Richard Schapke

Richard Hermann Schapke (born June 16, 1897 in Berlin ; † 1940 ) was a German national revolutionary , association functionary and publicist .

Career

Richard Schapke was the second child of Julius Hermann Schapke (born September 7, 1854) and his wife Marie Ida nee. Castner (born February 20, 1865) was born on June 16, 1897 in Berlin-Charlottenburg . There he spent his youth with two sisters.

After the end of the First World War , Schapke was an enthusiastic supporter of the Wandervogel movement , in which he was a leader in northwest Germany from 1920. For a short time he advocated the admission of girls within the Wandervogel movement, but in 1922 he refrained from this project. He was co-author of the Bremen Guidelines and published the Young Political Circulars in 1928/29 . Most recently he was the federal leader of the Wandervogel.

Schapke became a member of the Old Socialist Party (ASP). At this time Schapke began working with many like-minded people who would later found the Black Front . When the ASP failed in its attempt to establish itself as a serious political force and became part of the SPD again, Schapke joined the NSDAP together with Eugen Mossakowsky . As a member of the NSDAP, Schapke became an employee of Kampfverlag , the journalistic mouthpiece of the Strasser brothers . There Schapke in 1930 became the editor of the magazine “Der Nationale Sozialist”. He was also involved as a Hitler Youth leader .

After numerous disputes between the "Left Wing" of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler , Schapke was expelled from the NSDAP in 1930 by the Supreme Court of the NSDAP and signed Otto Strasser's appeal "The socialists are leaving the NSDAP". Together with Otto Strasser , Eugen Mossakowsky , Bruno Ernst Buchrucker and Herbert Blank , Schapke became a co-founder of the opposition group Combat Group of Revolutionary National Socialists (KGRNS) in July 1930 , which later became the small national Bolshevik party Black Front. In this organization he was also a youth leader. In 1932 and 1933, Schapke published two works and was editor of the Landvolkbriefe . Due to his activities in the fight against Hitler, Schapke was accused of high treason immediately after the National Socialist seizure of power and was imprisoned in KL Oranienburg together with Eugen Mossakowsky in the spring of 1933 . After he was released from the concentration camp in the summer of 1933, he did illegal work in Berlin.

In the summer of 1934 Schapke emigrated to Copenhagen . From there he acted for a few years as the head of the Black Front's foreign organization for Scandinavia, and from 1936, together with Otto Buchwitz, published the Volkssozialistische Blätter . In May 1938, he became Otto Strasser's deputy in the leadership of the Black Front's foreign organization. On August 16, 1938, his German citizenship was revoked . After the beginning of the Second World War , Schapke was intended to represent Strasser for Great Britain. After the German occupation of the country, he had to flee Denmark in 1940 . Schapke died in the same year during the crossing to Sweden , the boat was sunk by the Swedish coastal artillery.

Works

• The black front. About the goals and tasks and the struggle of the German Revolution. Lindner, Leipzig 1932. ISBN 3-922119-27-1
• Peasant uprising. Lindner, Leipzig 1933. ISBN 978-3-89846-704-9

literature

• Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life. Saur, Munich et al. 1980, ISBN 3-598-10087-6 , p. 640.
• Joseph Nyomarkay: Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party , University of Minnesota Press 1967.

Web links

• Mathias Brodkorb : With the “German Revolution” against Hitler? To Richard Schapke's book Die Schwarze Front , terminus right