Richard Kunze

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Richard Kunze

Richard Kunze , also known as stick-Kunze , (* 5. February 1872 in Sagan ; † May 1945 ) was a German teacher , writer and nationalist - Nazi politician.

Life

After attending the city and principality school as well as the preparatory institute and the Sagan seminar, Kunze initially worked as a primary school teacher. After his secondary school teacher examination, he worked at the boys' middle school in Schöneberg , meanwhile studying English, French, philosophy and economics at the Berlin University . From 1907 to 1909 he was a city ​​councilor in Schöneberg. In 1909 he left school and from then on was mainly active in politics and journalism.

During the First World War Kunze ran a prisoner of war camp in Gardelegen . In 1918, Kunze was briefly dismissed from army service at the Ministry of War at the instigation of Kuno von Westarp . In the Kingdom of Saxony he acted as general secretary of the German Conservative Party and was employed as an editor for their magazine Vaterland , where he made a name for himself with anti-Semitic propaganda.

During the election campaign of the German National People's Party (DNVP) for the election to the German National Assembly in January 1919, Kunze was appointed Secretary General of the DNVP and head of the lecturing department of the party executive committee by Oskar Hergt . At the same time, Kunze was head of the advertising department of the DNVP's font sales office, but was dismissed there on April 1st of that year. In the run-up to the DNVP party convention on July 12th and 13th, Kunze had his own publishing house distribute advertising slips in which he advertised a rubber stick, called "Heda", which was used to "defend against physical attacks caused by brutality in the all over the world disreputable Jews ”and should only be given to“ nationally minded ”people. From then on, Kunze was widely known as "Knüppel-Kunze". Also in 1919, Kunze brought out John Retcliffe's novel Biarritz under the title The Secret of the Jewish World Conspiracy and issued what was described in it as a factual report.

In 1919 Kunze was again a city councilor in Schöneberg and in the same year founded the Deutsche Wochenblatt (subtitle: "Independent newspaper for the enslaved people"), which has appeared in daily newspaper format since 1924 as Die Neue Zeitung . From 1920 he also published the German Witzblatt ; all of these publications were radically anti-Semitic. When young right-wing extremists sold the Deutsches Wochenblatt on Berlin's Kurfürstendamm in August 1919, there were violent confrontations and the use of firearms; Kunze was considered to be the initiator of the anti-Semitic riots. On February 19 and 21, 1920, Kunze gave speeches on the subject of " State Bankruptcy " in Munich at events organized by the German National Guard and Defense Association with a total of around 5,000 participants. In the spring of 1920, Kunze, together with Arnold Ruge and Reinhold Wulle, founded the “Deutschvölkischer Arbeitsring Berlin”, a company that competed with the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, but left in the first half of the year due to differences of opinion. Kunze, Wulle and Ruge accused the Schutz- und Trutzbund of being ruled by Freemasons .

On February 23, 1921, Kunze founded the German Social Party (DtSP). In the elections for the Berlin city council in October 1921, the DtSP achieved 0.7%; the party's only mandate was taken up by Kunze, who was also a district councilor in Schöneberg. Also in 1921, Kunze opened a sausage and meat shop on Potsdamer Platz , where subscribers to his newspaper Deutsches Wochenblatt could buy at discounted prices. The possibility to buy sausage at reduced prices also existed in the DtSP party office. These business practices were picked up by the Berliner Tageblatt , which saw contradictions with the special protection of small traders represented by Kunze. According to the Weltbühne magazine , Kunze was involved in pushing food during the war as head of the prison camp. At the end of the war, Kunze tried to return to Berlin with a furniture van. However, the vehicle was so loaded with food that it collapsed on the way, according to the world stage . In the opinion of the Weltbühne, Kunze was "one of the best speakers there are in Germany today":

“There is no doubt that Kunze understands the psychology of the Philistines like hardly anyone in this country. He knows exactly how to build up a period, the end of which is already half drowned in the storm of applause that is beginning. [...] His [...] political program is, if one takes into account the state of mind of his supporters, for whom it was written, astonishingly cleverly put together [...] He even has no qualms about making pacts with the communists and demanding that the workers share the profits [ ...] The secret is that Kunze juggles with stupidity and drives much better than his colleagues from the other parties, who always think they are facing an audience of scholars ”.

