Paul Schulz (politician)

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Paul Schulz (born February 5, 1898 in Stettin ; † August 31, 1963 in Laichingen ) was a German officer, politician ( NSDAP ) and SA leader. Schulz was best known as the leader of the " Black Reichswehr " in the 1920s. He was charged with organizing assassinations against unpopular members of the Black Reichswehr and against democratic politicians of the Weimar Republic . He made a name for himself in the NSDAP as a reorganizer of the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA) after the “ Stennes Putsch ” (1930). Schulz survived an assassination attempt by the SS during the " Röhm Putsch " of 1934 and then emigrated to Switzerland.

Life

Early years and Black Reichswehr (1898–1930)

Schulz entered the non-commissioned officers' school in Potsdam after primary school in 1912 . Multiple in the First World War wounded, he was in the spring of 1918 by a special decision of the emperor for bravery and a special performance for officers promoted. After the end of the war Schulz was a member of the Freikorps 1st Guard Reserve Division under Rüdiger von der Goltz . In the fighting in the Baltic States , he took part in a battalion under Bruno Ernst Buchrucker in the Freikorps of Siegfried Graf zu Eulenburg-Wicken . Then Schulz was taken over as Buchrucker's adjutant in the Reichswehr and promoted to lieutenant . Because of their support for the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, Schulz and Buchrucker were released from the army.

Schulz and Buchrucker were reinstated by the Ministry of Defense under a private contract ; Schulz had the order to set up a work detachment in Küstrin . The command belonged to the so-called Black Reichswehr , a secret organization hostile to the republic that provided secret personnel reserves for the Reichswehr and worked towards the overthrow of the Weimar state. Within the Black Reichswehr, Schulz was responsible for the organizational and military development; he was considered to be the real “doer of the whole thing”, according to a later testimony. At the end of 1922, Schulz moved to the Military District Command III in Berlin, where he set up other work groups for the Black Reichswehr. During the Küstriner putsch on October 1, 1923, Schulz was arrested, but not later indicted like the initiator of the putsch, Buchrucker.

Within the Black Reichswehr, Schulz was entrusted with the management of the " Feme Organization " of the Black Reichswehr in Prussia, the largest part of the German Reich. In this capacity Schulz planned and organized the murder of left-wing politicians and other alleged "enemies of the Reich" by members of the Black Reichswehr. Because of his involvement in these " Fememorden ", the "Femerichter" Schulz was later considered by large parts of the German public - sympathizers and opponents alike - as the "Feme-Schulz".

The article “The Black Reichswehr Spy System ”, which appeared in the magazine Die Weltbühne in the summer of 1925 , marked Schulz's role in the organization with the verdict: “The basis of the remote operation in the Black Reichswehr was an informer system, unique of its kind. Oberleutnant Schulz was responsible for the department, although the 'criminal department' had been organized by Oberleutnant Stennes [...]. ”The author of the anonymously published article was Carl Mertens , who was adjutant von Schulz in the Berlin military district command.

In March 1925 Schulz was arrested for inciting several murders. The circuit court Berlin III sentenced him on March 26, 1927 for "inciting communal killings" of the sergeant Walter Wilms to death . In large parts of the German right wing he was henceforth a martyr: A member of the Reichstag of the German National People's Party (DNVP) called him a “war hero on the cross”, and the National Socialist Völkischer Beobachter called for “freedom for Lieutenant Schulz”.

Heavy industry lobbyist August Heinrichsbauer collected 40,000 Reichsmarks for Schulz's release and stayed in contact with him.

Schulz's death sentence was eventually reduced to a prison term . He was released on bail in the spring of 1930 and was fully pardoned in October 1930 .

SA leader and Reich inspector (1930–1932)

On October 24, 1930, Schulz, who had been in contact with the NSDAP since 1928, joined the Hitler party. His entry probably took place through the mediation of Walter Buch , the party's chief judge , who knew him from wartime and who settled in the immediate vicinity in Solln near Munich. Schulz's marriage to Erna Belten resulted in a son in 1930.

