Leonhard Schlueter

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Franz Leonhard Schlueter (born October 2, 1921 in Rinteln ; † January 19, 1981 ) was a German politician ( DKP-DRP , FDP ) and publisher. In 1955, his appointment as Minister of Education and Culture in Lower Saxony provoked considerable public protests because of Schlüter's right-wing extremist attitudes. This led to his resignation a few days later.

Life

Family, military, studies

Franz Leonhard Schlüters father Friedrich Schlüter was in World War I, an active officer and served until November 1918 as a field artillery - first lieutenant , then he became a dance teacher. His mother was classified as “fully Jewish” under National Socialism ; Schlüter was able to avert her deportation in February 1945 with the support of Nazi agencies, but several relatives on his mother's side were deported to concentration camps. Der Spiegel interpreted the meaning of his family origins for Schlüter in 1955 as follows:

“Indeed, Leonhard Schlueter did not wish to be a 'half-Jew' either before 1945 or after, but rather an equal German patriot. Although he tried to balance his provenance, which he regarded as a flaw, by striving to surpass his patriotic compatriots in national zeal. "

Schlüter graduated from the Hameln Realgymnasium in 1939 and signed up for the Reich Labor Service , then in November 1939 voluntarily for military service. He took part in the western campaign as an infantryman and was promoted to private and later to non-commissioned officer. After a serious wound, Schlüter applied for training as a "war officer" after his recovery. His superiors refused, citing Schlüter's Jewish descent. His appointment to the rank of non-commissioned officer as Oberjäger was then revoked, and Schlüter was dismissed from the Wehrmacht in 1941 .

Schlüter then resumed his studies at the law faculty of the Georg-August University in Göttingen , after he had been allowed to do so by Reich Science Minister Bernhard Rust - until further notice. Since he was not admitted to the state examination as a “ half-Jew ” , Schlüter decided to do a doctorate with Professor Rudolf Smend . According to Schlüter, his work was entitled The Penetration of the Mass Problem in State Political and State Theoretic Literature . However, due to the Rigorosum on August 1, 1944, he failed. Schlüter's assertion that he failed the oral examination because of suspicious political questions cannot be upheld according to the examination protocol and according to the statements of the later Vice-Dean of the University of Göttingen Arnold Köttgen . In the post-war period, Schlueter was also investigated “for illegally using the doctorate”.

post war period

At the beginning of May 1945 Schlüter married the doctor Erika Geist. On May 5, he was - according to his own statements - entrusted with the management of the criminal police in Göttingen , an office for which he was proposed by the mayor of Göttingen and district court counselor Erich Schmidt . The American occupation forces had consented to the appeal . In June 1947, his work with the police became the occasion for preliminary judicial investigations: the chief public prosecutor's office accused him of extorting testimony, persecuting innocent people, depriving him of liberty, suppressing documents and discriminating against foreign property interests. Schlueter tried, among other things. to append a murder plot against Lord Mayor Schmidt and Schlueter himself to DGB secretary Fritz Schmalz. Schlueter resigned from the police force on October 1, 1947. The military government pulled the case and thus prevented further investigations, since "English officers were involved in the matter". In the following year, Schlüter was forbidden to continue as “Kriminalkommissar a. D. “to designate; correct is "criminal inspector on probation out of service".

"Just because he got involved in all sorts of disputes and processes that were unmistakably connected with the post-war redistribution of local positions of power, Schlüter gained the reputation of a colorful personality among certain Göttingen citizen circles."

In 1948 Schlüter received a job offer as a supervisor at the Public Opinion Research Office (PORO) of the British occupation authorities . There he is said to have been involved in monitoring the DKP-DRP, among other things. When it became known that Schlüter had run for the DKP-DRP in the local elections in Lower Saxony on November 28, 1948 - and was elected - he was dismissed in 1949 due to the political ban on all employees of the authority.

publisher

In the following period Schlüter worked as a publisher. At first he ran the Witzenhäuser Verlagsunion KG to publish the short-lived magazine Deutsches Echo . In 1949, Schlüter and Karl Waldemar Schütz helped found the Plesse publishing house , and his wife was entered on the board of directors. After they left Plesse Verlag, Schlüter ran the Göttingen Publishing Institute for Science and Politics from 1951 , in which he distributed works by numerous National Socialists, including eight professors who had been removed from office in 1945 and who had not been admitted to teaching again.

