Gertrud Scholtz-Klink

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Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (1934)

Gertrud Scholtz-Klink (born February 9, 1902 in Adelsheim , Baden as Gertrud Emma Treusch ; † March 24, 1999 in Tübingen ) was the Reich Women's Leader in the National Socialist German Reich .

Life

Gertrud Treusch was born as the daughter of a surveyor who died in 1910. After secondary school , she completed an apprenticeship and initially worked as a journalist. In 1920 she married Eugen Klink, who became district leader of the NSDAP in Offenburg and died of a heart attack at an election rally in 1930. This marriage had four children, u. a. the later historian Ernst Klink . Two years after Eugen Klink's death, she married the doctor Günther Scholtz. The marriage lasted until 1937. After the divorce from Günther Scholtz, he married the SS-Obergruppenführer August Heißmeyer in December 1940(1897–1979), whom she met on business. Her third husband brought six children into the marriage. Their last child, from August Heißmeyer, was born in 1944.

Political career under National Socialism

V. left to right: Olga Bjoner , Country Manager d. Norwegian National Socialist women's organization, Reichsfrauenführerin Scholtz-Klink, the wife of the Japanese ambassador Ōshima , the Spanish women's leader Pilar Primo de Rivera and Marchesa Olga Medici (leader of the fascist women's organization in Italy), 1941.
Scholtz-Klink in conversation with Heinrich Himmler (August / September 1943)
Mass rally of the land service of the Hitler Youth on February 13, 1939 in the Berlin Sports Palace, delivering the Hitler salute v. l. To the right: Scholtz-Klink, Heinrich Himmler , Rudolf Heß , Baldur von Schirach and Arthur Axmann , behind Himmler Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben
Motor vehicle standard Scholtz-Klinks

According to other sources, Gertrud Klink became a member of the NSDAP in 1928 ( membership number 137.002 or 157.007). From 1930 she was head of the Nazi -oriented German Order of Women in Baden, the forerunner of the Nazi women's association . When in 1931 the National Socialist Women's Association became the party's sole women's organization, it took over its leadership in Baden and was also given the task of setting up the organization in the Hessen-Nassau Gau . On January 1, 1934, she became head of the female labor service ( Reichsarbeitsdienst ), and on February 24, 1934, she became Reichsführer of the National Socialist Women's Association and the German Women's Work . In this function she also headed the German Red Cross . Since November 1934 she has held the title of “Reichsfrauenführer”. Because of her contacts with Robert Wagner , she also became a consultant for women's issues in the Baden Ministry of the Interior. Scholtz-Klink propagated a traditional image of women and rejected feminism . Her guiding principle was "Dienst" and she named her goal in 1934 with "forming an apparatus out of the good mass of German women, an instrument that is ready at every turn".

Scholtz-Klink was appointed to numerous other offices: as an expert for the field of women's protection in the expert advisory board of the NSBO , in the expert advisory board for population and racial policy , in the upper honor and disciplinary court of the DAF , in the honorary leader ring of the Reichsbund der Kinderreich and in the Academy for German Law . In her work, she was usually the NSV -directors Erich Hilgenfeldt assumed to July 1936, her official residence was also in the building of NSA's headquarters in Berlin. Later, the administrative apparatus of the Reichsfrauenführung, which had been growing steadily over the years, moved into its own building in Derfflingerstraße.

Formally, Scholtz-Klink remained Reichsfrauenführer until the end of the war , but her importance fell from 1936 after all women had been directly subordinated to the Reichsarbeitsdienst. With the decentralization of Nazi women from 1943 onwards, it completely lost its decisive influence. As early as 1938, Scholtz-Klink complained that she had not succeeded in “personally discussing the areas of responsibility of women” with Hitler. Nevertheless, the Nazi leadership stuck to Scholtz-Klink. Martin Bormann pointed out in 1937 that, according to a guide, she was entitled to the rank of head of the office. Scholtz-Klink was also frequently featured in Nazi propaganda abroad, so that its role abroad was perceived as more important than it actually was.

