Magnus von Knebel

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Karl Magnus von Knebel Döberitz (born March 19, 1890 in Friedrichsdorf , Dramburg district ; † December 31, 1942 there ) was a German agrarian politician . Among other things, he was Vice President of the Reich Association of Cooperatives.

Life and activity

Knebel was the third of five children of the landowner Edgar von Knebel -Döberitz and his wife Isidore, born in Biel. After initially aiming for a military career, the death of his brother made him the heir of the Friedrichsdorf family estate, which he took over in 1914. When the First World War broke out , however, he returned to his regiment, the Queen Cuirassier Regiment in Pasewalk , with whom he was deployed in France, Courland and Romania. In November 1918 he suffered gas poisoning .

After his return from the war, Knebel finally took over the management of Gut Friedrichsdorf in 1919. He managed to successfully modernize the estate and convert it to the processing industry. In addition, he was involved in agricultural cooperatives and political organizations in agriculture. At the turn of 1918/1919 he became district chairman in the section of the Pomeranian Land Association for his home district of Dramburg. In this position he succeeded in pacifying the local farmers 'and farm workers' councils and ensuring that agriculture in Dramburg continued to function largely unimpaired. Since Knebel also proved himself in the following years as district chairman of the Landbund in Dramburg, he was appointed director of the main cooperative of the Pomeranian agricultural cooperatives in 1926. In this capacity and as the dominant figure in the Pomeranian Chamber of Agriculture, he was one of the most important political stakeholders in East Elbe agriculture in the late phase of the Weimar Republic .

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Knebel was politically closely connected to the leading men in the Reichswehr Ministry, including Kurt von Schleicher and Kurt von Hammerstein as personal friends. As a representative of Hans von Seeckt and Schleicher, Knebel sought out Adolf Hitler at an early stage to check the extent to which he could be considered a political ally for the army. In doing so, he is said to have immediately come to a devastating assessment of Hitler's personality ("criminal"). Knebel was also one of Schleicher's closest advisers. Since Knebel, although a staunch monarchist and member of the German gentlemen's club , was one of the politically comparatively moderate representatives of the East Elbe large agrarians, he was entrusted by Gustav Stresemann with the task between the landowners during the aggravating agricultural crisis in the German eastern provinces around 1927 and to convey to the representatives of the workforce. As a solution, he designed concepts of professional cooperation, which essentially corresponded to the package of measures known in the 1960s under the name of concerted action .

In 1932 Knebel was elected vice-president of the Reichsbund der Cooperatives as deputy of Andreas Hermes . He was briefly arrested in the spring of 1933, but released again after a short time. In later years he belonged to the conservative resistance around Karl Friedrich Goerdeler . The plan he propagated to initiate a military coup against Hitler under the leadership of the Prussian Crown Prince Wilhelm failed at the outset because of the refusal of the Hohenzollern to get involved.

Knebel's political estate, which the Federal Archives looked for in the 1960s, is considered to have been destroyed.

marriage and family

On February 18, 1913, Knebel married Elisabeth Rose von Waldow (born May 18, 1891 in Fischhausen) in Stettin, with whom he had several children.

literature

  • Carl Freytag: Germany's urge to the southeast. The Central European Economic Day and the supplementary area of ​​Southeast Europe 1931-1945 . 2012.
  • Winfried Meyer: Conspirators in the concentration camp: Hans von Dohnanyi and the prisoners of July 20, 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . 1999, p. 246.
  • Elfriede Nebgen : Jakob Kaiser - The resistance fighter . Stuttgart 1967.
  • East German Memorial Days 1990. Personalities and historical events . 1990, pp. 47-49.
  • Gerhard Ritter : Carl Goerdeler and the German resistance movement . Stuttgart 1955.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harold Boldt: The bequests in the German archives (with additions from other holdings) , 1971, p. 270.
personal data
SURNAME Knebel, Magnus von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knebel Döberitz, Karl Magnus von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German agricultural politician
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedrichsdorf , Dramburg district
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1942
Place of death Friedrichsdorf , Dramburg district