Authors published by Schlüter included Hans Grimm , Franz von Papen , Rudolf Diels , Dietrich Klagges , Herbert Grabert and Joseph Otto Plassmann . Regarding Schlüter's short term as minister, Der Spiegel wrote : "The program of this publisher was without a doubt one of the most important causes of the Göttingen uprising against the minister of education Schlüter." In 1958 Schlüter published an - anonymous - account with the Göttingen professors in his Göttingen publishing house who opposed him in 1955. Even after that, Schlüter remained the operator of the Göttingen publishing house for science and politics, which was “specialized in neo-Nazi literature” .

Party politics

At the time of his work at PORO, Schlüter had been in contact with the then Göttingen chairman of the German Conservative Party - German Right Party (DKP-DRP) Adolf von Thadden and often gave völkisch-nationalist incendiary speeches at public events. In September 1948, Schlueter gave a lecture at the regional conference of the DKP-DRP on the subject: "The development of the German National People's Party and the need for a new right-wing party, which should preferably address the former National Socialists." Thereupon he became the Lower Saxony regional chairman of the DKP- DRP elected and organized the party's subsequent local election campaign. Der Spiegel reported on an election rally by Schlüter in Wolfsburg , where the DKP-DRP subsequently achieved a two-thirds majority: "This was the first time after 1945 that people - fascinated by Schlüter's speech - sang the song of Germany ." In the local elections in Lower Saxony on 28 November 1948 Schlueter himself was elected to the Göttingen city council. The British military government forbade Schlüter by scandals involving the behavior of DKP-DRP in Wolfsburg "by a decree of 30 April 1949 any political activity and de [n] Stay in Kreis Gifhorn to the Wolfsburg heard". Schlueter did not adhere to the political ban, but reduced his public visibility.

In the negotiations between the DKP-DRP and the German Party and the Hessian National Democratic Party on July 1, 1949, about running together for the 1949 federal election , Schlüter took part for his party together with Wilhelm Jaeger , Eldor Borck , Ludwig Schwecht , Lothar Steuer and Adolf von Thadden part. Although the plans had advanced quite far, they ultimately failed. The reason was the declaration by the British military government that a merger party would not receive a license and would therefore not be able to run for election. At the beginning of 1950 Schlüter left the party after Fritz Rößler had become the new Lower Saxony state chairman of the DKP-DRP.

One year later, in January 1951, Schlueter founded the National Rights (NR), a party organized as a reservoir for right-wing extremist forces, which he chaired. The NR tried together with the German Reich Party (DRP) to set up a community list with the FDP for the state elections in Lower Saxony in 1951, but the FDP ultimately did not participate. The association with the DRP showed that the NR insisted primarily on paper.

As a candidate for the DRP, Schlueter entered the Lower Saxony state parliament on May 6, 1951 . After an internal power struggle and financial disagreements, Schlüter left the DRP parliamentary group soon after and switched to the FDP parliamentary group in September at the instigation of the FDP parliamentary group chairman and Göttingen Mayor Hermann Föge . The inclusion of Schlüter in the parliamentary group was initially controversial in the FDP, but strengthened the right profile of the FDP, which wanted to establish itself as a “national collection movement”. The decision to convert to the FDP should have been easy for Schlüter after the NR had suspended him from all party offices in the summer of 1951. Schlüter rose as the "spokesman of the right wing" of the FDP in 1954 to deputy parliamentary group chairman, in 1955 finally to the parliamentary group chairman of the FDP in the Lower Saxony state parliament.

After the state elections on April 24, 1955, a civic bloc government consisting of the DP , CDU , GB / BHE and FDP was formed under Heinrich Hellwege . The SPD under Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf was ousted from government responsibility for the first time since the country was founded. On May 12, 1955, the FDP parliamentary group proposed Konrad Mälzig as minister for development and its parliamentary group leader Leonhard Schlueter as minister of education. Hellwege presented the new cabinet on May 26, 1955.

