Maurice Bavaud

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maurice Bavaud

Maurice Bavaud (born January 15, 1916 in Neuchâtel , Switzerland ; † May 14, 1941 in Berlin-Plötzensee ; entitled to live in Bottens ) was a Swiss seminarist who tried to shoot Adolf Hitler on November 9, 1938 in Munich. The attack on Hitler failed. After his arrest, Bavaud was sentenced to death in a secret trial by the People's Court and executed.

Life

childhood and education

School picture (Bavaud next to the flag in the red circle)

Maurice Bavaud was born on January 15, 1916 in Neuchâtel as the first-born son of the postal worker Alfred Bavaud and the businesswoman Hélène Bavaud-Steiner. He grew up in Neuchâtel with his five younger siblings. After attending a Catholic private school, the sensitive and musically gifted Maurice Bavaud completed an apprenticeship as a technical draftsman under pressure from his father. He then attended a Catholic high school in the boarding school of the Catholic seminary of Saint-Ilan near Saint-Brieuc in Brittany to train as a missionary with the Orden Pères du Saint-Esprit and later perhaps to work in Africa. After three years, however, the 22-year-old Bavaud suddenly dropped out and returned to Switzerland in 1938.

Attempted attack on Hitler

It is not known exactly when Bavaud came up with the plan to assassinate Hitler. In any case, he had already discussed the plan with a friend, the French Marcel Gerbohay , at the French boarding school . In any case, in the fall of 1938, Bavaud was determined to act. On October 9, 1938, Bavaud traveled to Germany, where, on the basis of newspaper reports on Hitler's footsteps , he stayed alternately in Munich and Berchtesgaden in order to ambush him - armed with a 6.35 mm caliber Schmeisser pistol. After many unsuccessful attempts, Bavaud decided to shoot Hitler on November 9, 1938 during the memorial march for the Hitler putsch to the Feldherrnhalle in Munich . He posed as an enthusiastic Nazi in order to get a seat as a spectator in the official gallery. In the pocket of his coat he hid the pistol with which he had previously practiced in the forest. Although Bavaud had managed to get a seat in the front row, the assassination attempt failed because Hitler was too far away from Bavaud as he marched past - protected by SA troops. In addition, Bavaud's view was blocked by bystanders who had stretched out their hands in the Hitler salute.

In the next few days, too, Bavaud could not get close enough to Hitler that he gave up and wanted to flee by train to Paris . Since his money was no longer enough, he drove without a ticket and got into a control. He still carried the pistol and incriminating documents with him. As a foreigner, Bavaud was automatically handed over to the Gestapo . He talked himself out of it that he was a gun fanatic and had only driven black . At first the Gestapo seemed to believe this and handed Bavaud over to the district court in Augsburg. On December 6, 1938, Bavaud was sentenced to two months and one week in prison for ticket fraud and unauthorized carrying of weapons.

In the hands of the Gestapo and the People's Court

When the Gestapo officials examined Bavaud's files more closely, they realized that they had been dealing with an attempted attack on Hitler. They then interrogated Bavaud for a week at the end of January 1939, day and night in the Augsburg prison. When Bavaud had confessed his assassination plans, the Gestapo transferred him to the People's Court in Berlin. Nothing reached the press about Bavaud's imprisonment. Because information about attacks on the "Führer" had to remain secret because the Nazis feared successor acts and, moreover, no corrections should be made to Hitler's positive image. At first Bavaud's relatives didn't know where he was. By the end of 1939, the Nazis had not announced to the Swiss embassy that Bavaud had intended to assassinate Hitler. Letters from prisoner Bavaud were not sent or were only sent sporadically. The secret trial took place on December 18, 1939 before the People's Court. Bavaud gave as a motive that he wanted to murder Hitler because he was a danger to humanity , the independence of Switzerland and Catholicism in Germany.

Bavaud was abandoned by the diplomats at the Swiss embassy and the then Federal Political Department (EPD), the Swiss Foreign Ministry. Hans Frölicher , the Swiss ambassador in Berlin, even condemned the assassination plans in a letter to his superiors as despicable. He refused to give Bavaud the usual consular assistance. Therefore had Bavaud the Public Defender assume the had selected him the Germans. This lawyer, Franz Wallau, was very much in favor of Bavaud to the great surprise of the Second Senate of the People's Court under the direction of the Vice President of the VGH and SS Oberführer Karl Engert . Wallau even demanded an acquittal for Bavaud. That displeased the Nazi judges. After the trial, Engert tried to get Wallau expelled from the bar, which would have meant a professional ban. He didn't succeed. For this, Wallau was expelled from the NSDJ and was imprisoned by the Gestapo for some time. The poor conditions of detention caused permanent damage to his health. At the beginning of December 1939, the Swiss diplomats at the embassy did not even know the date of the trial and the indictment. On January 4, Frölicher reported to the EPD that he had been informed of the holding of the trial and the death sentence. The ambassador and the EPD did not even pass this information on to Maurice's father, Alfred Bavaud, although he kept asking her for information and help for his son. Alfred Bavaud only learned of the death penalty from a letter from his son on June 10th. The father's request to exchange his imprisoned son for a German saboteur arrested in Switzerland was rejected by the EPD and the Federal Military Department . Questions from the father about his son's condition and requests for help for him were treated as if Switzerland were doing everything for Maurice Bavaud. On January 9, 1940, Legation Councilor Kappeler had already told his German colleagues from the Foreign Office that Switzerland would not do anything to prevent Bavaud from being executed, “it would not apply for a pardon for Bavaud”.

