Karl Stützel

Karl Konrad Stützel (born May 22, 1872 in Speyer , † July 25, 1944 in Munich ) was a German politician of the Bavarian People's Party (BVP) and long-standing Bavarian Minister of the Interior .

Life

He was the son of Speyr painters and whitewashers Franz Peter Stützel and Clara Stützel and half-brother of Speyr honor mayor Franz Anton Stützel . Stützel attended the humanistic grammar school in Speyer and after graduating from high school in 1891 studied law in Munich , Berlin , Erlangen and Heidelberg . There he became a member of the Catholic student associations KDStV Aenania Munich (1891), KAV Suevia Berlin and KDStV Arminia Heidelberg . He was also a founding member of the KDStV Trifels Munich and in 1893 of the KDStV Gothia Erlangen. After completing his doctorate and the first state examination in 1895, he did his year of voluntary military service . The second state examination followed in 1899. He then worked as an assessor in the Ebermannstadt district office and in Neustadt an der Haardt . In 1902 he married his wife Franziska geb. Wack with whom he had three sons, Fritz (1903-1945), Otto (1904-1981), Herrmann (1905-1941) and a daughter Franziska (1914-2004). The second oldest son Otto was later a doctor in Bangkok . In 1912 Stützel became a government assessor in the government of Lower Bavaria in Landshut and in 1914 head of the Vilshofen district office .

He took part in the First World War and from 1914 to 1916 was a captain at the Deputy General Command in Nuremberg and then a major on the Western Front .

politics

In 1918 he was Councilor in the Bavarian Ministry of Internal Affairs , then served as a speaker Stützel of Housing in the Ministry of Social Welfare. In 1920 he was promoted to Ministerialrat and in 1921 was briefly State Commissioner for the relief organization for the victims and survivors of the explosion at the Oppau nitrogen works . For his work, Oppau made him an honorary citizen . In 1924, Prime Minister Heinrich Held appointed him to succeed Franz Schweyer as Bavarian Minister of the Interior .

During his term of office, several important measures fell, including the municipal code of 1927. This promoted the expansion of regional self-government with a new local election law. He reformed the police system , initiated a Bavarian medical law and extensive plans to secure the energy supply and to expand the Bavarian state road network. He was the founder of the Nuremberg settlement works. Stützel resolutely fought the KPD and the NSDAP . In 1925 he imposed a ban on speaking against Adolf Hitler , which was only lifted in March 1927, and tried to get his deportation . He also thwarted the attempt by Wilhelm Frick and Rudolf Buttmann to obtain Hitler's naturalization . In 1930/31 he issued a uniform ban and temporarily banned the SA and SS .

When the Held government was declared deposed by the National Socialists on March 9, 1933 , the new rulers took revenge on their opponents. On the night of March 9th to 10th, 1933, he was abducted from his apartment and abused in the Munich Brown House .

Lina Heydrich , the wife of Reinhard Heydrich , who was responsible for numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II , reported triumphantly about the disempowerment of the Bavarian government in a letter to her parents on March 13:

"Politely received the order to arrest the Minister of the Interior, Stützel, with some SS men. At first he refuses to get out of bed to go with him. When he doesn't go with the third request, they take him as he is and put him in the car - and off to the brown house . You can imagine the fun. The Minister of the Interior is standing in the hall in socks and nightgown, surrounded by a crowd of SA and SS who, laughing, don't know where to go. Then they come and step on the crying Minister of the Interior with their heavy boots on the big toe so that he hops from one leg to the other between them. "

- The Chronicle of Bavaria :

The now private citizen Stützel fled to Innsbruck for a short time , but returned and lived completely withdrawn in Munich until his death.

Honors

• Dr. med. hc and Dr. med. vet. hc (Munich 1927 and 1928)
• Honorary citizen of Oppau

See also

• List of personalities of the city of Speyer

literature

• Oliver Braun:  Stützel, Karl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 25, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-428-11206-7 , p. 637 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Thomas Fürst: Karl Stützel. A life in upheaval: from royal civil servant to Bavarian interior minister during the Weimar period (1924–1933). Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-53262-1 . ( Review by Oliver Braun )
• Stefan Jelic: Karl Stützel and National Socialism. On the dispute between the Bavarian Minister of the Interior and the NSDAP from 1930 to 1933. In: Zeitschrift für Bavarian Landesgeschichte 63 (2000), pp. 787–866 ( digitized version ).
• Courageous opponent of Hitler . Article in OVB Online November 28, 2017.

Web links

• Literature by and about Karl Stützel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Stützel in the online version of the Reich Chancellery Files Edition . Weimar Republic
• Karl Stützel in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History
• Karl Stützel at the Bavarian State Library
• Hans Hinterberger: Interior Minister Karl Stützel - The man who wanted to expel Hitler . In: BR radioWissen, Podcast.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Stützel, Karl Konrad in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on February 5, 2020.
2. ^ City Archives of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein (ed.): History of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Vol. 2. From the end of the First World War to the present. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 2003, ISBN 3-924667-35-7 , p. 982.
3. ↑ The Chronicle of Bavaria. Chronik Verlag, 3rd edition, 1994, p. 482.

predecessor	Office	successor
Franz Xaver Schweyer	Bavarian Minister of the Interior (Free State of Bavaria (1918–1945)) 1924–1933	Adolf Wagner