Schlüter's fall

When Schlueter started talking as minister of culture, this first aroused considerable resistance from the academic public and especially at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . As early as May 13, 1955, the rector of the university, Emil Woermann , had a conversation with Hellwege about Schlueter: “Schlueter did not have the trust of the university, and in the event that he was appointed minister of education, he and the university senate might Resign from academic honorary positions. ”After a short time, the“ Schlüter affair ”also gained international attention. Because of Schlüter's extreme right-wing and ethnic background, there were fears that it would have negative effects on the democratic mandate of the universities. Der Spiegel later wrote that "the decisive factor was not individual allegations against the Minister of Education, but simply the fact that his personality is somewhat controversial."

On the day of Schlüter's appointment as minister, May 26th, the Göttingen rector, the senate and the deans of all faculties resigned from their offices in protest and declared: “After their efforts have been unsuccessful, the rector and the senate are forced to by resigning from their honorary positions in the academic self-administration to show that they are committed to the ideas raised in the fulfillment of their duties. "

The student body supported the university management in their decision. The AStA of the university resigned - as already decided on May 25 in the case of Schlüter's appointment with 18: 1 votes - and expressed its support for the decision of the university management. At the same time he published a three-page list of the books and authors that had been published by Schlüters Verlag. On the morning of May 27, 1955, he urged the university students to boycott lectures and exercises. Several demonstrations took place, but only five lectures with a total of 25 participants across the university. Of the 4900 students enrolled in Göttingen, more than half gathered in front of the auditorium for a torchlight procession.

While the right-wing FDP parliamentary group at the time continued to support Schlüter and described the protests against him as a “hate campaign”, the federal FDP distanced itself from Schlüter. Hellwege then urged him to take a leave of absence, which happened on June 4, 1955. In the next few days, the FDP considered leaving the Hellwege government again, but finally decided to give up Schlueter as minister of education. On June 9, he submitted his resignation, which took effect two days later. Schlüter 's office was initially taken over by Prime Minister Hellwege himself, before the FDP politician Richard Tantzen succeeded him in September . Der Spiegel reported:

“Friedrich Leonhard Schlueter sat in the ministerial office of the Ministry of Culture for exactly four days. There were no cultural-political actions. He set up his desk, and the first protests came, which required all his ministerial attention to be fought off. "

The state parliament dealt with the "Schlueter case" in a specially convened special session on June 11, 1955, in which the governing parties and in particular the FDP continued to support Schlueter. However, the state parliament decided to set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry to appoint Schlüter. In February 1956 he came to the conclusion that there had been no breach of the duty of care by Prime Minister Hellwege, but that Schlüter “had abandoned the most important prerequisites for the office of minister of education through his publishing activities. There is reason to examine his publications from the point of view of Article 18 of the Basic Law ( forfeiture of fundamental rights ). ”On this occasion, it became known that Schlueter had left the FDP on January 8, 1956. After leaving the party, he remained in parliament as an independent member of parliament until 1959 . In 1958 Schlueter published a book in his publishing house that had no author and was entitled “The great agitation. The Lower Saxon. Overthrow of ministerial. A factual report on the Schlueter case ”, in which he wrote in the third person about the Schlueter case. He denied all allegations and attacked his critics. This also included the former resistance fighter against the Hitler Empire, Emil Woerman, who was particularly involved in the Schlütersache . In some cases Schlueter held against his critics and Woermann, without any convincing evidence, that they themselves were notorious Nazis.

Judgment and retrospectives

On April 30, 1960, Schlüter was sentenced to a fine of 1200 DM instead of a prison sentence of two months by the 3rd Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice for “ endangering the state ” and “ insulting the state ” . He had published Herbert Grabert's anti- constitutional work People Without Leadership . In the same trial, Grabert was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended on probation ( BGHSt 14, 258). This judgment is considered to be the “final conclusion of the Schlüter affair”, as Schlüter had previously spread defamations against the rector Emil Woermann and other Göttingen professors.

