Konstantin von Gebsattel

Konstantin Wilhelm Hartmann Heinrich Ludwig Freiherr von Gebsattel (born February 13, 1854 in Würzburg , † May 10, 1932 in Linz ) was a Bavarian general of the cavalry , inspector of the cavalry and pan-German - ethnic agitator.

Life

Konstantin Freiherr von Gebsattel (around 1884) in a lieutenant's uniform

family

Constantine came from the Frankish noble family von Gebsattel . He was the son of Viktor Emil Freiherr von Gebsattel (1826–1874), Bavarian chamberlain and court marshal of Amalie of Greece , and his wife Emma, ​​née Freiin von Guttenberg (1821–1859). Godparents were the grandfather Konstantin Wilhelm Hartmann von Gebsattel (1783–1861), forester zu Lebenhan and the retired Bavarian Colonel Heinrich von Dufresne .

Gebsattel married Maria Freiin von Karg von Bebenburg (1860–1927) in 1882. The sons Viktor Emil (1883–1976) and Lothar (1886–1902) emerged from the marriage.

On December 13, 1901, Konstantin von Gebsattel managed to buy back the old family property in the village of Gebsattel and to win over Gabriel von Seidl for the rebuilding and partial rebuilding of the castle in the neo-renaissance style , which was completed in 1905.

Military career

After attending private schools and Latin schools in Münnerstadt and Bamberg as well as the Munich Ludwigs-Gymnasium and the Bavarian pagerie there (from 1867), Gebsattel joined the 1st Uhlan Regiment of the Bavarian Army on August 20, 1872 . From 1878 to 1881 Gebsattel graduated from the War Academy , which made him qualify for the higher adjutantage. He was then from 1882 to 1884 personal adjutant to Prince Leopold of Bavaria . In 1886 he then became adjutant of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade and three years later as Rittmeister squadron chief in the 1st Uhlan Regiment. On November 11, 1896 Gebsattel Major and as-budgetary staff officer for the next year 2. Heavy Cavalry Regiment of Landshut added. In 1899 he was given command of the 5th Chevaulegers Regiment in Speyer and Zweibrücken . On September 19, 1900 he became a lieutenant colonel and in 1903 a colonel . As such, Gebsattel was given command of the 1st Cavalry Brigade on June 11, 1903 and was promoted to major general in this position in 1905 . In mid-April 1906 he gave up the brigade and was appointed inspector of the cavalry . On June 26, 1908 he became lieutenant general ; in September of that year he was awarded the Order of the Red Eagle, Second Class with Oak Leaves.

On March 3, 1910 Gebsattel was due to an asthma under promotion to general of cavalry to the disposition provided. As a result, he actively devoted himself to politics.

Anti-Semitism and Pan-German Association

Influenced by the events of 1912 and reading the book If I were Kaiser… by Daniel Frymann ( Heinrich Claß ), to which his former colleague Georg von Kleist had drawn his attention at the end of 1912, Gebsattel wrote a sketch of his political in spring 1913 Thoughts that he sent to several personalities in high social positions, including the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria .

Since Gebsattel found extensive political agreement with Claß, he entered into correspondence with Claß from May 1913. In the developing correspondence, Claß was able to interest Gebsattel in the Pan-German Association . Both met personally for the first time on August 12 and 13 at Gebsattels Gut, after which Gebsattel joined the Pan-German Association. At the suggestion of Claß, Gebsattel was elected to the entire board at the Wroclaw Association Day on September 6th.

