Karl Roos

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Karl Roos around 1940

Karl Roos (also: Philippe-Charles Roos , born September 7, 1878 in Surburg , Weißenburg district , Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine ; † February 7, 1940 in Champigneulles , Meurthe-et-Moselle ) was a teacher and autonomist politician from Alsace . As a German scholar , he also campaigned for the Alsatian dialect and language rights , especially at the beginning of his political career . After he was accused, tried and executed as a traitor in France and thus became a martyr of the autonomists and homeland rights activists, the memory of him was intensively instrumentalized by the National Socialists during the annexation of Alsace in World War II .

Life

Until the end of the First World War (1902–1918)

After visiting the elementary school of the son attended a Catholic elementary school teacher high school in Schlettstadt and studied at the universities of Freiburg and the Kaiser Wilhelm University of Strasbourg German . In Freiburg Roos became a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Ripuaria Freiburg im Breisgau im CV . As an employee of the Strasbourg Germanist Ernst Martin , he was involved in the publication of the " Dictionary of Alsatian Dialects " (1899–1907). With his work on "Foreign words in the Alsatian dialects" he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1903 .

He first taught as a teacher in Alsace ( Barr , Markirch / Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines ), then as a senior teacher in Bochum and Cologne . In the First World War Roos took part as a vice sergeant and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class in the battles for Antwerp in 1914 . For health reasons he worked as a lieutenant and company commander in Belgium and Luxembourg in the stage service. After the armistice in November 1918, Roos returned to Alsace , which was already occupied by French troops on November 21, 1918, after October 17, 1919, according to the Treaty of Versailles, officially belonged to France again and was administered by a directorate-general in Paris.

The autonomist politician (1919-1940)

Karl Roos election poster

In 1918 Roos acquired a private business school in Strasbourg-Neudorf, which he headed for a number of years as rector, but eventually closed it when there was no economic success. In 1924, the French mine administration ( Administration francaise des mines domaniales de la Sarre ) hired the Alsatian teacher with a good knowledge of the German school system as an inspector for the newly established French domain schools in the Saar area, which was under French administration . In the available sources, he is described as a fighter for Germanism and against the French assimilation policy , as a loyal French official or as an informant who informed the French administration about German national activities in the Saar area.

In any case, he ended this activity in 1926 and returned to Strasbourg. He worked as a staff in Saverne / Zabern appearing autonomist newspaper The Future. Independent weekly for the defense of the Alsace-Lorraine people's and homeland rights and became General Secretary of the Alsace-Lorraine Homeland Federation in February 1927 . On September 25, 1927 he was one of the founding members of the Autonomist State Party for Alsace ( renamed Independent State Party on November 19, 1927 after merging with another autonomist splinter party ). This called for a representation of the people of Alsace-Lorraine with legislative powers and, as a long-term goal, an independent Alsace-Lorraine state within a European community of states.

In the run-up to the French chamber elections in April 1928, the Poincaré government took legal action against the Alsatian autonomists: On November 12, 1927, among other things, the future was forbidden, prominent autonomist politicians were arrested in December 1927 and on May 1, 1928 in the Colmar plot charged with a conspiracy against state security. Roos was able to evade arrest and temporarily settled in Basel . In March 1928 he published the brochure Politics and Violence Politics in Alsace-Lorraine in order to mobilize the international public against the actions of the French government. On June 12, 1928, he was sentenced in absentia to 15 years imprisonment in Colmar . Secretly returned to Alsace, Roos surrendered to the French judiciary voluntarily on the morning of November 10, 1928 after an effective evening appearance at a communist protest meeting against the withdrawal of the chamber mandates of Eugen Ricklin and Joseph Rossé . While he was still in pre-trial detention, which lasted seven months, Roos was elected to the Strasbourg city council on May 12, 1929 through the autonomist group Home Front . At the first meeting of the newly elected council he was elected mayor of Strasbourg, but renounced this office in favor of the communist Charles Hueber . In a review process in Besançon , Roos was acquitted on June 22, 1929 of the charge of high treason .

In the following years Roos ran for public offices with varying degrees of success. He was able to keep his seat on the city council and was temporarily vice-president of the general council of the Bas-Rhin department . However, his independent state party was never able to gain a broader base in the population, so that in elections he always remained dependent on alliances and agreements with other autonomist parties. From 1935 onwards he increasingly lost political influence, which can be seen both in the decreasing share of the vote in elections and in the decreasing circulation of the Elsass-Lothringer Zeitung (ELZ) , which is closely related to his party . Younger and more radical autonomist politicians like Hermann Bickler increasingly ousted him in the public eye. In this situation, Roos founded an Alsatian folk education association based on the model of the adult education centers , which organized folkloric events. Roos himself contributed lectures on dialect history to the club's program.