The German diplomats did not consider it necessary to notify their Swiss colleagues of the execution of Bavaud, which took place on May 14th. The news of this reached Alfred Bavaud in a suicide note from his son, which he received on June 7, 1941, in which the latter announced his impending execution.

Marcel Gerbohay

Bavaud had first claimed in his detention that he was instigated by his friend Marcel Gerbohay . In any case, he knew about the planned attack on Hitler on November 9, 1938. This prompted the Gestapo to search for Gerbohay after the German occupation of France . Gerbohay was able to hide first and was not arrested until January 1, 1942, after Bavaud's execution. He was also tried and sentenced to death on January 1, 1943 and beheaded on April 9, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee.

rehabilitation

Memorial stele for Maurice Bavaud in Hauterive

A first rehabilitation attempt made by his father ended on December 12, 1955 with a judgment by the Berlin-Moabit Regional Court , in which Maurice Bavaud's sentence was posthumously reduced. But there was still an attempted murder conviction of five years in prison and five years for loss of civil honor. The reasoning for the judgment stated: “The life of Hitler [...] is to be recognized as a protected legal asset in the same way as the life of any other person. A justification in the sense of a permitted dictator killing is alien to criminal law. "

A second judgment in 1956 overturned the original one. The Federal Republic of Germany awarded the bereaved compensation in the amount of 40,000 Swiss francs.

The Bavaud case was forgotten in the Swiss public and also in Germany. It was not until the 1970s that a new discussion about the Swiss Hitler assassin began with the publications of Peter Hoffmann , Rolf Hochhuth , Niklaus Meienberg and Klaus Urner . The case was also taken up in the film It is cold in Brandenburg (Killing Hitler) .

The Swiss Federal Council admitted in 1989 and again in 1998 that the Swiss authorities had not done enough for Bavaud in 1938–1941.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the assassination in 2008 of the National Council urged Paul Rechsteiner in a motion to the Federal Council once again to make a statement on. Federal President Pascal Couchepin responded to this motion on November 7, 2008 with a public written declaration, which was titled in the NZZ with the words: Couchepin commemorates Hitler's assassin Maurice Bavaud . Couchepin wrote literally: "From today's perspective, the Swiss authorities at that time did not do enough for the convicted (...) He must have foreseen the fate that hit Hitler all over the world, and he thus deserves our memory and recognition."

On the 70th anniversary of his death, the University of Neuchâtel organized a Maurice Bavaud Symposium on May 13, 2011. At the same time, a memorial stele for Bavaud was inaugurated in Hauterive .

On November 9, 2013, the 75th anniversary of the failed assassination attempt by Bavaud on Hitler and the night of the Reichspogrom that followed Herschel Grynszpan's assassination attempt on November 7, 1938 on a German embassy employee in Paris, a memorial service was held in Munich. The Comité Maurice Bavaud, the Georg Elser Memorial Königsbronn and the Bavarian State Center for Political Education invited to a memorial afternoon with several events.

Adrien Bavaud, brother of Maurice, and the Swiss parliamentarian Paul Rechsteiner were present.

The Green Zurich City Council Simon Kälin is fighting for the city of Zurich to name a square after Bavaud. It is currently (November 2013) still open whether this concern will be successful.

Others

In response to Maurice Bavaud's assassination plans, the performance of Friedrich Schiller's drama Wilhelm Tell in Germany and its treatment in school classes were banned by Hitler's personal orders . An association between the Swiss freedom fighter and the assassin should be avoided.

