Max Gruschwitz

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Max Gruschwitz (born October 9, 1892 in Breslau , † probably between 1942 and 1944) was a German journalist and political activist.

Life and activity

Early life (1892-1933)

Gruschwitz was a son of the businessman Max Gruschwitz and his wife Emma, ​​nee Barth. After participating in the First World War , Gruschwitz began to be politically active: first he belonged to the USPD , later he switched to the Communist Party of Germany . In this he took on official duties as party secretary and district manager in Wroclaw.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Gruschwitz joined the Black Front , a split from the NSDAP around Otto Strasser , which set stronger socialist accents than the NSDAP. In this he finally became regional manager Silesia and editor of the magazine Tribüne , one of the most important journalistic organs of the Black Front.

Worked in emigration between 1933 and 1939

When the Black Front fell victim to systematic persecution after the National Socialists came to power , Gruschwitz and his wife emigrated to Austria. In the following years he was active in journalism against National Socialism from Vienna. He wrote - sometimes using the pseudonym Brutus - for the anti-Nazi magazines Deutsche Zukunft , Wiener Zeitung and Freiheit . In addition, he worked in the Federal Commissariat for Propaganda under Richard Steidle and contributed to contributions with a corresponding tendency for Austrian radio.

Gruschwitz was active in an activist way by participating in plans for an assassination attempt on Heinrich Himmler on the occasion of his first visit to Rome : Specifically, through intermediaries, Gruschwitz offered some opposition generals in Berlin to carry out such an assassination attempt on the SS chief during his stay in Organize Italy. Besides the goal of meeting Himmler as a personal enemy, the determining factor for him was primarily the ulterior motive of permanently disrupting the rapprochement between Germany and Italy by staging such an international incident. In this way tensions were to be created between the two countries, which were intended to maintain the relative distance between the two regimes that existed until 1936/1937. In particular, by preventing Germany and Italy from becoming politically united, Italy was to be induced to maintain its role as guarantor of the independence of the Republic of Austria, which it had assumed since Mussolini came to power, and to continue to assert German efforts to annex the Alpine state as the protective power of the small one To oppose the country.

After the annexation of Austria by National Socialist Germany in 1938, Gruschwitz fled to Czechoslovakia, where he lived in Prague. From there, when this country was also occupied by Germany, he went to France in 1939. There he worked for the French secret service Deuxiéme Bureau in Paris.

The National Socialist police officers classified Gruschwitz as an enemy of the state: on June 13, 1935, he was expatriated from Germany. At the beginning of 1940 he was placed on the special wanted list GB by the Reich Security Main Office - which erroneously assumed him to be in Great Britain - a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British island by the Wehrmacht, were identified and arrested with special priority by SS special commands should be.

After the military overthrow of France and the occupation of Paris, Gruschwitz - at least outwardly - made a political about-face: in 1941 he wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler in which he vowed to unreservedly follow the Nazi line. In this context, Elfriede Seefried points out that already in Vienna Gruschwitz oscillated between resistance and rapprochement with the Third Reich. She describes the letter to Hitler as a "letter of surrender" and explains its content that Gruschwitz had declared that with the mobilization he "became aware of his true loyalty to the fatherland and to the 'Führer'". He also asked - "with deep regret" for his aberration and full of "disgust" about the "Jewish and Freemason rabble" in the emigration - Hitler for generosity and the opportunity to work for the "fatherland".

Following his letter to Hitler, Gruschwitz tried to get permission to return to Germany. At the instigation of the SS , the repatriation commissioner of the Franco-German armistice commission in Toulouse asked Gruschwitz to Paris. After he followed the request, he was arrested in 1942. At this point his track is lost. In the literature it is mostly assumed that he was murdered by the Gestapo around 1942/1943 .

literature

  • Elke Seefried: Reich and Estates: Ideas and Effects of German Political Exile in Austria 1933–1938 , 2006.
  • Werner Röder / Herbert A. Strauss : Politics, Economy, Public Life , 1980, p. 251.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Mierau: The way down: Recordings from a great time , 1998, p. 172.
  2. ^ Entry on Max Gruschwitz on the special wanted list GB (reproduction on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London)
  3. ^ Elke Seefried: Reich and Estates. Ideas and Effects of German Political Exile in Austria 1933–1938 , 2006, p. 455.
  4. ^ Elke Seefried: Reich and Estates. Ideas and Effects of German Political Exile in Austria 1933–1938 , 2006, p. 455.
personal data
SURNAME Gruschwitz, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and political activist
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: between 1942 and 1944