Klaus Dohrn (publicist)

Klaus Heinrich Dohrn (born June 28, 1909 in Hellerau near Dresden , † May 22, 1979 in Zurich ) was a German publicist.

Life and activity

Youth, Education and Early Career

Dohrn was a son of Wolf Dohrn (1878–1914) and his wife Johanna (1884–1964), b. Sattler and grandson of the zoologist Anton Dohrn . His younger sister was Herta Dohrn (1912-2014), who in 1941 married Christoph Probst , who was later executed as a member of the White Rose . After the father's death, Dohrn's mother married his brother Harald Dohrn . Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, he was arrested and shot by the SS as a member of the anti-Nazi resistance group Freedom Action Bavaria .

After Dohrn converted to Catholicism as a high school student , he studied theology in Innsbruck and Munich . During this time he came into close contact with Paul Claudel .

From 1932 to 1933 Dohrn worked as a correspondent for the Rhein-Mainische Volkszeitung in Rome .

Emigration in Austria (1933 to 1938)

When the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Dohrn emigrated to Austria in 1933, where he settled in Vienna .

In December 1933, Dohrn became the unofficial editor-in-chief of the newspaper Der Christliche Ständestaat, founded in that month and published in Vienna . The content of this newspaper, whose profile is mostly characterized as "clerical" and "anti-Nazi socialist" in the literature, was largely determined by him and the editor Dietrich von Hildebrand .

The Christian Ständestaat was specifically set up to strengthen the political system established by Engelbert Dollfuss at the beginning of the 1930s in Austria ( Austrofascism ) on a spiritual and ideological level and to support it in its struggle with the German National Socialist system. In pursuing this goal, Dohrn and Hildebrand saw themselves as "intellectual officers" of Dollfuss in his fight against National Socialism in Austria and Germany. National Socialism was interpreted by them as a "heresy", as an anti-Christian and ultimately hostile to all religion ideological movement, based in particular on Alfred Rosenberg's elaboration of the National Socialist ideology in his work The Myth of the 20th Century .

Dohrn justified his journalistic commitment with the conviction

“There should be a clear document from the Catholic side against National Socialism, proof that at the moment of collaborationism, even on the part of the bishops, voices were raised that clearly radically rejected National Socialism on a principled basis from their conscience as Catholics represent. "

One of the articles by Dohrn in the city state that received the most attention from later research was the contribution "National Socialism and ..." ( Der christliche Ständestaat 1/24, 1933/34, pp. 17f.). In this he took the view that National Socialism should neither be compared with Italian fascism nor with the Austrian homeland security movement, since it would separate it from both "worlds". It is much more important to understand it as a twin of Russian Bolshevism , with which it, despite all external differences, has numerous characteristics, namely: "the brutal oppression of all opponents, the equalization of all spheres of life, the struggle against Christianity in the name of a new [ secular] religion of the deification of a collective, the deprivation of rights of the family and the dishonor of the individual soul. " Researchers like Elke Seefried have pointed out that these considerations are nothing less than an anticipation of the totalitarian theory formulated after the Second World War .

Dohrn mostly used the pseudonyms Nikolaus Heinrich , Heinrich Norden or Klaus Thorn to mark his articles in the Christian corporate state .

Except on Christian corporate state Dohrn also worked on the financed by Czechoslovak donors magazine The Hour .

As a counter-model to German National Socialism, Dohrn advocated Austrian legitimism. In this context he worked closely with Ernst Karl Winter and other Austrian monarchists. In particular, he was also in connection with the Austrian pretender Otto von Habsburg .

In 1936, Dohrn participated alongside Peter Bultmann and others in founding the Ring of German Young Catholics , before joining the German Front against the Hitler regime in January 1937 , an association of German conservative exile groups organized in Czechoslovakia and Austria. a. the Black Front under Otto Strasser and the People's Socialist Movement in Germany under Hans Jaeger and Fritz Max Cahen.

The German front against the Hitler regime endeavored - in deliberate delimitation to the politically left-wing popular front movement - to bring together the Catholic-conservative emigration in a third front "against National Socialism and Communism.

Emigration to Czechoslovakia, France and Spain (1938 to 1941)

In March 1938, Dohrn fled to Czechoslovakia when German troops marched into Austria and this country was annexed by the German Reich. After this country was occupied by Germany in March 1939, he went to Paris , where he became an important contributor to the newspaper Die Österreichische Post . He also made contributions to the Ligue Autrichienne under Hans Rott and was in working relationship with the French Ministry of Information.

Dohrn's political stance and his activities in the years since 1933 had made him a man extremely hated by the National Socialists in the late 1930s. His co-emigrant Eugen Kogon later recalled in his memoirs that Dohrn - whom he describes as a "vehement opponent of National Socialism" - was wanted by the Nazi authorities with great vigor: "They wanted his head". Documentary confirmation of this information is found in Dohrn's classification as an enemy of the state by the Nazi police: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin - which mistakenly suspected him to be in Great Britain - finally put Dohrn on the special wanted list of GB a list of people who would be in the event of a successful invasion of the British Isles should be located and arrested with special priority by the occupying troops following SS special commands.

In 1941 Dohrn fled the German occupation of France from southern France to Spain, where he was interned in a fortress near Miranda del Ebro for several months from May 1941 before he was released on intervention by the Habsburgs. At the end of 1941 he was allowed to leave for Lisbon , from where he was given a passage to the United States in 1942, where he worked for Catholic aid organizations for the rest of the war.

post war period

After the Second World War, Dohrn became Henry Luce's European advisor and correspondent for Henry Luce's Time and Life magazines and European representative of the Macmillan Press.

In 1978 he lived in the USA, where he had been naturalized in 1948, and in Switzerland. According to his own statements, as a remigrant, he "never fully settled in America and never again in Europe". Instead, he liked the role of a mediator between the old and the new world: on the one hand, by explaining the old home in his articles to his new home and vice versa, explaining the old to the new. On the other hand, by acting as an unofficial liaison between European and American politicians.

Dohrn u. a. close contacts to Konrad Adenauer's environment and in particular to Hans Globke and State Secretary Guttenberg, with whom he was also close private friends. As a result, it was widely used in the 1950s as an intermediary for getting in touch with relevant people in the States through informal channels and as a provider of information from the United States.

The most important key points in Dohrn's political program in the post-war period were his resolute anti-communism as well as his support for the West's invasion of the FRG and his rejection of the possibility of an American withdrawal from Europe.

Marriage and offspring

In 1932 Dohrn married Anneliese Fritzen for the first time. This marriage ended in divorce in 1939. In his second marriage he was married to another woman. He had several children (including Beatrice, Mathias).

Fonts

Essays:

• "Adenauer's picture of America", in: Dieter Blumenwitz et al. (Ed.): Konrad Adenauer and his time. Politics and personality of the first Federal Chancellor , Stuttgart 1976, pp. 510–523.
• "Globke's relationship with the United States", in: Klaus Gotto (Ed.): The State Secretary Adenauer. Personality and Political Work of Hans Globkes , Stuttgart 1980, pp. 172–183.

literature

• Werner Roeder / Herbert A. Strauss : Biographical Handbook of German emigration after 1933 , Vol. I (politics, economy, Public life) Munich / New York / London / Paris 1980, p 135th

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Elke Seefried: Reich and Stands, p. 214.
2. ↑ Eugen Kogon: "This strange, important life": Encounters , 1997, p. 43.