Gebsattel then worked out his sketch into a memorandum, which he sent to over 200 personalities in October 1913 under the title “Thoughts on the necessary progress in the internal development of Germany”. In the text, Gebsattel puts the " Jewish question " as central to the fate of the monarchy and religion - in addition to the proposals to be enforced by a coup d'état and state of siege , if necessary , to link the right to vote in the Reichstag to military service and military taxes as well as total protection of the monarchy and religion from journalistic attacks German Reich and recommends a radical anti-Semitic solution. Judaism and Germanness are opposed to each other like fire and water; Germanism is deep, positive and idealistic, while Judaism is shallow, negative, tearing and materialistic. Jews were to be placed under aliens law and excluded from civil service and military service. The acquisition of large estates should be prohibited to Jews. Nonetheless, the desired anti-Semitic legislation should exercise caution in ensuring that it does not cause excessive emigration of Jews from the German Reich, because an accompanying flight of capital could damage the Reich. Gebsattel therefore recommends that Jewish property be expropriated by the state before the owners emigrate. Gebsattel wants to rule out any mixing of the Jewish and German “races”, which is why Christian baptism should not change the legal status of Jews and their children (cf. Rassenschande ). Gebsattel recommended that only grandchildren with no more than a quarter of Jewish blood should be allowed to enter into “the rights of the Teutons ”. After all, Jews, since they are only guests and not citizens, must be excluded from the political opinion-forming process and they must be prohibited from publishing and working in newspapers.

The memorandum had no immediate political consequences. However, the German Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia , who was regarded by the Pan-Germans as a bearer of political hope and was also among the addressees, asked his father, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Reich Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to transfer the document in November 1913 Review forwarded. Both judged Gebsattel's writing on the whole negatively, even if both explicitly shared various anti-Semitic prejudices, such as the allegedly harmful Jewish influence on the German press, in their letters of reply.

On April 12, 1914, Gebsattel came to the main management of the Pan-German Association, in which he took over his post as deputy chairman in October after the death of Alfred Breusing (1853-1914). In the Pan-German Association he worked from the beginning to orient its activities in an anti-Semitic manner, which initially did not work because the Pan-German Association wanted to avoid publicly professing anti-Semitism. Gebsattel, who in July 1913 accused Claß of evading the Pan-German Association with "our most important enemy [...], namely the rule of Judaism", agreed with this strategic assessment. In the run-up to a meeting of the executive committee, he wrote to the Pan-German Hans von Liebig : "If we really discuss the Jewish question in public, the association will be blown." A few weeks later, with the outbreak of the First World War, the political situation in the German Reich and thus also radically change the conditions for anti-Semitic agitation in public.

First World War

At the beginning of the war, for which Gebsattel was not reactivated militarily - he had unsuccessfully tried to recycle it from Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke - Gebsattel promoted the Pan-German war aims at the end of August 1914. a. foreseen the expulsion of the inhabitants of the Russian territories to be annexed , and for this purpose held talks with Kuno von Westarp , Matthias Erzberger , Hans Wendland (editor at the Kreuzzeitung ) and Theodor Schiemann .

During the war, Gebsattels radicalized ethnic thinking. For example, on December 4, 1914, he wrote in a letter that he had become used to "looking at all serious political questions from the racial standpoint". He considered the "fixed basic rules" of racial doctrine to be an iron law of world history, so that he wanted to "help this original law to its right in the reorganization of things after the war". The world war itself seemed to him as a racial struggle in which the possible downfall of the "Germanic race" would mean the end of the world:

“Now it has become an irrefutable certainty for me, as the current war proves irrefutably, that the only race that is able to achieve cultural progress in mankind - indeed to create only cultural works that are Germanic. [...] Wherever in world history we encounter an ascending cultural development, we always find a Germanic upper class. Depending on whether this upper layer is thicker or thinner, the culture period lasts longer or shorter. The rise of the Germanic upper class in the ruled race was followed by a brief, high blossoming of the arts, followed by a rapid decline. [...] But if this is the case, then the annihilation of the Germanic race Ragnaröck means Götterdämmerung. Who of us would still like to live in a world from which the Teutons would be removed? "

At this time Gebsattel also campaigned for his anti-Semitic concerns at the Bavarian court, for example during an audience with King Ludwig III. on December 20, 1914, and although he could not convince him of his Pan-German war aims, Gebsattel was reconciled by the fact that Ludwig, according to his impression, had identified himself as a resolute anti-Semite.