For a long time, research gave her and the organizations she directs a subordinate role in the male-dominated Nazi regime. More recent studies, on the other hand, emphasize their importance for the development of the Reich women’s leadership, on which they made their mark through the targeted appointment of academically educated women. As a talented speaker, she headed an organization whose absolute leadership claim of the “Aryan women” she herself always emphasized. She was also involved in National Socialist crimes. The NFS was responsible for checking the social contacts of the Nazi forced laborers employed in private households and at times helped to select female concentration camp guards .

After the end of the war

She went into hiding with her husband in Leitzkau and received false papers under the name Maria Stuckenbrock . On the mediation of Pauline Fürstin zu Wied , a daughter of the last King of Württemberg, Scholtz-Klink registered as Maria Stuckenbrock in Bebenhausen near Tübingen , where she was denazified . Pauline zu Wied was sentenced in 1948 to a fine of 25,000 marks by the Middle Military Court in Ludwigsburg for hiding the "Scholtz-Klink-Heissmeyer" couple.

At the beginning of 1948 Scholtz-Klink was arrested by the police of the French occupation forces and sentenced in April to 18 months in prison by the French Intermediate Military Court in Reutlingen for using a false identity. In November she was classified by the tribunal in Tübingen as the main victim of the Nazi dictatorship and sentenced to a sentence of 18 months in an internment camp, which she did not serve. After protests against the verdict, a revision process took place in 1950, in which she was sentenced to two years and six months of internment and the loss of her civil rights . According to the court, no criminal act could be proven against her. In her political work she was concerned with the " domestic , social and charitable tasks of women".

After a pardon, she was released from her sentence. In her 1978 memoir, The Woman in the Third Reich , which she dedicated to the “Victims of the Nuremberg Trials”, she rated the National Socialist ideology as positive. She died in 1999 in Bebenhausen , a district of Tübingen.

Publications

literature

  • Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß : Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Munich 1997.
  • Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring, Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The brown elite II. 21 further biographical sketches. Scientific book club, Darmstadt 2nd edition 1999.
  • Christiane Berger: The "Reichsfrauenführer" Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. On the impact of a National Socialist career in the course, retrospective and present. Dissertation, University of Hamburg 2005. ( full text ).
  • Heinz Bergschicker: German Chronicle 1933–1945. A picture of the times of the fascist dictatorship. 2nd Edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1982, ill. P. 162.
  • Hilde Kammer, Elisabet Bartsch (Ed.): Lexicon National Socialism. Terms, organizations and institutions. Hamburg 1999, p. 346.
  • Massimiliano Livi: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. The Reichsfrauenführer. Political spheres of action and identity problems of women under National Socialism using the example of the “Führer of all German women” (= Political Sociology, Vol. 20). Münster u. a. 2005, ISBN 978-3-8258-8376-8 .
  • Gudrun Schwarz: A woman by his side. Wives in the SS clan community. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-930908-32-8 , p. 86.
  • Nicole Kramer:  Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud, née Treusch. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 449-451 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Gertrud Scholtz-Klink  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ronald Smelser , Enrico Syring, Rainer Zitelmann (eds.): The brown elite II. 21 further biographical sketches. Scientific book club, Darmstadt 2nd edition 1999.
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer, 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 557.
  3. ^ Quote from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , p. 557.
  4. ^ Nicole Kramer: Art. Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud, née Treusch. In: NDB 23, Berlin 2007, p. 450.
  5. ↑ Annette Kuhn: The perpetration of German women in the Nazi system. Traditions, dimensions, changes. In: Women under National Socialism. (PDF; 367 kB) In: Polis . Series of publications by the Hessian State Center for Political Education, No. 7, 1994, p. 12.
  6. ↑ Sebastian Winter: Review of: Massimiliano, Livi: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. The Reichsfrauenführer. In: H-Soz-u-Kult , March 9, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Scholtz-Klink, Gertrud
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Reichsfrauenführer in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH February 9, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Adelsheim (Baden)
DATE OF DEATH March 24, 1999
Place of death Tübingen