literature

  • e-Dossier: The Swiss Hitler assassin Maurice Bavaud in the database Dodis the Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland .
  • Committed to the voice of conscience - down to the last: Maurice Bavaud: theology student and Hitler assassin; Requiem against forgetting of November 19, 2009 (= Romero House Protocols , Volume 121). RomeroHaus, Lucerne 2010, DNB 1007936312 .
  • Otmar Hersche, Peter Spinatsch (editor): Maurice Bavaud: a 22-year-old Swiss tries to stop Hitler in 1938. Documentation on the 60th anniversary of his death, translated by Bertrand Schütz. Comité Maurice Bavaud, Bern 2001, DNB 967632129 .
  • Rolf Hochhuth : Tell 38. Acceptance speech for the Basel Art Prize 1976 on December 2nd in the auditorium of the Altes Museum. Notes and documents. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-498-02849-9 .
  • Rolf Hochhuth: "Tell 38". He wanted to kill Hitler. The case of the theology student Maurice Bavaud. In: Die Zeit , No. 52/1976, December 17, 1976 (6 pages).
  • Rolf Hochhuth: Tell against Hitler. Historical studies. With a speech by Karl Pestalozzi. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-458-19119-4 .
  • Peter Hoffmann : Maurice Bavaud's Attempt to Assassinate Hitler in 1938. In: George L. Mosse (Ed.): Police Forces in History . Sage Publications, London / Beverly Hills 1975, ISBN 0-8039-9934-8 , pp. 173-204.
  • Niklaus Meienberg : It's cold in Brandenburg. A Hitler assassination attempt. Limmat, Zurich 1980; Wagenbach, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8031-2186-8 .
  • Roger Moorhouse: Maurice Bavaud - Assassin in the Name of God. In the same: Killing Hitler: The assassins, the plans and why they failed. Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-86539-136-0 . Pp. 25-68.
  • Martin Steinacher: Maurice Bavaud - prevented Hitler assassin under the sign of the Catholic faith? (= Adjustment, self-assertion, resistance , volume 38). Lit, Münster / Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-643-12932-1 .
  • Klaus Urner : The Swiss Hitler Assassin. Three studies on resistance and its limits. Systemic resistance, individual perpetrators and their environment, Maurice Bavaud and Marcel Gerbohay. Huber, Frauenfeld 1980, ISBN 3-7193-0634-8 .

Web links

Commons : Maurice Bavaud  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gianna Niewel: An Enigmatic Hero . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 25, 2017, p. 53.
  2. ↑ Niklaus Meienberg : It's cold in Brandenburg. A Hitler assassination attempt. Wagenbach, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8031-2186-8 , p. 106.
  3. ↑ Niklaus Meienberg : It's cold in Brandenburg. A Hitler assassination attempt. Wagenbach, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8031-2186-8 , p. 113f.
  4. ↑ Niklaus Meienberg: It's cold in Brandenburg. A Hitler assassination attempt. Berlin 1990, pp. 144f.
  5. ↑ Peter Hoffmann: Maurice Bavaud's Attempt to Assassinate Hitler in 1938. In: George L. Mosse (Hrsg.): Police Forces in History . Sage Publications, London 1975, ISBN 0-8039-9934-8 , p. 204.
  6. ↑ Klaus Urner. A Swiss hero or two victims of Nazi justice? In memory of Maurice Bavaud and Marcel Gerbohay. (PDF; 45 kB) Neue Zürcher Zeitung, (current issues) November 7, 1998, No. 259, p. 81.
  7. ↑ Maurice Bavaud. Rehabilitation. Simple question from Paul Rechsteiner dated June 19, 1997 and Federal Council opinion of April 1, 1998.
  8. ^ A b Declaration on the 70th anniversary of the assassination attempt by Maurice Bavaud on Adolf Hitler . Motion by Paul Rechsteiner from October 3, 2008.
  9. ↑ Couchepin commemorates Hitler assassin Maurice Bavaud: Criticism of the lack of commitment by the Swiss authorities . NZZ, November 7, 2008.
  10. ↑ Georg Elser Working Group: Together lonely against Hitler ( Memento from May 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Various commemorative events took place on November 9, 2013, see p. Homepage Maurice Bavaud CH under current ( Memento from May 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  12. ↑ Speech by the St. Gallen Council of States Paul Rechsteiner on November 9, 2013, in: SP-Pressedienst: https://web.archive.org/web/20140502041150/http://www.sp-ps.ch/ger/Medien / Pressedienst / 2013 / Maurice-Bavaud-There-are-things-that-don't-get-smaller-but-bigger-with-increasing-distance
  13. ↑ Kaspar Surber in: WochenZeitung / Zurich, November 14, 2013 http://www.woz.ch/1346/hitler-attentaeter-bavaud/alles-andere-als-verwirrt
  14. ↑ Berthold, Will: The 42 assassinations on Adolf Hitler. Munich-Breitbrunn 2008, p. 145.
  15. ^ Peter Koblank: Adolf Hitler, Wilhelm Tell and Georg Elser , online edition Mythos Elser 2008
personal data
SURNAME Bavaud, Maurice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss Hitler assassin
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuchâtel , Canton of Neuchâtel , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1941
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee , Germany