Gebsattel formulated his views on race war even more sharply two years later, in 1916:

"The war is the fateful struggle between heroism and the merchant spirit - between Arierism and Judaism - between an ideal sense of family and disdainful English-American mammonism ".

In August 1915, Gebsattel turned to the Bavarian state government with the request to prevent " Eastern Jews " from "attacking the German Reich like a swarm of locusts". In the same year Gebsattel tried to replace Bethmann Hollweg as Reich Chancellor and suggested this in a private audience with Georg von Hertling , who made this Ludwig III. should present, u. a. Alfred von Tirpitz and Erich von Falkenhayn present.

Since September 1915 at the latest, Konstantin von Gebsattel also seems to have worked towards the establishment of the Free Ukraine Association , in collaboration with other Pan-Germans, including JF Lehmann and Falk Schupp , which took place on December 11th of that year and which he apparently acted as chairman of the board .

After the Teutonic Order approached Gebsattel in the spring of 1916, Gebsattel joined the order as Grand Master in the summer of 1916, after the founder and chairman of the Teutonic Lodge Mainz, the Pan-German building officer Paul Lucius , had been able to persuade him to do so. From April 1 to May 31, 1916, Gebsattel was the leading chairman of the Pan-German Association representing the sick class and was able to win over Catholic circles for the association during this time.

In 1917, Gebsattel approached the Bavarian War Minister Philipp von Hellingrath several times and gave him information about the allegedly harmful effects of Jews in the army and in world war politics.

With the war that was unfavorable for the German Reich (cf. the failed Operation Michael and “ Black Day of the German Army ”), the growing anti-Semitism at home and the piecemeal shifting of the Pan-German Association to public anti-Semitic agitation from June 1917 onwards, Gebsattel's ideas became Pan-German Association current. At his request, Claß had the position of the Pan-German Association on the “Jewish question” discussed at the meeting of the main management and the executive committee on September 13, 1918 in Hanover. At the suggestion of Claß, a separate committee was established for this purpose, which Gebsattel took over. When it came to the composition of the staff, Gebsattel paid attention to anti-Semitic and ethnic attitudes as well as “ pure Aryan blood ” ( he excluded the Pan-German Hans von Liebig because of a note in Semi-Gotha ). But even before the committee, which u. a. Alfred Roth , Theodor Fritsch (both Reichshammerbund ) and Paul Langhans ( Deutschbund ) were supposed to belong together, the end of the war had come - surprisingly for the Pan-Germans.

For Gebsattel, the associated establishment of a parliamentary government and the ceasefire agreement negotiated by it - both initiated by the Supreme Army Command - were welcome occasions to demonstrate his anti-Semitism on the Pan-German question of fate: The "Alljudenblätter" had "poison of decomposition" responsible for the defeat of the German Reich, as he explained in the article “The ferment of decomposition” on October 15, 1918 in the Deutsche Zeitung . He wrote to the Pan-German association leadership, which met in Berlin on October 19 and 20, to “use the fanfare situation against Judaism and the Jews as a lightning rod for all injustice”. Claß, who a month earlier had asked in a Pan-German meeting what the Pan-Germans - an essentially elitist organization - had to offer “downwards”, now took this line of brutal anti-Semitism aimed at strategic mass action in Berlin and there called for the "practically demagogic" use of anti-Semitism to create "fear and horror ... in Judaism". He will "not shrink from any means and in this regard stick to Heinrich von Kleist ’s saying , which was aimed at the French: Beat them to death, the Last Judgment does not ask you the reasons!"

