Otto Schwab (student functionary)

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Otto Schwab (born September 7, 1889 in Geiß-Nidda ( Upper Hesse ); † April 14, 1959 there ) was a German engineer, student functionary, expert in military science and SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS .

Life

Empire

Schwab was born in 1889 as the son of a farmer from Upper Hesse. After graduating from high school , he studied from 1908 to 1914, first at the Technical University of Darmstadt , then at the Technical University of Dresden and graduated as an engineer. In 1933 he was promoted to Dr. PhD at the Technical University of Dresden . From 1911 to 1912 Schwab completed a voluntary one-year service with the foot artillery regiment 3 in Mainz. In 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War , Schwab volunteered as a member of the Darmstadt fraternity Germania . He took part in the western campaign in an artillery regiment, most recently as a lieutenant.

Weimar Republic

After military service, during which he was already studying the efficiency and development of weapons, he had his own engineering office in Geiß-Nidda from 1919 to 1933. At the same time, he continued his military science research. Politically, he was committed to the "introduction of a planned civil science military training for students". He founded the "civil defense sciences" as a "military component of every academic profession", that is, as a compulsory part of every academic training. He advocated "total military detention". He rejected the non-violent policy of renunciation as a state task. A democratic political system seemed to him to be unsuitable for the " German people " in the long term.

Since 1928 Schwab organized the paramilitary training of students (" Wehrsport "), since 1930 as head of the Wehramt (WA) of the German Burschenschaft , which for camouflage reasons was called "Wissenschaftliches Arbeitsamt" and was financed from a "Freedom Fund" decided by the Burschentag in 1929 . In 1930/31 Schwab was one of the founders of the glider flying group and the aviation department of the German fraternity, with the help of which the air force ban of the Versailles Treaty was to be circumvented. In 1930 Schwab founded the General Wehramt (AWA) of the student corporation associations (again under the cover name: General Scientific Employment Office - AWA).

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1933 Schwab joined the SA and the NSDAP ( membership number 1,507,699). Later he also became a member of the NSFK and the NS-Dozentbund . At the Burschentag in 1933 he was elected the first leader of the German fraternity . In his speech there as well as in the fraternity papers , he warmly welcomed the transfer of power. "Hitler's act set us free," he declared.

In 1933 he made an agreement with the Supreme SA leadership in the "Friedrichshafen Agreement" to maintain the corporations. He was now staff leader of the Reichs-SA-Hochschulamt, to which the "military sports" training of the students had been assigned. Hitler himself examined and approved the corresponding planning. Schwab was active as a consultant in the defense policy office of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP and with the rank of SA standard leader on the staff of the chief of training of the SA. When the SA university offices were dissolved in autumn 1934 after the murder of Ernst Röhm , Schwab left the SA.

From 1933 to 1934 Schwab was the first federal leader of the German Burschenschaft (DB). As such, he pushed through the withdrawal of the DB from the General German Arms Ring and participation in the founding of the Völkischer Waffenring, as well as the exclusion of all Jewish and “ Jewish-related ” members. This ultimately led to the founding of the Old Burschenschaftlichen Ring by 33 fraternities excluded from the DB and resigned.

From 1936 he was a lecturer for natural science and physical telecommunications at the Technical University of Berlin . In 1939 Schwab became a member of the SS (SS no. 351.399). During the Second World War he was the commander of the Waffen SS artillery school in Trebbin. In 1942 he headed the Technical Office VIII. Research, Development, Patents (subordinate to the weapons and equipment office of the SS Leadership Main Office) and "also participated in prisoner experiments using N-substance" (a code name for chlorine trifluoride , a gas that is used as an incendiary agent should). On April 4, 1944, Schwab was appointed SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS. At this point in time he saw the bazooka as the “main weapon of the entire warfare”.

post war period

After being a prisoner of war for several years, Schwab “continued to work scientifically in the military field” and was able to successfully register several patents. Some of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation and in the German Democratic Republic .

