Karl Strölin

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Karl Strölin (1938)

Karl Emil Julius Strölin (born October 21, 1890 in Berlin ; † January 21, 1963 in Stuttgart ) was a German National Socialist politician and Lord Mayor of Stuttgart from 1933 to 1945 .

Life

Officer career

Karl Strölin was born in 1890 into a pietist family. As the son of a later general, he got a place in the Prussian Cadet Corps and consequently entered an officer career. Promoted to captain , he took part in the First World War. In 1920 he had to leave the military against his will because of the disarmament provisions of the Versailles Treaty . Strölin studied law and political science in Vienna and Giessen from 1920 to 1923. He was with the thesis "The economic situation of the middle class and the working class of the city of Stuttgart before and after the war" doctorate . In Stuttgart he then made a career in the city gas works. During his studies, he approached the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Adolf Hitler on. He joined the NSDAP for the first time in 1923 and then again in 1931.

Nazi politician

In 1931 Karl Strölin stood as a candidate for the National Socialists in the Stuttgart mayoral election against the incumbent Karl Lautenschlager , but suffered a clear defeat. Strölin received almost 26,000 votes, Lautenschlager more than 115,000.

Nevertheless, he moved into the Stuttgart municipal council in subsequent local elections , where he became chairman of the NSDAP parliamentary group . After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, the newly installed Württemberg Reich Governor Wilhelm Murr appointed him State Commissioner for the Administration of the City of Stuttgart on March 16, 1933 .

Strölin consistently enforced his National Socialist ideas in the city administration. Lord Mayor Lautenschlager was demoted to Strölin's "letter opener". Political opponents and Jews lost their jobs in the city administration. Within a few months he had trimmed the city administration on his course. On July 1, 1933, Murr appointed him Lord Mayor of Stuttgart for life.

Strölin saw his most important administrative tasks as Lord Mayor in urban planning and housing construction. Just a few weeks after taking office, by May 1, 1933, he had the previously independent villages of Weilimdorf , Mühlhausen and Zazenhausen incorporated in the north of Stuttgart . There he created space for new apartments, in which, however, according to the National Socialist worldview, only “racially superior” applicants (so-called Aryans ) were allowed to move.

In addition to many other posts, Strölin was appointed chairman of the German Institute for International Affairs (DAI) in Stuttgart in 1933 . This organization, originally conceived for the support and documentation of Germans abroad , was involved in numerous activities in the area of ​​National Socialist national politics during National Socialism .

During his tenure, Strölin repeatedly traveled to the capital of Berlin to make the city of Stuttgart and himself known to Adolf Hitler and his surroundings. In this way he achieved that Stuttgart received the NS honorary title "City of Germans Abroad". Strölin rose to the Reich leadership of the NSDAP.

In addition, Strölin, as Lord Mayor, was at least indirectly responsible for the fact that between 1941 and 1945 more than 2,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps from Stuttgart's Nordbahnhof . With a few exceptions, these people were murdered in the Holocaust .

In resistance

Strölin had contact with the former Mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , who was significantly involved in the bomb attack on Hitler on July 20, 1944 . On April 14, 1944, on behalf of Goerdeler, Strölin sent Field Marshal Erwin Rommel an inquiry about a meeting between Rommel and the former Reich Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath to discuss a political overthrow in Germany. Out of political caution, Rommel did not come himself, but sent his chief of staff, Hans Speidel , to the meeting with Neurath and Strölin on May 27, 1944 in Freudenstadt . Speidel on Strölin's statements at the meeting: “Lord Mayor Dr. Strölin particularly pointed out the central problem of the person of Adolf Hitler, with whom foreign countries would not make any political agreements. Only its elimination would enable a new creative policy. ”-“ Both men [Neurath and Strölin] asked that the Field Marshal be sent an urgent appeal to keep himself available for the rescue of the Reich, be it as Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht or as interim head of state. "

After the attack on July 20, Strölin's house was also searched , but it did not result in anything incriminating against him. Nevertheless, he was dismissed from the NSDAP Reich leadership in 1944, with the dismissal of his party rank. But he remained Lord Mayor of Stuttgart.