Roos had been under police surveillance since 1926. He went through his frequent trips to Germany and Switzerland as suspect as its obvious sympathies for the expansion of the Third Reich in 1938. In the following the Munich agreement still tense political situation in Europe, the French government went Daladier in to Départements bordering Germany decided against groups that were viewed as supporters of Hitler in Alsace. The Alsatian National Education Association was banned, and Roos himself was arrested on February 4, 1939 and taken to the military prison in Nancy . After the declaration of war by France on 3 September 1939, he was due to statements made by his close associate Julien Marco on October 23 before a military court of espionage indicted for Germany and on 26 October because of high treason sentenced to death . His objection was rejected by the appeals court, the French President Albert Lebrun refused a pardon. On February 7, 1940, Roos was executed by firing squad on the Champigneulles military site near Nancy . Roos was first buried in the Champigneulles cemetery.

The "martyr of German Alsace" (1940–1944)

On February 10, 1940, the German government declared that Roos had never been in contact with a German intelligence service. On February 14th, the Freiburg district leader Kretschmar praised Roos for the first time as the “ martyr of Alsace in Germany” at a ceremony . The coffin adorned with the swastika flag with the body of the executed man was transported through the territory of the former Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine to the Hüneburg near Neuweiler / Neuwiller-lès-Saverne at the instigation of the Baden Gauleiter and head of civil administration in Alsace, Robert Wagner convicted and buried there on June 19, 1941 with military honors. In the next few years, the Hüneburg became an obligatory place of pilgrimage for the NSDAP party formations and the students of occupied Alsace-Lorraine .

Julien Marco, regarded as a traitor, was arrested in June 1940 and later killed in Mauthausen concentration camp . The police commissioner Antoine Becker , who led the investigation against Roos in the prewar period, was arrested by the Gestapo in Marseille in December 1943 , held in the Vorbruck-Schirmeck security camp and finally murdered in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in 1944 with a shot in the neck. After the liberation of France and the recapture of Alsace by the Allied troops, the sarcophagus in which Roos was buried is said to have been thrown into the moat by French troops. It is not known where his remains remained (as of 1987).

politics

Roos campaigned for the autonomy of his Alsatian homeland in the late twenties . For him, this meant the preservation of cultural traditions and Alsatian special rights against the centralistic and secular aspirations of the French government. In particular, the German language should be on an equal footing with French in public life in Alsace.

Since the seizure of the Nazi party in 1933, Roos began increasingly to the Nazi ideology to care. The state party , which according to available sources comprised around 300 members with regional focuses in northern Alsace on the border with the Palatinate and in Strasbourg, was organized according to the “ leader principle ”: the executives (“ shop stewards ”) had to be confirmed by party president Roos. At times he also toyed with the idea of ​​setting up storm troops based on the National Socialist model to protect autonomist assemblies. In autumn 1933 Roos undertook a long trip through Central Europe and made contact with the organizations of the German-speaking minorities in South Tyrol and Czechoslovakia . In connection with the annexation of Austria and the Sudeten crisis in 1938, the state party under the leadership of Roos repeatedly broached the issue of ethnic group law and the self-determination of national minorities in its press, and in doing so took the increasingly obvious side for National Socialist Germany. As a result, the party and its president increasingly came into an outsider position in the Alsatian public.

Roos was repeatedly accused of being the recipient of support payments from the German Reich and of having betrayed military secrets of the French troops in Alsace to the Germans. However, there does not seem to have been any solid evidence for this. From today's perspective, the death sentence against him appears to be predominantly politically motivated, but ultimately as a political stupidity that Nazi propaganda exploited: Between 1940 and 1944, Roos was almost as ubiquitous in Alsace as Hitler. After the occupation of France by National Socialist Germany, Place Kléber in Strasbourg bore his name from August 1940, as did a student association at the University of Strasbourg . There was hardly a village or town without a square, street or school named after him.

With regard to the death sentence, German research largely supports the thesis of a judicial murder, while French research in Alsace mostly ignores the circumstances of the sentence in silence. Alsatian autonomist websites still refer to Karl Roos as the martyr of their cause.

