Kurt Freiherr von Schröder

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Schröder as a witness at the Nuremberg trials (1947)

Kurt Freiherr von Schröder (born November 24, 1889 in Hamburg ; † November 4, 1966 there ) was a German banker , NSDAP regional economic advisor and SS brigad leader .

Early years

Schröder, great-grandson of the entrepreneur Johann Heinrich Schröder , was the second of four sons of the banker Frederick Freiherr von Schröder and his wife Harriet, nee. Milberg. He completed his school days at high schools in Hamburg and Gütersloh. In 1907, Schröder began studying law at the University of Bonn . During this time he became a member of the Corps Borussia Bonn . His corps brothers in Bonn included u. a. the later diplomat Kurt von Lersner . In the long term, this relationship turned out to be highly significant, as it formed the foundation for the momentous political role that Schröder played in 1932/1933 as an intermediary between the NSDAP leadership and the conservative politician Franz von Papen, who was also friends with Lersner. In 1932, Lersner brokered the contact between Papen and Schröder so that he could take on the aforementioned mediating role.

In 1909 Schröder broke off his studies, which, according to Soenius, he had probably only started because of the desired membership in the student association, without seriously wanting to graduate or embark on an administrative career. Instead he became a professional officer in the Hussar Regiment "King Wilhelm I." (1st Rheinisches) No. 7 in Bonn. During the First World War , Schröder was deployed on the Western Front. He was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes and was transferred to the replacement squadron of his regiment in Bonn in 1917 for health reasons. From early 1918 to early 1919 he served as a captain on the General Staff . In the course of general demobilization in 1919, he left the army.

In April 1913, Schröder married Ottilie Marie Edith Schnitzler (1892–1951). At her father's request, Schröder became a partner in the J. H. Stein bank in Cologne in 1921 . In 1919 this bank became a center of the Rhenish separatists with significant participation by Schröder : In that year Schröder signed an appeal by the separatists calling for the separation of the Rhineland from the German Reich. In addition, conferences of industrialists and bankers took place in the Schröder banking house. One of these conferences even elected him to the economic committee, which was supposed to prepare the formation of the aforementioned separate Rhenish state.

From 1928 von Schröder became politically active and joined the German People's Party . He was a member of the German Men's Club . In November 1932, Schröder was one of the signatories of the “ industrialists' submission ” to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg , in which industrialists, bankers and farmers demanded Hitler's appointment as Chancellor .

Cologne meeting with Hitler

Villa Schröders at Stadtwaldgürtel 35

Von Schröder also belonged to the study group for economic issues ("Keppler-Kreis"), the later Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS , and administered the "Sonderkonto S" of his bank, to which the members of the Freundeskreis paid one million Reichsmarks annually for special tasks from Heinrich Himmler . With Wilhelm Keppler he organized a secret meeting on January 4, 1933 in his villa (Stadtwaldgürtel 35) in Cologne-Lindenthal , in which Hitler and Franz von Papen agreed on preparations for taking over government. Hitler was accompanied to this meeting by Wilhelm Keppler, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess . At this meeting, Hitler and Papen agreed to overthrow Kurt von Schleicher 's government and jointly form a Hitler-Papen-Hugenberg right-wing coalition.

Third Reich

One day after Hitler came to power , von Schröder joined the NSDAP on February 1, 1933 ( membership number 1.475.919) and donated millions to it over the years. At the end of April 1933 he became President of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and subsequently Vice-President of the German Industry and Commerce Conference , Chairman of the Foreign Trade Office for the Rhineland and holder of numerous other offices in the economy.

Schröder personally ensured that the representatives of Bank Sal. Oppenheim were no longer invited to the meetings of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Bankenvereinigung, of which their father had been a co-founder. After Schröder eliminated his competitor Paul Silverberg , who was also of Jewish origin, as president of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he himself took over the chairmanship of this institution. As one of his first official acts, he had a ban on inviting non-Aryan members to the general assembly, which meant above all the Oppenheims. Schröder also ensured that the Oppenheims lost most of their supervisory board positions in the companies they oversee. The appointment as head of private banks in the Reichsgruppe Banken in 1934 was followed in 1935 as head of the Rhineland Chamber of Commerce. In 1943, the magazine Die Bankwirtschaft honored his work as head of the private banking specialist groups: In particular, under his leadership the Aryanization , which was an extremely difficult task in the private banking industry , was carried out with determination but with the preservation of the company's valuable assets. From May 1942 Schröder was also President of the Cologne-Aachen Chamber of Commerce . Between 1933 and 1945 he doubled the number of his supervisory board positions to over 30. These included the following companies:

On September 13, 1936, von Schröder joined the SS (SS No. 276.904) and was promoted to SS- Brigadführer on April 20, 1943 . According to his SS assessment of August 10, 1937, he had a special “relationship of trust with the Führer” and was “frequently asked and called by the Führer to confidential meetings and missions”. Since November 9, 1944, he was part of the Reichsführer SS staff . He was also a member of the Academy for German Law , the Reichsverkehrsrat and the advisory boards of the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the Deutsche Reichspost as well as Senator of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . He was also councilor of the city of Cologne, member of the board of trustees of the University of Cologne , member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements and, since 1921, royal Swedish consul (since 1938 consul general).

post war period

After the end of the Second World War , Schröder was discovered in a French prisoner-of-war camp, where he was wearing the uniform of an SS corporal. He was questioned several times at the Nuremberg Trials and submitted affidavits , in particular about the outcome and content of the meeting between Hitler and Papen at his house in January 1933.

On November 12, 1947, Schröder was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for crimes against humanity and a fine of 1,500 Reichsmarks before the Bielefeld Spruchkammergericht in the British Zone . 40,000 workers demonstrated against this mild sentence in Bielefeld; In a resolution of the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament , which was supported by two CDU members in addition to the members of the SPD, KPD and FDP, the judgment was described as a “mockery of democracy”. A request was also made to set up a committee of inquiry. After the prosecution appealed, the sentence was increased in 1948 to one year in prison and 500,000 Reichsmarks. On June 11, 1948, Schröder was released from prison. In a third hearing in 1950, Schröder's sentence was reduced again: the fine was now 60,000 DM, half of which was considered to have been settled by internment.

Schröder was no longer involved in the management of the JH Stein bank, which was reopened in 1950. He spent his last years on Gut Hohenstein near Eckernförde .

family

Schröder was a great-grandson of Johann Heinrich Schröder . His mother Harriet was married to Carl Heinrich Johann Freiherr von Merck for the second time. He was the owner of the Hamburg commercial bank HJ Merck & Co.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 , column 1710.
  2. ↑ See Ulrich S. Soénius / Tobias Kaufmann: Adolf Hitler's Cologne Meeting ( Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger , January 4, 2008)
  3. ^ Die Bankwirtschaft (Berlin), No. 18, of December 15, 1943
  4. ↑ Joachim Petzold : Upper middle class initiatives for the appointment of Hitler as Reich Chancellor . In: ZfG , 1/1983, p. 52.
  5. ^ Die Bankwirtschaft (Berlin), No. 18, of December 15, 1943
  6. ^ Gérard Schmidt: Schröder: Honored and condemned . In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . No. 2 , January 4, 1983, p. K 17 .
  7. ^ German Gender Book 128 , 10th Hamburg Volume, Starke, Limburg 1962, p. 224.
personal data
SURNAME Schröder, Kurt Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION major German banker and SS brigade leader
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH 4th November 1966
Place of death Hamburg