Shortly before the end of the war

When French and American troops advanced on Stuttgart in April 1945, the National Socialists declared the city a fortress and demanded that it be defended with all available means. As a former officer, Strölin knew that the city was impossible to defend in its basin position. The city was already badly damaged by heavy air strikes. In ground combat within the city limits not only remained intact buildings and utilities were destroyed but have also killed more thousands of people. Through his personal intervention, he prevented the bridge over the Neckar, over which the water pipeline was led to Stuttgart, from being blown up.

Strölin therefore secretly contacted the French army and offered the peaceful surrender of his hometown. In doing so, he consciously risked his life, because he defied the Nazi leadership's express order to hold out. In fact, the Secret State Police found out about Strölin's contacts with the enemy army and obtained an arrest warrant against him. But the radio operator who received the arrest warrant sent by telegram in Stuttgart made it disappear. In doing so, he not only saved Strölin from being shot dead , but also the city from complete destruction. On April 21, 1945, French troops were able to occupy the Stuttgart areas on the left bank of the Neckar with the city ​​center, largely without a fight . American troops moved into the districts on the right bank of the Neckar with Bad Cannstatt . A day later, Strölin officially handed over the city to a French general and at the same time proposed the non-party and unencumbered lawyer Arnulf Klett as the new mayor.

After the end of the war

Because Strölin was an important Nazi politician, he was initially imprisoned by the Allies and interned for some time in POW camp No. 32 ( Camp Ashcan ) in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg . He was later released and even classified as "less polluted" as part of the denazification process . However, he never expressed regret or self-criticism about his Nazi past. Rather, Strölin viewed National Socialism until his death as a fundamentally good political idea that Hitler and those around him had merely betrayed. In 1950 he published a book on "Stuttgart in the final stages of the war". At the beginning of the 1950s he obtained a pension from the city of Stuttgart in court. In the post-war period he was attacked not only by left, but also by extreme right-wing circles, because he had "betrayed Germany" with his contacts to the resistance and the surrender of Stuttgart.

Strölin was buried in the forest cemetery.

Honorary positions

Fonts

  • Problems of housing, urban development and spatial planning with regard to the reconstruction and planning of new urban facilities in the future peacetime , Stuttgart, July 1944
  • Stuttgart in the final stages of the war , Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, Stuttgart 1950, 68 pp.
  • Traitors or patriots. July 20, 1944 and the right to resistance , Friedrich Vorwerk Verlag, Stuttgart 1952, 47 pp.

literature

  • Walter Nachtmann: Karl Strölin . Silberburg publishing house. Stuttgart Lord Mayor in the "Führer State." Silberburg-Verlag, Tübingen, 1995, ISBN 3-87407-210-X .
  • Michael Kißener , Joachim Scholtyseck (ed.): The leaders of the province: Nazi biographies from Baden and Württemberg. Karlsruhe Contributions to the History of National Socialism 2 , Universitätsverlag Konstanz (UKV), 1997, ISBN 3-87940-566-2
  • Walter Nachtmann: Wilhelm Murr and Karl Strölin . In: Stuttgart Nazi perpetrators. From fellow travelers to mass murderers. Ed. Hermann G. Abmayr, Schmetterling-Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 186–197, ISBN 3-896571-36-2
  • Phillip Wagner: Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45. In: European Review of History , 25 (2018), pp. 512-534, doi: 10.1080 / 13507486.2018.1439888 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ If not mentioned otherwise, the statements refer to: Walter Nachtmann: Karl Strölin. Stuttgart Lord Mayor in the Führer State. Tübingen 1995.
  2. ^ Strölin, Karl Emil Julius , leo-bw.de, accessed December 12, 2015
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 609.
  4. ^ Hans Speidel: Invasion 1944 . Ullstein publishing house, Frankfurt / Berlin / Vienna 1975. ISBN 3-548-03051-3 . Pages 58-59.
  5. ↑ Michel Geertse: Cross-Border Country Planning Dialogue in Interwar Europe , SAGE Open, August 2015, DOI : 10.1177 / 2158244015600768 [1]
  6. ↑ Michel Geertse: Defining the Universal City, The International Federation for Housing and Town Planning and transnational planning dialogue 1913-1945 , Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam , Amsterdam 2012, [2]
  7. ↑ Phillip Wagner: Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45- In: European Review of History , 25 (2018), pp. 512–534, doi: 10.1080 / 13507486.2018.1439888 .
personal data
SURNAME Strölin, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strölin, Karl Emil Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP) and Lord Mayor of Stuttgart
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1963
Place of death Stuttgart