Max Braun (politician)

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Max Braun Medal.jpg

Mathias Josef "Max" Braun , also Matz Braun , (* August 13, 1892 (different information: August 12 ) in Neuss ; † July 3, 1945 in London ) was a German politician ( SPD ) and journalist.

Life and activity

Early years

Braun was a brother of Heinz Braun . He first worked as a primary school teacher before turning to journalism in 1919. At the beginning of the 1920s he began to be politically active in the SPD.

In 1923 Braun became editor-in-chief of Volksstimme in Saarbrücken, the capital of the Saar area . As a result of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, the Saar area was separated from Germany and placed under French administration as a League of Nations mandate . Braun had been on the board of the Saarland SPD since 1925 . From 1925 to 1928 he served as its 2nd chairman and from 1928 to 1935 as 1st chairman.

Also since 1925 Braun was a member of the Saarland regional council as a member. Since 1932 he was a member of the Saarland District Administrator and the Saarbrücken City Council.

From 1933 to 1935 Braun was editor-in-chief of the social democratic newspaper Deutsche Freiheit , which wrote from Saarland against the Nazi regime that came to power in the German Reich in 1933 . As the only significant party in Saarland, the SPD had changed course in 1933 by no longer advocating the return of the Saar area to Germany, but instead advocating the continued existence of the mandate administration in view of the Saar referendum agreed for 1935 , to keep the country out of the sphere of influence of the Hitler dictatorship in Keep out German Reich .

The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) remained an opponent of the mandate administration. Now she fought the Social Democrats not only as social fascists , but also as "enemies of the fatherland who betrayed the German people to France". It was not until six months before the vote, in July 1934, that the KPD, prompted by the Executive Committee of the Communist International , decided to form a united front with the Social Democrats in order to continue the League of Nations mandate.

Braun campaigned for a common defensive front with the KPD , left-wing socialist forces and Catholic Nazi opponents around Johannes Hoffmann . The Saarlanders were to be called upon to vote against returning to the German state association at the beginning of 1935 and instead to remain under the previous League of Nations administration. He tried to persuade the League of Nations to postpone the vote on the international legal status of the Saarland, which was scheduled for 1935, and campaigned among the Saar population to work for the independence of the Saar from the Reich. Against the will of the leadership of the exile SPD in Prague, he cooperated in the months before the vote with the Saarland KPD in an effort to prevent the Nazi rule from spreading into the Saar area. Because of all these activities, Braun was targeted by the Nazi police and surveillance organs as well as Nazi propaganda: the latter attacked him sharply in the press and on the radio. In some cases, for example by the Frankish Gauleiter Julius Streicher , the (inaccurate) claim was made with defamatory intent that Braun was a Jew. The Gestapo meanwhile intrigued in a tangible way against Braun and organized a. a. a failed bomb attack on him.

Braun's intention to defeat Hitler on the occasion of the Saar referendum and to win the majority of the population to refuse to return to Germany, however, failed because of the referendum result in spring 1935.

Exile in France and Great Britain (1935–1945)

Immediately after the Saar referendum, which ended with a vote in favor of the National Socialists, Braun, who was in mortal danger due to the impending takeover of state power in his home country by the National Socialists, fled to Forbach in Lorraine, where he co-founded a counseling center for Saar refugees.

From Forbach Braun went to Paris, where he founded the Office Sarrois - the organization of Saarland social democratic emigrants. This represented a central point for the administration of the concerns of the Saarland social democratic emigrants in France. In particular, the office served him to coordinate his further journalistic work: From this location Braun was editor-in-chief of the emigrant newspaper Nachrichten von der Saar (1935-1936 ) and German Freedom (until 1939). In addition to his own newspapers, Braun also worked for the Paris daily newspaper in Paris , to which he contributed numerous articles. In the Lutetia district (1935–36) he was involved in the attempt to create a “ popular front ” against the Hitler dictatorship. Politically, he was active in the Popular Front in France until 1938.

Soon after his move to France, Braun was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police forces: his German citizenship was withdrawn because - according to the official justification - he violated the obligation to be loyal to the Reich and the people through his "behavior" and "the harmed German interests ”and announced his expatriation in the Reichsanzeiger . In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who were considered particularly important or dangerous by the Nazi surveillance apparatus (or who were particularly hated by the Nazi leadership or the police apparatus) and who therefore In the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, special SS commandos that followed the occupation troops should be located and arrested with special priority.

In 1940 Braun fled the German invasion of France to Great Britain, where in 1941 he joined the group of parliamentarians around Karl Höltermann . He continued to be active in anti-Nazi propaganda and in this sense worked for emigrant circles as well as for British government agencies such as the Calais soldier broadcaster .

Shortly before the end of World War II , Braun was interned on the Isle of Man . A few days before his planned return from exile in London , he died on July 3, 1945 of a blood clot in his brain that he had contracted from a headstand .

His passport has been in the Saar History Museum since May 2019 .

In 1955 his body was buried in the main cemetery in Saarbrücken . In March 1957 his urn was transferred to the Braun family grave in Neuss.

Honors

Since 2005 the Saarland SPD has been awarding the Max Braun Medal to deserving party members in memory of Max Braun .