At the end of 1930 and beginning of 1931 Schulz was appointed acting "SA Leader East" and was thus at times actually the highest SA leader in Berlin. As a partner of Joseph Goebbels , the Gauleiter of Berlin, the “Berlin SA chief” Schulz was given the task of reorganizing the Berlin SA in the following weeks. This reorganization had become necessary after the SA in the Reich capital in 1930 under the leadership of its chief of staff Walther Stennes revolted against the NSDAP party leadership around Hitler in Munich in the Stennes putsch in order to change the political course of the National Socialist movement - away from Hitler's "legality course" to a course of direct confrontation with state power - to achieve. In cooperation with Goebbels, Schulz disempowered Stennes and brought the mutinous Berlin SA, which at times had completely slipped out of control by the party leadership and had become independent, again under control of the party leadership.

After the end of his SA activities, Schulz was assigned to the head of the Reich organization of the NSDAP, Gregor Strasser . The reasons for his appointment with Strasser must be Strasser's close relationship with Schulz's uncle Ernst Schulz, who was a “fatherly friend” of Strasser, and Schulz's authority among former Freikorps fighters and members of the Black Reichswehr who the NSDAP through the use of Schulz hoped to make use of it in an exposed position.

As Strasser's closest colleague and personal friend, Schulz quickly moved up into the narrow leadership of the NSDAP and was one of the most important influences on Strasser from 1931 to 1933. In 1931 Schulz was next to Ernst Röhm the most promising candidate for the post of Chief of Staff of the SA, who had become vacant after the dismissal of Franz Pfeffer von Salomon . Schulz '"application" ultimately failed, despite Strasser's support, as Hitler gave Röhm the preference. In the course of a press campaign against Röhm, the social democratic Munich Post printed on June 24, 1931 under the title “The Brown House of Homosexuals. The gay line extended from Munich to Berlin. Fememörder Schulz reports. ”An alleged internal report from Schulz. According to the assessment of the Bavarian Political Police , the report is likely to have been falsified and based on material from the “ Combat Group of Revolutionary National Socialists ” founded by Otto Strasser .

From 1930 to 1932 Schulz met several times with Heinrich Brüning , who was then Chancellor of the Center , whom he had met during the 1923 occupation of the Ruhr and with whom he had had a good relationship ever since. Schulz's secret ambition in these years - after Hitler's rejection of his ambitions to the post of Chief of Staff of the SA - was aimed at bringing the Strasser wing of the NSDAP together as the “reasonable” wing of the party with the center and in this way the “Irrational and incalculable” part of the party to sideline Hitler and Röhm. Schulz's plan of a compromise with the center ultimately failed to materialize.

In the state elections in April 1932 he was elected as a member of the Prussian state parliament via constituency 11 (Merseburg) .

In the summer of 1932 Schulz was appointed Reich Inspector I of the NSDAP and thus Strasser's deputy. His responsibility was primarily for northern Germany, while Reichsinspektor II, Robert Ley , was responsible for the south . In December 1932 Schulz left the NSDAP together with Gregor Strasser. He then worked for the Allgemeine Baugesellschaft Lenz & Co in Berlin.

Röhm Putsch and later life (1934–1964)

Letters from and about Schulz while he was hiding after the failed attempt on his life.

In 1934 Schulz was put on a special wanted list, the so-called "Reichsliste", probably at the instigation of Göring , who played one of the main roles in the murder. The Reichsliste served as the “working basis” of the SS and Gestapo commandos, which in the summer of 1934 were entrusted with the murder of Hitler's actual or alleged opponents in their own ranks (as well as a few other undesirable people). Schulz was arrested on June 30th and taken to Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse . Then he was driven into a dark forest outside Potsdam near the village of Seddin by three plainclothes Gestapo men in a civilian car . The Gestapo officers ordered him to get out and shot him in the back. Schulz - seriously injured - fell to the ground and pretended to be dead. The officers turned away from him for a few moments to fetch a tarpaulin for easier removal of the body. At that moment Schulz jumped up and fled into the dark forest. He managed to escape. For the next few days he stayed with a friend, the former Rear Admiral Lübbert , whose address he suspected was not on the Gestapo wanted lists because the address was not in Schulz's address book. According to Schulz's own later statements, Lübbert succeeded in obtaining “personal protection” for Schulz both from Hitler and Göring. This protection was limited to 14 days. Schulz left for Switzerland on July 20, 1934 and lived there as a businessman in Zurich and Basel . In 1935 his former employer got him a diplomatic mission based in Athens , which enabled him to move frequently and stay abroad. At the end of 1940 Schulz moved from Athens to Budapest .