The Pan-German "Jewish Committee", which was put together at the end of October and which, in addition to Gebsattel and a. Georg Fritz , Wilhelm Bacmeister , August Gebhard , Alfred Jacobsen , Ernst Joerges , Paul Langhans , JF Lehmann, Karl Lohmann , Paul Lucius, Gustav Pezoldt , Alfred Roth , Wilhelm Schlüter and Leopold von Vietinghoff-Scheel and - at the suggestion of Lucius - from the beginning November still Adolf Bartels and Ferdinand Werner belonged, should for a first discussion on 16 and 17 November in Nuremberg days. Although this did not happen as a result of the November Revolution, Gebsattel and Fritz received ample material through written submissions from members. The most important idea, put forward by several, was probably to found a separate central organization for anti-Semitic agitation, since the many, fragmented associations of the national movement would not make themselves available to the Pan-German Association.

German Volkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund

Although the planning for the new organization was completed at the end of 1918, the elections for the national assemblies in January 1919 and the state elections in February 1919 took further steps ahead. It was not until February 6 that Gebsattel, in cooperation with Claß, issued guidelines to the committee members calling for the establishment of two organizations: a public one - called the "German Protection and Defense Association" - and a secret one - internally only called "Bund" ( the latter was directed by the Hamburg lawyer Alfred Jacobsen , but remained inoperative and meaningless). The foundation was finally approved by the general management at the Bamberg conference of the Pan-German Association (February 15 and 18) and Claßens Kaiserbuch was raised to the programmatic basic writing.

The actual founding of both groups then took place in March and April. Gebsattel, who with Carl Cäsar Eiffe and Emil Kirdorf had collected an "honorary gift" of 260,000 marks for Claß and presented it to Claß on March 1, of which the latter transferred 100,000 marks to a special fund for the Schutz- und Trutzbund, became the "secret headmaster" of both Organizations. Outwardly, however, the German Protection and Defense Association - even after the merger in September / October 1919 with the Reichshammerbund and Deutschvölkischer Bund to form the German Protection and Defense Association - was represented by the general manager Roth. However, the rapid expansion of the federal government in the Reich and the dictatorial powers that were only valid in secret led to Gebsattel - apart from a few personal decisions in the federal government - functioning as little more than just an arbitration and appeals body as early as the beginning of 1920, which is also the federal government became more and more independent of the Pan-German Association.

In the Pan-German Association, Gebsattel took over the business of the main management from September 1 to October 15, 1919 as Chief Executive Officer. In mid-November 1919 he handed the Gebsattel Castle over to his nephew, Franz Eduard Konstantin Felicianus Freiherr von Gebsattel (1889–1945).

After long-lasting internal rivalries and secession efforts, in which Gebsattel was no longer able to mediate, as well as the prohibition of the Schutz- und Trutzbund in July / August 1922 by most of the German states (with the exception of Anhalt , Mecklenburg-Strelitz as well as Württemberg and Bavaria ) in As a result of the murder of Walther Rathenau , Gebsattel withdrew to his work in the Pan-German Association, where he hardly appeared, and in early 1929 by Gertzlaff von Hertzberg (1880–1945), since April 30, 1920 executive chairman of the Schutz- und Trutzbund , was replaced as deputy chairman. On February 15, 1929, a letter of congratulations was sent to Gebsattel from Wilhelm II, who was exiled in the Doorn house, on his 75th birthday, in which he was thanked “not least for your meritorious work in the Pan-German Association”.

Michael Peters believes that the statement by Uwe Lohalm (see literature ), Hertzberg and Gebsattel asked the members of the still existing local groups of the Schutz- und Trutzbund to join the NSDAP in 1924 , believes Michael Peters to be wrong, since the aristocratic Gebsattel was never a member of the NS mass movement had been. The more recent representation of the Schutz- und Trutzbund by Walter Jung follows the representation of Lohalm.

Konstantin von Gebsattel died of a stroke on May 10, 1932 while visiting a political friend in Linz on the Danube. At his funeral on May 14th in Gebsattel, Hertzberg spoke for the main leadership of the Pan-German Association and conjured up the establishment of a "national empire (s)".

