Max Karl zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg

Max Karl Joseph Maria Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (* July 21, 1901 in Toblach , Tyrol, Austria-Hungary ; † July 27, 1943 in Stuttgart (executed)) was an artist and writer from the European aristocracy and worked since 1933 from the emigration to France increasing journalistic resistance against the Nazi regime . As a politically committed journalist and activist in the fight against the Saar , he was targeted by the Nazi state and, after voluntarily returning home, was accused of high treason because of his writings critical of the Nazis and actions. The death sentence imposed by the People's Court in 1942 was carried out in Stuttgart in July 1943.

origin

Prince Max Karl came from a Catholic branch of the House of Hohenlohe-Langenburg that emerged in the late 18th century and thus belonged to the European nobility. The headquarters of the line was in Rothenhaus near Komotau in Bohemia.

His father was Prince Max zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1861-1935), who had been married to Karoline (1867-1945), née Countess zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg , since 1891 . Prince Max Karl had an older sister named Marie Therese (1895–1974) who married the middle-class pharmacist Otto Kohlisen in 1916. The sister's early failed and divorced marriage had three daughters. Prince Max Karl's grandfather Ludwig Karl Gustav zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg died in the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866 .

resume

From 1912 to 1914 Max Karl Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg attended the Ettal Abbey high school . From 1914 he received further secondary school lessons from private teachers with his parents in Merano, without ever obtaining a school leaving certificate .

From the age of 19 he aspired to become an artist. In 1920 he found his teacher at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich in Jan Thorn Prikker . He mostly dealt with depictions of people on glass mosaics, which were also taken by Philipp Rosenthal on two of his porcelain vases. In 1922 all of Hohenlohe's works from Prikker came to the exhibition of Professor Peter Behrens' Dombauhütte at the German Trade Show in Munich , where he was also allowed to decorate the Dombauhütte with ornamental wall paintings. Furthermore, in 1921 and 1922 Hohenlohe dealt with coloring a volume of poetry by Hedwig Caspari .

In 1924 Hohenlohe served a five-month prison sentence for several moral offenses. Because of this turning point, he ended his artistic ambitions. Instead, an inheritance enabled him to travel longer, through which he gradually developed into a travel writer. He was inspired by the working-class poet Heinrich Lersch , whom he met for the first time on the island of Capri and who accompanied him on other trips. Through his literary activity he made contacts and acquaintances with some well-known writers such as Thomas Mann , Joseph Roth , Lion Feuchtwanger , Joachim Ringelnatz , Ernst Glaeser and Gustav Regulator .

After the National Socialists took power , Hohenlohe emigrated to France. From there he interfered in the battle against the Saar . He campaigned against the reintegration of the Saar area into the German Reich as long as the dictatorship was not overcome there. On November 3, 1934, the Deutsche Reichsanzeiger published the third expatriation list of the German Reich through which he was expatriated . After the beginning of the Second World War , Hohenlohe was interned in France as an undesirable foreigner and in 1940 he joined the French Foreign Legion , which took him to Algeria.

In 1942 he decided to return to Germany after a German officer had assured him that he would not be held responsible for his political past. Regardless of this, he was charged with high treason on October 26, 1942 and sentenced to death on December 12, 1942 by the First Senate of the People's Court , chaired by Roland Freisler . On July 27, 1943, Hohenlohe was beheaded in Stuttgart and his body was made available to Heidelberg University for research purposes. In 1950 the university arranged for the anonymous burial. It was not until 2001 that Hohenlohe received a plaque of honor with names at the Heidelberg mountain cemetery along with other Nazi execution victims who had been buried anonymously up to then .

Personal

Because of constant lack of money, Max Karl Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg was in legal disputes with his father's siblings, especially his uncle Gottfried, Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1860–1933), who held the majority of the property and real estate at the Rothenhaus headquarters Had brought possession.

Hohenlohe was sent to the Stadelheim prison in Munich from February to the end of June 1924 for homosexual acts against minors that lasted from 1921 to 1923.

Because of the constant financial worries, he concluded a marriage of convenience with the Italian Louisa Georgina Pasquero on June 3, 1931 in London. The marriage only served the bride to carry the name Luise Princess zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg and included the contractual obligation to pay the groom 300,000 francs. Since his wife only paid part of the sum because of her high gambling debts, there were divorce suits. All these scandals made Max Karl Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg a blatant outsider in his family at an early age, which was further deepened by his later political stance.

Publications (excerpt)

• Since the mid- twenties , Max Karl Prinz zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg worked as a travel journalist for various German, Austrian and Swiss magazines.
• Report on a trip around Africa in the Berliner Tageblatt , 1929
• Reports on trips to North and South America and the South Seas in the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger , 1930
• First political article in the Berliner Tageblatt in 1932 because of his expulsion from Tangier imposed by the French because, as a German, according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, he had no right of residence in the French protectorate of Morocco.
• Excerpts from the planned autobiographical book Der Vater published in 1934 in the Dutch exile magazine Die Sammlung .
• Conversations with Röhm , Pariser Tageblatt , Vol. 2, July 15, 1934, No. 215: pp. 1 f.
• His Redeemer: Memories of Röhm , Pariser Tageblatt, Vol. 2, July 16, 1934, No. 216: pp. 1. u. 3
• Last visit to the Third Reich , Pariser Tageblatt, Vol. 2, July 22, 1934, No. 222: p. 1 and No. 223, p. 1
• A Solomonic judgment. Experience on the Parisian Boulevards , Pariser Tageblatt, Vol. 2, July 30, 1934, No. 230: p. 3
• Open letter to his mother in the emigrant newspaper Das Neue Tage-Buch , with which he spoke out against the Anschluss of Austria , which his mother had publicly advocated.

literature

• Peter Schiffer: Prince Max Karl zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1901–1943). A life between art, literature and politics. In: Alma Hannig, Martina Winkelhofer-Thyri (eds.): The Hohenlohe family. A European dynasty in the 19th and 20th centuries . Verlag Böhlau, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-22201-7 , pp. 309–329.
• Prince Max Karl zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, executed in Stuttgart on July 27, 1943. In: Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg , Archive News 2005, special no. September, p. 44.
• Jürgen Walter: Max Karl Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, the German-Jewish emigration in Paris and the Third Reich. In: Württembergisch Franken . Edited by the Historical Association for Württemberg Franconia. Volume 88, Schwäbisch Hall 2004, pp. 207-230.

Web links

Wikisource: The Father  - Sources and Full Texts

• Estate of Max Karl zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (La 147) in the Hohenlohe Central Archive in Neuenstein

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 5 (reprinted 2010).