Fonts (selection)

  • District shooting trial. 1915
  • Lectures about plan shooting against ground targets and tethered balloons. 1917
  • Engineer and soldier , Hassia Verlag Nidda (Hessen) 1928
  • Total detention. 1932
  • The German fraternity. Willing and working in the past and present. 1934
  • Fraternities fly! Frankfurt am Main 1939.

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 5: R – S. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , pp. 381-383.
  • Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 158.
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. Frankfurt a. M. 1997.
  • Günter Nagel: Explosives and fusion research at the Berlin University. In: Rainer Karlsch, Heiko Petermann (ed.): For and Against “Hitler's bomb”. Münster 2007, p. 243 (Studies on atomic research in Germany (= Cottbus studies on the history of technology, work and the environment, Volume 29)).
  • Florian Schmaltz: Research on warfare agents under National Socialism. For cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry. Göttingen 2007.
  • Anette Schröder: men of technology in the service of war and nation. Students of the TH Hannover. In: Karen Bayer, Frank Sparing, Wolfgang Woelk (Hrsg.): Universities and colleges during National Socialism and in the early post-war period. Stuttgart 2004.
  • Alfred Thullen: Otto Schwab, the Allgemeine Deutsche Waffenring and the exclusion of Jews from its corporations - a documentation. In: Burschenschaftliche Blätter , 114/2 (1999), pp. 109-114.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anette Schröder: Men of technology in the service of war and nation. Students of the TH Hannover. In: Karen Bayer, Frank Sparing, Wolfgang Woelk (Hrsg.): Universities and colleges during National Socialism and in the early post-war period. Stuttgart 2004, p. 37.
  2. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 5: R – S. Winter, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-8253-1256-9 , p. 381.
  3. ↑ See: Otto Schwab (Ed.), Die Deutsche Burschenschaft. Wanting and working in the past and present , Berlin 1934, pp. 34–44.
  4. ↑ a b c d Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon for National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 158.
  5. ↑ a b Otto Schwab on the list of SS group leaders on http://www.dws-xip.pl
  6. ↑ Burschenschaftliche Blätter, summer semester 1933, No. 10, p. 240. Quoted from: Heike Ströle-Bühler: Student Antisemitism in the Weimar Republic. An analysis of the Burschenschaftliche Blätter 18918 to 1933. Frankfurt / M. et old. 1991, p. 146.
  7. ↑ Harald Lönnecker : The assembly of the "better National Socialists"? - The Völkischer Waffenring (VWR) between anti-Semitism and corporate elitism. (PDF; 267 kB) Frankfurt am Main, 2003. p. 23.
  8. ^ Günter Nagel: Explosives and fusion research at the Berlin University. In: Rainer Karlsch, Heiko Petermann (ed.): For and Against “Hitler's bomb”. Münster 2007, p. 243 (Studies on atomic research in Germany (= Cottbus studies on the history of technology, work and the environment, Volume 29)); Florian Schmaltz: Research on warfare agents under National Socialism. For cooperation between Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the military and industry. Göttingen 2007, pp. 172ff., 175; Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. Frankfurt a. M. 1997, p. 86.
  9. ^ Andreas Kunz: Wehrmacht and defeat. The armed power in the final phase of the National Socialist rule 1944 to 1945. 2nd edition, Munich 2007, p. 232.
  10. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I. Politicians. Volume 5. R – S, Heidelberg 2002, p. 382.
  11. ^ List of literature to be sorted out by the German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, Zentralverlag, Berlin 1946; List of literature to be sorted out by the German Administration for National Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, Zentralverlag, Berlin 1947; List of literature to be sorted out by the German Administration for Popular Education in the Soviet Occupation Zone, Zentralverlag, Berlin 1948; List of literature to be discarded from the Ministry for National Education of the German Democratic Republic, Zentralverlag, Berlin 1953.
personal data
SURNAME Schwab, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, student functionary and expert in military science
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Geiß-Nidda ( Upper Hesse )
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1959
Place of death Geiß-Nidda (Upper Hesse)