Michael Graf von Matuschka

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Michael Graf von Matuschka, 1920s

Michael Graf von Matuschka (born September 29, 1888 in Schweidnitz , † September 14, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German administrative officer, center politician and resistance fighter from July 20, 1944 .

Life

Michael Graf von Matuschka was a student at St. Matthias Gymnasium in Breslau . He studied at the Universities of Lausanne , Munich and Wroclaw law . In 1910 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on parliamentary freedom of speech and the obligation to witness . During the First World War he served on the Eastern Front as a lieutenant in the Hussar Regiment "von Schill" (1st Silesian) No. 4 and was seriously wounded in 1915. He fled the subsequent Russian captivity in Krasnoyarsk , Siberia , in 1918.

After passing the second state examination , Matuschka began his service as a government assessor at the Pleß district ( Upper Silesia ) in 1919 . From January 1921 he was a member of the government at the district office in Lublinitz . After also with the assignment, eastern Upper Circle Lublinitz fell to Poland, Matushka was in May 1923 District Administrator of the district Opole , located in the same city Opole . In 1932 he was elected to the Prussian state parliament as a candidate for the Center Party . In July 1933, the Nazi government put him into temporary retirement. The mandate ended when the state parliament was dissolved.

In the following years it was initially used in the municipal department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. In November 1936 he was transferred to the Upper Silesian Presidium in Breslau as a member of the government , where he succeeded Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg . From 1939 Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg was Deputy President of Upper and Lower Silesia , with whom he became friends. In 1941 Matuschka, meanwhile a senior government councilor, was seconded to Katowice as head of the state economic office and the trustee office. Although he still refused to join the NSDAP , he was promoted to government director in December 1941 .

Due to his close contacts with Schulenburg and as a long-time friend of Hans Lukaschek , Paulus van Husen and other members of the Kreisau Circle , the Gestapo arrested him after the failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 and accused him of complicity in the preparations for the coup. In the Beck / Goerdeler shadow cabinet , Matuschka had been scheduled as government president in the event of a successful coup. On September 14, 1944, he was sentenced to death by the People's Court under its President Roland Freisler and hanged on the same day in Plötzensee .

progeny

Michael Graf von Matuschka was born with Pia. Countess von Stillfried married. From this marriage there were three sons born. 1931, 1932 and 1934, as well as a daughter, b. 1936, who married Dirk von Haeften in 1960, son of diplomat Hans Bernd von Haeften , who was also executed by the Nazi regime .

Awards

Commemoration

In December 2009 a memorial plaque for Michael Graf von Matuschka was unveiled in the city of Opole in the presence of his son Mario Graf von Matuschka . The memorial plaque was designed by the artist Adolf Panitz and attached to the facade of the former seat of the district administration in Opole.

The Catholic Church accepted Michael Graf von Matuschka as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

See also

Fonts

  • Parliamentary freedom of speech and the obligation to witness . Noske, Borna-Leipzig 1910.

literature

  • Hans-Ludwig Abmeier: Michael Graf von Matuschka executed in 1944 . In: Archives for Silesian Church History , Volume 30 (1972), pp. 124–154.
  • Herbert Groß: Michael Graf von Matuschka . In: Important Upper Silesians. Short biographies . Laumann, Dülmen 1995, ISBN 3-87466-192-X .
  • Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 754–757.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Neubach, Nikolaus Gussone: Contributions to the history of Silesia in the 19th and 20th centuries . Laumann, Dülmen 1987, p. 99 ( book excerpt ).
  2. ↑ Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in Opole: Ceremonial unveiling of the memorial plaque in honor of Count Michael von Matuschka at the seat of the former Opole District Office
personal data
SURNAME Matuschka, Michael Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative officer and resistance fighter, MdL
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweidnitz
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee