Oskar Glöckler

Oskar Glöckler (* 29. October 1893 in Stuttgart , † 27. January 1938 the same place) was a German sculptor medalist , sports functionary and SA - leader .

Life and activity

Oskar Glöckler learned the craft of sculpting. After the beginning of the First World War in the summer of 1914 he volunteered as a war volunteer. He fell into British captivity, from which he tried unsuccessfully to escape. He was then taken to a penal camp in Africa, from which he returned to Germany in 1919. In the first post-war years Glöckler lived in material need.

Glöckler joined the NSDAP in October or December 1922 . According to his own statements, in the summer of 1923 he was the leader of the entire SA and organizer of the NSDAP's intelligence service in the Stuttgart Gau, which gathered information about political opponents and Jews. After participating in the Hitler putsch in November 1923, the police wanted him and sentenced him. According to an obituary from 1938, Glöckler was led to the NSDAP through the war and the suffering of imprisonment after he had come to the conclusion that the war defeat of 1918 had cheated of his chance in life.

In 1925 Glöckler moved to Berlin, where he worked as an artist. At that time he had temporarily turned away from the NSDAP "disappointed by local disputes". In December 1930 he rejoined the NSDAP, again in distress due to the global economic crisis . According to his own admission, it was the publications by Joseph Goebbels , especially his Michael novel, that brought him back to the NSDAP camp.

After the National Socialists came to power , Glöckler was commissioned to create works of art to glorify the new regime. In the summer of 1933, for example, he designed a commemorative coin commemorating the turning point in Germany, which was intended to symbolize the “national uprising and the liberation of the German people from internal discord and bondage” and which Hitler himself approved. With a plaque created in the autumn of 1934 for an SA group sports festival, he caught the attention of Goebbels, who gave him further government contracts. In the following years he designed and created numerous sculptures and commemorative coins as well as sports medals, many of which were awarded decorations (including from the Reichswehr Ministry and the Reich Sports Leader ).

From 1933 Glöcker also acted as a sports advisor on the staff of the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg under Karl Ernst . He held the rank of SA Obersturmbannführer. Later he was promoted to Standartenführer in the SA and finally to Oberführer.

In the 1930s, Glöckler was department head of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts in Berlin and later State Director of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and, as the successor to Bernhard Pankok, director of the State Württemberg School of Applied Arts .

After it had been proven that for years as a participant in the First World War he had wrongly worn the Iron Cross and wrongly held the title of professor , Glöckler shot himself to death in February 1938 in his office at the Stuttgart School of Applied Arts at Weißenhof. According to contemporary witnesses, he should have been pressured to do so; the official obituaries ignored this fact.

literature

• Wolfgang Kermer: The creative angle: Willi Baumeister's educational activity. 1992, p. 38.
• Nils Havemann: Football under the swastika: the DFB between sport, politics and commerce. 2005, p. 97f.

Web links

• Suicide of the regional director of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, Oskar Glöckler, after his exposure as a con man
• Pictures from Glöckler at Getty Images

Individual evidence

1. ^ Nils Büttner and Angela Zieger: 250 years of the Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. (PDF) Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg, pp. 159,175,387,411 , accessed on November 10, 2015 (the director of the Württemberg School of Applied Arts became the medalist and NSDAP party member Oskar Glöckler in 1937).