In retrospect, Der Spiegel rated the "Schlueter case" in 1967 as a "political scandal that resonated all over the world" and as the climax of the "radical poisoning of the Free Democratic Party, which only slowly subsided at the end of the 1950s". In 1998, as Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau mentioned the "Schlueter case" in a speech on the 50th anniversary of the Conference of Ministers of Education as a curiosity, as the shortest acting minister of education:

“There was a minister of education who was in office for ten days, from June 2 to 11, 1955. His name was Leonhard Schlueter, he was from Lower Saxony, belonged to the FDP, and he had a strange robber and gendarme affair himself brought down. "

literature

  • Schlüter: A fire should burn . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1955, pp. 12-24 ( online ).
  • You speak Greek . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1958, pp. 32-34 ( online ).
  • Heinz-Georg Marten: Lower Saxony's ministerial fall. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the Minister of Culture Schlüter in 1955 ( Göttinger Universitätsschriften, Volume 5). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 .
  • Teresa Nentwig: "Minister of Culture for the Fourteen Days" - The scandal surrounding Leonhard Schlueter 1955. In: Franz Walter / Teresa Nentwig (eds.): The hurt Gänseliesel - 250 years of scandal stories in Göttingen , V&R Academic, Göttingen 2016, pp. 126-138

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au Schlüter: Let a fire burn . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1955, pp. 12-24 ( Online - June 15, 1955 ).
  2. ↑ Ingeborg Borek: My memories of the emperor's daughter . Braunschweig 1997, p. 116
  3. ^ Dietrich Kuessner: Dietrich Klagges. 1891-1971. A biographical sketch . Alternatives from / for the Braunschweig regional church
  4. ^ Heinz-Georg Marten: The fall of the ministers of Lower Saxony. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the minister of education Schlueter in 1955. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 , p. 15.
  5. ^ Letter to the editor to the Spiegel by Arnold Köttgen in June 1955, printed in Heinz-Georg Marten: Der niedersächsische Ministersturz. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the Minister of Culture Schlüter in 1955 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 ( Göttinger Universitätsschriften ), p. 15f.
  6. ↑ You speak Greek . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1958, pp. 32-34 ( online ).
  7. ↑ Lower Saxony: Hail, Minister! In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1957, pp. 15 ( online ).
  8. ^ Heinz-Georg Marten: The fall of the ministers of Lower Saxony. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the Minister of Culture Schlüter in 1955 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 , p. 17.
  9. ^ Schmollinger: German Conservative Party - German Right Party . In: Richard Stöss : Party Handbook. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1986, p. 1002 f.
  10. ^ Heinz-Georg Marten: The fall of the ministers of Lower Saxony. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the Minister of Culture Schlüter in 1955 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 ( Göttinger Universitätsschriften ), p. 19.
  11. ^ De Tijd , Dagblad voor Nederland , May 16, 1955.
  12. ^ Das Sprachrohr , No. 11, June 1, 1955.
  13. ↑ Leonhard Schlüter , International Biographical Archive No. 6, January 28, 1957, in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on June 25, 2011 ( beginning of the article freely accessible)
  14. ↑ The great agitation. Lower Saxony's ministerial fall. A factual report on the Schlueter case. Göttinger Verlagsanstalt, Göttingen 1958. so z. BS 174.
  15. ↑ a b Heinz-Georg Marten: The fall of the ministers of Lower Saxony. Protests and resistance of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen against the Minister of Culture Schlüter in 1955 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1987, ISBN 3-525-35835-0 ( Göttinger Universitätsschriften ), p. 9.
  16. ↑ Peter Bruges: Right off to the fatherland. Spiegel series about the new nationalism in Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1967, p. 82–96 ( online - here p. 89 f.).
  17. ^ Johannes Rau: 50 years of KMK. Ceremonial lecture by the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. In: kmk.org. February 26, 1998, archived from the original on September 3, 2007 ; Retrieved June 25, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Schlueter, Leonhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schlueter, Franz Leonhard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians (DKP, DRP, FDP), MdL and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Rinteln
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1981