Melitta Wiedemann

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Melitta Wiedemann (born April 2, 1900 in Saint Petersburg , † September 13, 1980 in Munich ) was a German journalist and publicist.

Life

Wiedemann was born in Saint Petersburg as the daughter of German parents. Her father was the director of an oriental bank and qualified as an orientalist. She grew up in Petersburg and later in Tehran . In the monastery school of Saint Nina in Baku she received a humanistic education.

From the early 1920s, Wiedemann lived in Germany, where she began to work as a journalist. Around 1928, Wiedemann joined the editorial team of the National Socialist newspaper, The Attack , for which she worked until the beginning of 1931. Around the same time she became a member of the NSDAP . Until she was removed from the editorial office of the attack in the wake of the Stennes revolt of 1931, Wiedemann worked closely with Joseph Goebbels as the newspaper's editor on press issues . While they were working together, Goebbels recognized Wiedemann's craftsmanship, which he ironically described as “the only man in the editorial office of the attack” , but distanced himself due to growing personal distrust - in March 1931 Goebbels wrote in his diary that Wiedemann was “ the evil spirit ”of the editorial team and stated:“ A woman will always abuse power ”- more and more of her.

In the April 4, 1931 edition of the attack , Wiedemann's expulsion from the NSDAP was publicly announced. The reason given was: "Confession to the excluded Captain Stennes and violation of the party's efforts." She appealed against this to the party's Reich Investigation and Arbitration Committee, which was rejected. After 1945, she untruthfully claimed that she left the party on her own initiative.

In June 1931, Wiedemann was sentenced to a fine of 75 RM by a department of the Berlin-Mitte lay judge's court for insulting because, during her time as editor of the attack, she was criticizing a discussion evening "Revolutionary writers and the war" with a speaker as "Jewish pig "had designated. In another trial in June 1931, Wiedemann was sentenced, like the attack editor Julius Lippert, to a fine of 100 RM for having referred to police officers as "Zörgiebel Cossacks" in an article about riots on the occasion of the opening of the Reichstag in 1930.

Nazi era

From June 1935 to May 1936, Wiedemann was editor of the Sunday newspaper Evangelium in the Third Reich (EvDR), an organ of the German Christians (DC), and from 1935 editor of the weekly newspaper Positives Christianentum , a combat and leader journal of the DC Reichsleitung.

During the Second World War, Wiedemann maintained close contacts with leading SS functionaries, including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich . She also worked with the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda .

From April 1936 to August 1939, Wiedemann was the main writer in the Contra-Comintern , founded by Eberhard Taubert , which saw itself as the “fighting organ of the anti-Bolshevik world movement” and wrote articles in collaboration with the “Institute for Research on the Jewish Question”. In August 1939 the magazine was in Die Aktion. Battle sheet against plutocracy and sedition (at times also with the subtitle Battle sheet for the new Europe ), renamed. From September 1939 to 1944, Wiedemann was the main editor and editor of the magazine, which was particularly noticeable for its rabid anti-Semitism . Despite the racist views she represented - emphasizing the high value of Germanic- German blood - Wiedemann turned against the classification of the inhabitants of Russia as “ sub-humans ” during the Second World War , which she mentioned in her correspondence with Heinrich Himmler, among others the reference to the courage and fighting strength of the Red Army soldiers in war tried to prove. Instead, she advocated building the Vlasov Army and joining forces with the peoples of the Soviet Union against “ Bolshevism ”. In November 1944 she was arrested for a few days for meddling in German Ostpolitik.

post war period

After the Second World War, Wiedemann continued to work as a publicist and translator.

Wiedemann last came out publicly in 1977, when she intervened in the then at its height controversy over the Reichstag fire of March 1933. The so-called Luxembourg Committee (which the National Socialists considered to be responsible for the fire in the Reichstag building in February 1933) and the group around the constitutional protector Fritz Tobias (which considered the sole perpetrator of the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe to be proven) faced each other. In particular, in March 1977 she sent numerous copies of a twenty-six-page “open letter” addressed pro forma to Walther Hofer to various newspaper editors and prominent public figures (including Willy Brandt ). In this letter, Wiedemann sharply attacked some representatives of the Luxembourg committee and in particular Hofer as the head of the committee. She tried to portray Hofer as a scientifically and politically questionable personality and accused him of “ideological Marxism”. It was later assumed that Fritz Tobias was the actual author of this letter and that Wiedemann, who agreed with him politically, had only given him her stationery and letterhead so that he could hide behind a straw man in the event of an attack on his opponent Hofer.

At the end of the 1970s, Wiedemann was politically active with the Greens.

Publications

Fonts

  • The new domestic professions , 1928.
  • Woman, Economy and Culture , 1929.
  • The sin against life. Art exposes Bolshevism , in: The action of February 1944, pp. 97-105

Translations

  • Norman O. Brown: Future under the sign of Eros , Pfullingen 1962.
  • WI Samkowoj: War and Coexistence from the Soviet Perspective , Pfullingen 1969.

literature

  • Walter Birnbaum : Witness of my time - statements about 1912 - 1972 . Musterschmidt, Göttingen, Frankfurt [Main], Zurich 1973.
  • “New provocation based on the Gestapo model. The former anti-Semitic ideologist Melitta Wiedemann disseminated a letter of abuse against the Luxembourg Committee ”, in: Freiheit und Recht , vol. 23, no. 3, May / June 1977.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Renz (ed.): "Forsaken by God and the world". Fritz Bauer's letters to Thomas Harlan. With introductions and comments by Werner Renz and Jean-Pierre Stephan, Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 2015, ISBN 978-3-593-50468-1 , p. 245, note 248; Death register of the city of Munich: Death register no. 1980/1945.
  2. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): Goebbels-Tagebücher, Vol. 2 / I, p. 288 (entry from November 21, 1930).
  3. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): Goebbels-Tagebücher, Vol. 2 / I, pp. 359f. (Entries from March 9 and 10, 1931).
  4. ↑ For example, Wiedemann stated in an interview on June 23, 1971: "[I] left the party in March 31". (See IfZ: Witness literature Wiedemann, sheet 1 ).
  5. ^ "Goebbels means rabbit ... He knows nothing at all", in: Vorwärts of June 12, 1931 (evening edition).
  6. ↑ "'Attack' and 'Zörgiebel-Kosaken'", in: Vorwärts from June 28, 1931 (morning edition).
  7. ^ Rainer Hering , The Faith Movement German Christians and Their Periodicals , In: Michel Grunewald, Uwe Puschner , Hans Manfred Bock , The Evangelical Intellectual Milieu in Germany, Its Press and Its Networks: 1871-1963 , Verlag Peter Lang 2008, p. 450
  8. ↑ David Bankier , Questions about the Holocaust: Interviews with Christopher Browning, Jacques Derrida, Saul Friedländer, Hans Mommsen et al. , Wallstein Verlag 2006, p. 278
  9. ^ "Story from the darkroom" in: The time of September 14, 1979 .
personal data
SURNAME Wiedemann, Melitta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1980
Place of death Munich