In 1940 Schulz resumed his membership in the NSDAP from abroad, but was met with Hitler's express rejection. Martin Bormann informed the competent Gauleiter in this matter, Ernst Wilhelm Bohle , on 25 September 1940, "the leader has answered that question emphatically denied and stresses a resumption of Schulz in the party never out of the question." Was addition Schulz at this time entered into the "black list" of the Nazi leadership.

After the war, Schulz returned to the Federal Republic. He was mainly active as an entrepreneur and ultimately managed a construction machinery plant in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse . In 1963 he died in his home town of Laichingen. Schulz's estate has been stored in the Institute for Contemporary History since 1996 under the stock number ED 438. It consists of a deposit from Ms. Helene Ranke and several individual items already in the archive of the Institute for Contemporary History (private papers, correspondence, copies of his two publications; trial files on the Fememord Wilms; statements on Strasser).

personality

In reports from his superiors, Schulz was characterized as “decent from head to toe” . Erich Ludendorff described Schulz in a testimony for the defense in the fememicide trial as modest, unselfish and courageous and went on: "His exemplary behavior as a soldier makes participation in a mean assassination out of lust for murder or revenge seem impossible to me ." For Friedrich Grimm , it seemed simply impossible his client Schulz dedicated himself to his task with particular devotion:

“And so we see Schulz in his office in 1923 […], in a room that is furnished with spartan simplicity , in which even his bed is; and he is there every day, from morning to night . When he gets up, officers and orderlies are already standing at his bedside, and when he leaves the office it is only to hunt from one work detachment to another, to organize, to create and to give all comrades his spirit of discipline To plant loyalty and devotion. "

A correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt did not do justice to Schulz's reputation as a “fascinating mercenary ” and “outstanding leader nature” that surrounded Schulz at the time of the fememicide trials :

“In the dock sits a well-dressed man with a smooth face and a short neck. A small mustache adorns him. The eyes small and piercing. He makes a bow at the judges' table that a journeyman butcher would have done just as well or just as awkwardly. In general, one has the impression of seeing one of the NCO types in the old army. "

Shortly after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists, Roland Freisler praised the murderers as "heroes of the nation". The "service that Schulz and his splendid people did" presented itself differently for the dropout Carl Mertens:

“What I found there was a swamp of the lowest convictions and the most pitiful passions, an atmosphere of lust for murder and cynicism. I turned to flee with horror. […] [A] ll look forward to civil war, looting, burning and killing and, most of all, the crushing of the defenseless masses of the working people. This is what the organizations look like whose program includes 'national youth education' and 'physical exercise'. "

Emil Julius Gumbel called Schulz in 1962 a “man of tremendous energy and ultimate ruthlessness” . In 2004, Bernhard Sauer referred to a police report in which a speech by Schulz to SA members in January 1931 was recorded: “The enemy is very close, even in our own ranks [...]. Everyone should be careful not to divulge anything about the organization. " For Sauer, Schulz was " apparently paranoid . "

Alexander Dimitrios (d. I. Schulz's son) paints a completely different picture of Schulz in a biography of his father that deviates from the previous representations.

Fonts

  • My shooting on June 30, 1934 , Pratteln 1948. (private print of which only a few copies exist). Reprinted in Alexander Dimitrios [d. i. Schulz 'Sohn]: Weimar and the fight against the “right”. A political biography , 4 volumes. Ulm 2009. ISBN 978-3-9803191-0-2 , pp. 777 to 814.
  • Rescues and assistance to the persecuted, 1933–1945 by first lieutenant a. D. Paul Schulz . Laichingen 1967. (private print)

literature

  • Anke Hoffstadt / Richard Kühl: "Dead man walking". The “Fememörder” Paul Schulz and his “shooting on June 30, 1934” , in: Historical Social Research , vol. 34 (2009), no. 4, pp. 273–285.
  • Anke Hoffstadt / Richard Kühl: The annoying revenant and the dead "heroes". On the iconization of Paul Schulz as a hero and martyr of the early National Socialist “movement” , in: Dominik Groß / Christoph Schweikardt (eds.), The Reality of Death. On the current change in images of the dead and cultures of remembrance, Frankfurt a. M./New York 2010, pp. 261-299
  • Irmela Nagel: Fememicide and Fememord Trials in the Weimar Republic . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-412-06290-1 . (Cologne Historical Treatises Volume 36)
  • Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememicide. A milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic , Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2004. ISBN 3-936411-06-9 .