The estate is in the Berlin Federal Archives , holdings R 8048.

literature

• Uwe Lohalm : Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923. Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3-87473-000-X .
• Michael Peters : Konstantin Freiherr von Gebsattel (1854–1932). in: Franconian pictures of life. Volume 16, Neustadt an der Aisch 1996, pp. 173-187.
• Johannes Leicht: Heinrich Claß 1868–1953. The political biography of an Pan-German. Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77379-1 .
• Werner Bergmann, Elke Kimmel: Gebsattel, Konstantin Wilhelm Hartmann Heinrich Ludwig Freiherr von , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, pp. 271–273

Web links

• Rothenburg under the swastika

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Peters 1996, pp. 174-178.
2. ^ Burkhard Stefan Scheible: Viktor Emil von Gebsattel (1883-1976) - life and work . Tübingen 2008. p. 13.
3. ↑ Peters 1996. p. 174, 178. Scheible 2008. p. 14.
4. ↑ Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck´sche publishing house bookstore. Munich 1989. ISBN 3-406-10490-8 . P. 443.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Lohal 1970, p. 40.
6. ↑ Peters 1996 p. 180.
7. ↑ Lohalm 1970 p. 41.
8. ↑ Lohalm 1970, pp. 41-43.
9. ↑ Loham 1970, p. 41. For the content cf. Loham 1970 pp. 41-43 and Peters 1996, pp. 180f.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Lohalm 1970, p. 43.
11. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 345, note 70.
12. ↑ Quoted from Peter Walkenhorst: Nation - Volk - Rasse: radical nationalism in the German Empire 1890 - 1914 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, p. 302. ISBN 978-3-525-35157-4 .
13. ↑ Peters 1996, p. 174.
14. ^ ^{A b} Walter Jung : Ideological prerequisites, contents and goals of foreign policy programs and propaganda in the German-Volkish movement in the early years of the Weimar Republic: the example of the German-Volkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . University of Göttingen 2000, p. 243.
15. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 46f.
16. ↑ Quoted from Jung 2000, p. 73.
17. ↑ ^{a b} Lohalm 1970, p. 346, note 77.
18. ↑ Quoted from Scheible, p. 15; quoted there from Helmut Berding : Modern anti-Semitism in Germany . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1988, p. 174.
19. ↑ Quoted from Reiner Pommerin : “The expulsion of 'Eastern Jews' from Bavaria 1923”, in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 34 (1986), issue 3, p. 317; quoted there from Werner Jochmann : “The spread of anti-Semitism”, in: Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (eds.): German Judaism in War and Revolution 1916–1925 . Tübingen 1971, p. 415.
20. ^ Raffael Scheck : Alfred von Tirpitz and German right-wing politics, 1914 - 1930 . Humanities Press 1998, p. 39. ISBN 0-391-04043-X .
21. ↑ Oleksyj Kuraev : The 'Free Ukraine' Association in the Context of German Ukraine Policy of the First World War, Eastern European Institute Regensburg , Mitteilungen 35, August 2000, ISBN 3-921396-56-5 , pp. 22, 25, 27, 29 .
22. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 48.
23. ↑ ^{a b} Peters 1996, p. 183.
24. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 51f.
25. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 52.
26. ↑ ^{a b} Lohalm 1970, p. 53.
27. ↑ Lohalm 1970, pp. 348f.
28. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 54.
29. ↑ Lohalm 1970, pp. 19f, 54f.
30. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 100.
31. ↑ Lohalm 1970, pp. 86, 95-97.
32. ↑ ^{a b} Peters 1996, p. 185.
33. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 274.
34. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 281.
35. ↑ See Peters 1996, pp. 184f.
36. ↑ Jung 2000, p. 21.
37. ↑ Peters 1996, p. 185.