Oscar Frey

Oscar Frey (born April 3, 1893 in Schaffhausen ; † April 27, 1945 there ) was a Swiss officer .

Oscar Frey took up active service as a non-commissioned officer in 1914 and, together with his brother Richard, who later became the Colonel Corps commander, trained as a lieutenant in the field aspirant school. During the First World War he did a total of 1307 days of military service. In 1921 he took over the insurance agency from his late father Conrad Frey, a colonel in the cavalry .

From 1936 to 1942 Oscar Frey was in command of Basel's 22nd Infantry Regiment. In the winter of 1940/41 he held public lectures on his own initiative as part of the intellectual defense of the country to strengthen the will to resist, placing more emphasis on objectivity than on pathos. In spring 1941, under German pressure, he was banned from speaking by the Federal Council , whereupon he let his regiment march past the German consulate in Basel with waving flags . From 1941 Frey was head of the Army and House Section of the Swiss Army . He was a member of the National Resistance Action .

A heart attack forced him to resign from military service in March 1942. From May 1942 to April 1945 he wrote over 350 assessments of the situation in the Basler Nachrichten under the pseudonym “Legatus” . Alongside General Guisan , Colonel Frey became a symbol of national resistance during the Second World War .

Oscar Frey was married to Elsa Frauenfelder. The couple had three children. Oscar-Frey-Strasse in Basel has been named after him since 1952.

literature

• Philipp Wanner: Colonel Oscar Frey and the Swiss will to resist. Münsingen 1974.
• Philipp Wanner: Oscar Frey . In: Schaffhauser Contributions to History. Biographies Volume III . 46th year 1969, pp. 73–82 ( PDF; 192 kB )
• Waisch no im 22? Memory book Inf Rgt 22, 1912-2003. Basel 2003.

Web links

• Hans Senn: Frey, Oscar. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Oscar Frey in the archive database of the Swiss Federal Archives