Publications

  • The foreign words in the Alsatian dialects. A contribution to Alsatian dialect research. Heitz, Strasbourg 1903.
  • Politics and violence in Alsace-Lorraine. A font for teaching and defense; on the occasion of the persecution of the autonomists around Christmas 1927. Fricke, Zurich 1928.
  • Our Elsässerditsch (publications of the Elsässischer Volksbildungsverein 1). Strasbourg 1938.
  • Our Alsace in house humor and proverbs. Hünenburg-Verlag, Neuweiler 1940.

literature

  • Lothar Kettenacker: National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in Alsace. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1973 (Studies on Contemporary History. Published by the Institute for Contemporary History ), ISBN 3-421-01621-6 .
  • Karl-Heinz Rothenberger: The Alsace-Lorraine home and autonomy movement between the two world wars. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. Main 1976 (European University Writings. Volume 42), ISBN 3-261-01485-7 .
  • Philip Charles Farwell Bankwitz: Alsatian autonomist leaders 1919–1947. The Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1978, ISBN 0-7006-0160-0
  • Kurt Hochstuhl: Between Peace and War. Alsace in the years 1938–1940. A contribution to the problems of a border region in times of crisis. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. Main 1984, ISBN 3-8204-8254-7 (European university publications . Volume 250).
  • Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. In: Agnès Acker (ed.): Encyclopédie de l'Alsace. Ed. Publitotal, Strasbourg 1985, Sp. 6502-6504; there also further literature.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. In: Agnès Acker (ed.): Encyclopédie de l'Alsace. Ed. Publitotal, Strasbourg 1985, p. 6502.
  2. ^ Karl Roos: The foreign words in the Alsatian dialects. A contribution to Alsatian dialect research. Heitz, Strasbourg 1903.
  3. These schools should specifically educate miners' children in the French language and culture; s. Gerhild Krebs: Domanial schools in the Saar area (1920–1935) (PDF; 27 kB)
  4. ^ Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. P. 6502.
  5. ^ Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. P. 6502; Ulrich Päßler: Alsace in the interwar period (1919–1940). P. 153–166 in: Michael Erbe (Ed.): Das Elsass. Historical landscape through the ages. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-17-015771-X .
  6. ^ Alsace-Lorraine communications. Complete volume 1928. Elsaß-Lothringischer Hilfsbund-Verlag, Berlin. P. 602, pp. 6010-611.
  7. a b Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. P. 6503.
  8. Rothenberger speaks of about 400 members in 4 local groups; Rothenberger 1976. p. 200.
  9. Our Elsässerditsch (writings of the Elsässischer Volksbildungsverein 1). Strasbourg 1938; Our Alsace in house humor and proverbs. Hünenburg-Verlag, Neuweiler 1940.
  10. a b c Léon Strauss: ROOS Philippe-Charles, plus connu sous le nom de Karl ROOS. P. 6504.
  11. Federal Archives, inventory: Fig. 240 - Friedrich Wilhelm Ferdinand estate [1]
  12. Christian Fauvel: Metz 1940–1950, De la tourmente au nenouveau, Metz 2017, p. 74.
  13. ^ PC Ettighofer : One slain victorious homecoming. Karl Roos back in his Alsace. Strasbourg Monthly Issues July 1941, pp. 417-423; with photos of the ceremony.
  14. « The grave of Roos becomes a place of pilgrimage for all German and Alsatian patriots. The body is buried in a tower that was built next to the castle and over which the flag with the swastika flies day and night . »The latest Strasbourg news. June 22, 1941.
  15. ^ Philip Charles Farwell Bankwitz: Alsatian autonomist leaders 1919-1947. The Regents Press of Kansas, Lawrence 1978, p. 50.
  16. ^ Bernadette Schnitzler: Le chateau de Hunebourg et ses légends. In: Groupe de Recherche sur le chateau de Hunebourg, 1987; Hunebourg. Un rocher chargé d'histoire du Moyen Age à l'époque contemporaine. Société Savante d'Alsace 1997 (Collection "Recherches et documents" tome 59), pp. 263-266.
  17. ^ Philip Charles Farwell Bankwitz: Alsatian autonomist leaders 1919-1947. Pp. 17-18.
  18. Kurt Hochstuhl: Between Peace and War. Alsace in the years 1938–1940. Pp. 61-82, 308.
  19. ^ Lothar Kettenacker: National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik in Alsace. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1973 (Studies on Contemporary History. Published by the Institute for Contemporary History ), ISBN 3-421-01621-6 , p. 32 and p. 128–129.
  20. Kurt Hochstuhl: Between Peace and War. Alsace in the years 1938–1940. P. 278 (note 104)
  21. Kurt Hochstuhl: Between Peace and War. Alsace in the years 1938–1940. P. 392.
  22. z. B. Karl Roos 9/7/1878 - 7/7/1940 in Memoriam or Young Alsace Jeune Alsace  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (both in French; last checked on September 26, 2009)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.jeune-alsace.com