The Berliner Tageblatt published on April 26, 1922 a correspondence between a confidant Kunze and industrialists the Berlin office Hugo Stinnes , was asked in the financial support Kunze. The office of Stinnes rejected this because of Kunze's "way of fighting", but pointed out that there was agreement in terms of content on many points. Kunze's goal was defined by his confidante as “the separation of our well-meaning workers from their Jewish leaders”. Kunze, who saw himself as a Berlin workers' leader, had attacked Stinnes publicly on several occasions.

Kunze mobilized his supporters to rallies accompanied by violence against those who were politically unpopular, but stayed in the background when violent acts were committed. In July 1922, the Reich Commissioner for Public Order Supervision received confidential information “that a group within the circle around the well-known Knüppel-Kunze threatened danger, which was also of importance to the Reich Chancellor. It is mainly about young people who are close to the student associations [...] ”. It was ruled out that Kunze himself could participate in attacks on leading representatives of the Weimar Republic : "[...] Kunze himself, as I am told, is a vain man who is very concerned about his personal security and anything but a man of action" . The Silesian SPD member of the state parliament Otto Buchwitz characterized Kunze as a political highwayman and as an unscrupulous blackmailer.

In the Reichstag election in May 1924 , Kunze was able to move into the Reichstag for constituency 3 (Potsdam II) , where he represented his party in the second electoral period until December 1924. During this time the DtSP began to decline: In September 1924, the man who led after Kunze resigned from the Berlin DtSP on the charge that Kunze only used the party for private purposes to make money. Election defeats and mass emigration of DtSP members to the German National Freedom Movement and to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) reduced the DtSP to a splinter group. In May 1929 Kunze dissolved the DtSP and joined the NSDAP himself ( membership number 240.001). The Berlin NSDAP Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels commented on this in his newspaper The Attack under the heading: "Party owner Kunze's end". After the dissolution of the party, Kunze worked, among other things, as the host of a restaurant on Landsberger Strasse in the Berlin district of Friedrichshain. This bar was used by Horst Wessel's SA storm as a " storm bar".

From 1930 onwards, Kunze appeared as an imperial speaker for the NSDAP . He was then from 1932 to 1933 for the NSDAP member in the Prussian state parliament . From November 1933 to 1945 he again had a mandate in the then meaningless Reichstag . On Kunze's 70th birthday, the National Socialist press published numerous commendations in which Kunze's role as a pioneer in the propagation of anti-Semitic ideas was highlighted. On the same day, with reference to his work as a writer and member of parliament, Kunze was awarded the NSDAP's golden party badge .

After the liberation of Berlin in May 1945 , Kunze was arrested and has since been considered missing. Wilhelm Heinz Schröder's database BIORAB -Online gives this month as the date of death.

Kunze's publications In the new Germany! (1929) and The Unbelievable Guilt of the Novemberlings and Their Followers (1931) were placed on the list of literature to be sorted out in the Soviet occupation zone , followed by Hau-Ruck in the German Democratic Republic ! The Siegfried Line stands. (1939).

