Paul Schneider (politician, 1892)

Paul Schneider (* 1892 in Westphalia, † 1974 in Itzehoe ) was a German mill owner and politician of the NSDAP .

Schneider learned the teaching profession at the Soest teacher training college (together with Dietrich Klagges ), but from 1918 worked with his wife in their parents' mill in Itzehoe . When he met Klagges again in Wilster , he joined the folk scene. The "solution of the social question" formulated by Hitler, the "overcoming of flat materialism", appeared to him as a "divine enlightenment", like the "beacon of a new era". From 1923 the two friends met weekly in their “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Weltanschauung”, where questions of politics and ideology were discussed. In the fall of 1924 he and Klagges had plans to found a West Coast Gauverband for the National Socialist Freedom Party .

Schneider only became a member of the NSDAP shortly before the Gau was founded in 1925 under number 9,452 , even if he was already known there. He tried to expand the local NSDAP group in Itzehoe. His strong focus on ideological and religious questions stood in the way of popularizing Nazi politics. Only when he had to resign the chairmanship of the local group in 1927, since his additional office of deputy Gauleiter brought him the charge of accumulating offices, the Itzeho group slowly began to grow. In 1929 he accommodated Adolf Hitler in his house. He helped Joseph Goebbels with propaganda appearances. He was Gau culture director, Gau inspector and Gauamtsleiter, also from 1935 to 1939 in the city council of Itzehoe. When he was faced with the choice of working full-time for the NSDAP in 1933, he resigned from almost all party offices and decided to start his own family business. During the war he was provisionally responsible for the district leader for the Steinburg district , but was replaced by Walter Bilkau in 1943 .

In 1946, Schneider was sentenced to two and a half years of internment within the framework of a judicial chamber procedure , which he served first in Neumünster - Gadeland , then in Eselheide near Paderborn . Dismissed in 1948, he went back to work in his company.

literature

• Kay Donke: The "heartland of the Nordic race" greets its leader. Gau foundation, ideological positions, propaganda strategies: On the early history and establishment of the NSDAP in Schleswig-Holstein. Information on Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary History, 2008 ( Donke online ).