison in autumn 1952 .

Karl Meyer died on December 19, 1986 in Schaffhausen.

literature

• Matthias Wipf: Frontism in a border town: Schaffhausen in the Second World War 1933–1945 . Manuscript (90 pp.). Historical seminar, University of Bern, Bern 1998, in particular pp. 14–20 (location: Schaffhausen City Archives).
• Walter Wolf: Fascism in Switzerland: The History of the Front Movement in German Switzerland 1930–1945. Dissertation. Flamberg, Zurich 1969.

Web links

• Matthias Wipf: Meyer, Karl Christian. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

swell

• Federal Archives: Personal dossier Karl Meyer, E 4320 (B) 1971-78-16 / C.2.2126
• State Archives SH: files of the Government Council 1937–1952, K / 29/2/6/17 and K / 42/6/5
• StadtA SH: Police files, C II 06/03/60
• Report of the Federal Council to the Federal Assembly on anti-democratic activity… 1939–1945 (Boerlin motion) . December 28, 1945
• Conversations with contemporary witnesses Dr. Matthias Wipf with Oskar Brunner (Police, March 6, 1998) as well as Elisabeth and Dr. Hedwig Schudel (May 5, 1998)