Contemporary right-wing sources

  • Friedrich Grimm: Legal opinion in the criminal case of the first lieutenant a. D. Paul Schulz from Berlin , Lehmann Verlag, Munich 1928.
  • Wilhelm Freiherr von Müffling (Hrsg.): Pioneer and champion for the new Germany . Lehmann, Munich 1933. (with photo)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Dimitrios [d. i. Schulz 'Sohn]: Weimar and the fight against the “right”. A political biography , 4 vols., Ulm 2009. ISBN 978-3-9803191-0-2 , p. 841. (Review: Michael Salewski: acquittal. FAZ, October 29, 2010. )
  2. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 48. See also: Emil Julius Gumbel : Conspirators. Contributions to the history and sociology of the German nationalist secret societies since 1918. Malik-Verlag, Vienna, 1924, pp. 34, 41. (Reprint in Verlag Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-88423-003-4 )
  3. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr ; P. 48f.
  4. ^ Statement of April 27, 1926, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 48.
  5. ^ Sauer, Reichswehr , pp. 57, 64.
  6. ↑ Die Weltbühne No. 21, 1925, p. 565.
  7. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 83.
  8. ^ Kurt Koszyk : German Press 1914–1945. History of the German press. Part III . Berlin 1972, p. 177.
  9. ↑ Burkhard Jellonnek: homosexuals under the swastika. The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1990, ISBN 3-506-77482-4 , p. 65ff.
  10. ^ Memorandum from Schulz, printed by Udo Kissenkoetter: Gregor Straßer and the NSDAP . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1978, pp. 199-204.
  11. ^ Joseph Murdock Dixon: Gregor Strasser and the Organization of the Nazi Party, 1925-1932 . 1966, p. 201.
  12. ↑ Ernst Kienast (Ed.): Handbook for the Prussian Landtag. Edition for the 4th electoral term. R. v. Decker's Verlag (G. Schenck), Berlin 1932, p. 486.
  13. ↑ Otto Gritscheder: "The Führer has sentenced you to death ..." Hitler's "Röhm Putsch" murders in court. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37651-7 , pp. 65f. Gritscheder gives as the source of his illustration: Paul Schulz: My shooting on June 30, 1934. Photomechanically reproduced edition by Paul Illg, Photo-Offsetdruck Stuttgart 1967.
  14. ^ Letter from Bormann to Bohle, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 299.
  15. ↑ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 19.
  16. ↑ Quoted in Hanover, Justiz , p. 163.
  17. ^ Lecture by Grimm on January 29, 1929, published by Alexander Griebel, Staatsnotstand und Femetötungen , Erlangen 1930, p. 7, cited by Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 282. Underlining in the original.
  18. ↑ Berliner Tageblatt No. 506 of October 27, 1926, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 181.
  19. ^ Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 283.
  20. ↑ Friedrich Felgen: Femgericht. Munich 1930, p. 33, quoted in Nagel, Fememorde , p. 332. Friedrich Felgen is the pseudonym of Goetz Otto Stoffregen , who in 1923 was the leader of a work detachment of the Black Reichswehr.
  21. ^ Carl Mertens: The Fatherland Associations. In: Weltbühne 21 (1925), No. 33 of August 18, 1925, pp. 239-258. Quoted from Sauer, Reichswehr , p. 21.
  22. ^ Emil Julius Gumbel: From Fememord to the Reich Chancellery. Lambert Schneider Verlag, Heidelberg 1962, p. 53.
  23. ^ Report of the police chief in Königsberg about a public rally on January 29, 1931, quoted in Sauer, Reichswehr , pp. 245, 325.
  24. ↑ Alexander Dimitrios [d. i. Schulz 'Sohn]: Weimar and the fight against the “right”. A political biography , 4 vols., Verlag Dr. Paul Schulz, Ulm 2009, ISBN 978-3-9803191-0-2 .
personal data
SURNAME Schulz, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, politician (NSDAP) and SA leader
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1963
Place of death Neustadt an der Weinstrasse