Moritz Oppenheimer

Moritz Oppenheimer (born April 12, 1879 - † July 2, 1934 in Gießen ) was a German businessman. He was best known as one of the victims of the Röhm affair .

Life and activity

Oppenheimer lived as a cattle dealer in the Hessian town of Langsdorf , a village between Hungen and Lich , at the latest since the 1920s . He was married to Berta Flörsheim and had three sons and a daughter.

Because of his Jewish descent, Oppenheimer was the victim of teasing and harassment by the National Socialists in his home country after the National Socialists came to power . The Nazi government's political cleansing action of the summer of 1934, known as the Röhm affair , ultimately fatalized him : although the action primarily aimed to overthrow the unreliable party army of the NSDAP, the SA, by eliminating its most important leaders and a few others In order to neutralize important political personalities who could potentially be dangerous to the Nazi leadership, the completely apolitical and above all politically completely insignificant Oppenheimer was drawn into the maelstrom of the events: Some SS people from the Hungen area decided that day that the political cleansing action initiated by the state leadership represents a good opportunity to "clean the table" even at the subordinate level of their local village community and to give some people they personally dislike a reminder. For this reason, these SS men went to various Jews living in the area around Hungen and Lich and attacked and beat them.

On the night of June 30th to July 1st, some SS men went to the house of the Oppenheimer family to “stir up” them. In this attack, Oppenheimer and his three sons Hugo, Siegfried and Gerhard were seriously injured. Oppenheimer, who was shot in the stomach, died two days later in the Giessen clinic. Oppenheimer's widow and her three sons, recovering from their injuries, emigrated to the United States in the years that followed.

The murder of Oppenheimer was made known abroad, among other things, by the white book published in Paris in 1934 on the shootings of June 30, 1934 , in which his death and - by mistake - the death of one of his sons were reported. Oppenheimer's first name was wrongly given as Salomon.

Post-war investigations by the Giessen public prosecutor's office led to the first trial in 1947, in which the defendants were sentenced to long prison terms; however, an appeal in 1949 reduced the original sentence considerably.

literature

• Hanno Müller / Friedrich Damrath / Klaus Konrad-Leder / Monica Kingreen: Jews in Lich: Families , 2010.
• Rainer Orth : Der SD-Mann Johannes Schmidt , 2012, p. 125.

Web links

• Village initiative publishes book about Jews in Langsdorf (article in the Gießener Zeitung)
• Student photo from 1919 (article in the Wetterauer Zeitung)