A street in Saarbrücken city center, initially named in memory of Max Braun in 1946, was renamed Großherzog-Friedrich-Straße in October 1956 after the referendum on the Saar Statute, the outcome of which led to the connection of Saarland to the Federal Republic . At the same time, a street named after Max Braun in the Luisenthal district of Völklingen was renamed Jahnstraße . In the meantime, however, Saarbrücken has a Max-Braun-Strasse again in the St. Johann district . In October 2012, the space between the old fire station and Großherzog-Friedrich-Straße was named Max-Braun-Platz in memory of Max Braun in Saarbrücken.

At the request of the SPD parliamentary group, the city council of the state capital Saarbrücken decided on July 21, 2015 to give Max Braun an honorary citizenship of the city. Next to Willi Graf, Max Braun is the second citizen of the city to receive this award posthumously . It took place on July 13, 2016 in a ceremony in the presence of representatives from both branches of the family.

The former Karlstrasse in Neunkirchen / Saar was named after him in a ceremonial act on April 30, 1948.

In Steinberg -ckenhardt ( Oberthal ) there is a house of the falcons named after Max Braun .

family

From 1924 on, Max Braun was married to the women's rights activist Angela Braun-Stratmann , who accompanied him at all stages of his life. After 1945 she returned to Saarland alone.

Quote

"Hitler, who ever got the Saar, would not stop at the Saar border, but with the key to the Ludwigskirche he would try to penetrate the Strasbourg and Metz Minster."

- Max Braun, 1933 : Quoted in Gerhard Paul: Max Braun , p. 67.

Publications

Items:

in the Pariser Tageblatt :

  • Wesemanns dark bustle on the Saar , Volume 3, 1935, No. 471 (March 28, 1935), p. 1
  • Danzig Elections and Saar Voting , Volume 3, 1935, No. 484 (April 10, 1935), p. 1
  • Geneva's Formalism , Volume 3, 1935, No. 568 (July 3, 1935), p. 1
  • The Saar is “free”! , Volume 4, 1935, No. 811 (March 2, 1936), p. 1
  • On the Anniversary of the Saar Voting , Volume 4. 1936, No. 762 (January 13, 1936), p. 1
  • For a Saar amnesty , vol. 4. 1936, No. 773 (January 24, 1936), p. 2

in the Paris daily newspaper :

  • Same way - same text ... , Volume 1, 1936, No. 1 (June 12, 1936), p. 1
  • The second forged vote on the Saar , Volume 2, 1937, No. 288 (March 26, 1937), p. 2
  • Bishop Bornewasser and the teachings of the battle against the Saar , Volume 2, 1937, No. 349 (May 27, 1937), p. 2
  • Revenge on Pater Doerr , vol. 2. 1937, No. 427 (August 14, 1937), p. 1

in the socialist observation point :

  • Declaration , Volume 13, 1938, No. 8 (February 25, 1938), p. 172

literature

  • Walther Killy , Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition, Vol. 2 (Brann – Einslin). Saur, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-598-25032-0 , p. 18 f ( online , subscription access, accessed via De Gruyter online).
  • Ernst Kunkel : For Germany - against Hitler. The social democratic party of the Saar region in the voting campaign 1933–1935. Union-Druck-und-Zeitungsverlag, Saarbrücken 1968, DNB 770374441 .
  • Franz Osterroth: Biographical Lexicon of Socialism. Vol. 1. Hannover 1960, p. 43 f.
  • Gerhard Paul : Max Braun. A political biography. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 1987, ISBN 3-924555-15-X ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Gerhard Paul: Max Braun, pioneer of Franco-German understanding and early European. In: Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 20 (1988) 3, pp. 297-310.
  • Martin Schumacher (Ed.): The end of parliaments in 1933 and the members of the state parliaments and citizenships of the Weimar Republic during the National Socialist era: Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. Droste, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-7700-5189-0 , p. 17.
  • Maria Zenner: Parties and politics in the Saar area under the League of Nations regime 1920–1935 . Saarbrücken 1966, DNB 481430407 (also dissertation University of Cologne).

Web links

 Wikinews: Max Braun  - in the news

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Paul : Max Braun. A political biography. Röhrig, St. Ingbert 1987, ISBN 3-924555-15-X , p. 15 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  2. ↑ a b Entry on Braun on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
  3. ↑ a b State capital Saarbrücken, city archives, résumés of Saarbrücken city councilor, Matthias "Max" Braun, accessed on October 23, 2015
  4. ↑ Ernst Kunkel: "For Germany - against Hitler." The Social Democratic Party of the Saar region in the voting campaign of 1933/35 ; 1968 Saarbrücken
  5. ↑ Quoted from Martin Sabrow : Erich Honecker. The life before. 1912–1945 , CH Beck, Munich 2016. ISBN 978-3-406-69809-5 , p. 100
  6. ↑ Michael Hepp, Hans Georg Lehmann: The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger , p. 8.
  7. ↑ Max Braun - A Socialist from the Saar against Hitler , Saarländischer Rundfunk, 1987
  8. ↑ Historisches Museum Saar receives pass from Max Braun
  9. ↑ Renaming of streets in Völklingen
  10. ↑ Saarbrücker Zeitung of October 13, 2012
  11. ↑ Complete application text ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on Bürgerinfo Saarbrücken (last accessed on July 14, 2016)
  12. ↑ Volksstimme No. 46 of May 4, 1948, quoted from: Armin Schlicker: Straßenlexikon Neunkirchen. Historical Association City of Neunkirchen, Neunkirchen 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027592-0 .
personal data
SURNAME Brown, max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Braun, Mathias Josef (real name); Brown, Matz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social democratic politician and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Neuss , North Rhine-Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1945
Place of death London