Fonts

  • The guilty. A guide for everyone who doesn't want to stop being Prussian and German . German National Font Distribution Office Berlin 1919.
  • The fate of our captive brothers. A wake-up call to the German conscience . German National Font Distribution Office Berlin 1919.
  • The Teutons in ancient literature. A collection of the most important passages in the text . Freytag, Leipzig and Tempsky, Vienna 1920
    • Vol. 1: Roman literature
    • Vol. 2: Greek literature
  • In the new Germany! A picture book for adults . Self-published, Berlin 1929.
  • The immense guilt of the Novemberlings and their followers . Self-published, Berlin 1931.
  • The way to salvation . Self-published, Berlin 1932.
  • Whack! The Siegfried Line stands. A whimsical book by the men with a shovel and pick . Published on behalf of the German Labor Front, Gauwaltung Saarpfalz. Saardeutsche Verlagsanstalt, Saarbrücken 1939.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b life data based on the biography of Richard Kunze . In: Heinrich Best and Wilhelm H. Schröder : Database of Members of the National Assembly and the German Reichstag 1919–1933 (Biorab – Weimar)
  2. ↑ Jan Striesow: The German National People's Party and the Völkisch Radicals 1918–1922 . Volume 1. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt / Main 1981, p. 15.
  3. ↑ Jan Striesow: The German National People's Party and the Völkisch Radicals 1918–1922 . Volume 2. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt / Main 1981, p. 503.
  4. ^ Walter Mohrmann: Anti-Semitism: Ideology and history in the German Empire and in the Weimar Republic . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1972, p. 111.
  5. ↑ Striesow 1981, Volume 1, p. 48.
  6. ↑ a b Striesow 1981, Volume 1, p. 128.
  7. ↑ See also Mohrmann 1972, p. 156f.
  8. ↑ Mohrmann 1972, p. 124f.
  9. ^ Bernd Kruppa: Right-wing radicalism in Berlin 1918–1928. Overall-Verlag, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-925961-00-3 , pp. 101ff.
  10. ↑ Uwe Lohalm: Völkischer Radikalismus: The history of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutz-Bund. 1919-1923 . Leibniz-Verlag, Hamburg 1970, p. 294. ISBN 3-87473-000-X .
  11. ↑ Lohalm 1970, p. 258.
  12. ^ Kruppa: Rechtsradikalismus , p. 142.
  13. ^ Martin Schuster: The SA in the National Socialist "seizure of power" in Berlin and Brandenburg 1926-1934. Technical University of Berlin 2005, pp. 18-20.
  14. ↑ Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p. 223.
  15. ↑ Kruppa: Rechtsradikalismus , p. 151f.
  16. ↑ Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 152, with reference to: Johannes Fischart: "New Politicians Heads XIV: Richard Kunze", in: Die Weltbühne , No. 30 / II (July 24, 1924), pp. 127-131.
  17. ↑ Heinz Pollack: "Knüppel-Kunze.", In: Die Weltbühne , No. 43 / II (October 26, 1922), pp. 440–442; quoted in Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , p. 150.
  18. ↑ In the Berliner Tageblatt letter (no. 195, 26 April 1922) published, quoted in Kruppa, right-wing radicalism , p.192.
  19. ^ Correspondence of the Reich Commissioner for the Monitoring of Public Order, quoted in Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , pp. 194f. See also ibid, p. 143.
  20. ↑ Manfred Weißbecker: "German Social Party 1921–1928", in: Dieter Fricke (Ed.): Lexicon for the history of parties. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and associations in Germany (1789–1945). Volume 2, Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1984, p. 539, with reference to: Otto Buchwitz: 50 years of functionary of the German labor movement. Berlin 1949, p. 109f.
  21. ↑ a b c Kruppa, Rechtsradikalismus , pp. 300, 327ff, 362.
  22. ↑ Schuster 2005, p. 43.
  23. ^ A b Klaus D. Patzwall: The golden party badge and its honorary awards 1934–1944. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , pp. 55, 76.
  24. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German Constitutional History since 1789. Volume 6, The Weimar Imperial Constitution . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, p. 282.
  25. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-k.html
  26. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1953-nslit-k.html
personal data
SURNAME Kunze, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stick Kunze
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, publicist and politician (NSDAP), MdR, MdL
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Sagan
DATE OF DEATH May 1945