Knight to the fiery cross

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The Knights of the Fiery Cross , also Order of the Knights of the Fiery Cross , Order of the Knights of the Fiery Cross , was a secret organization during the Weimar Republic , which was modeled on the US Ku Klux Klan .

history

Almost everything that is known today about the Knights of the Fiery Cross comes from an investigation by the Berlin Criminal Police in the summer of 1925, the results of which were announced at a press conference on September 10, 1925 . The discovery of the secret organization was a by-product of two unrelated investigations, a missing person case and a possible femicide .

The organization was then founded on February 21, 1925 in Berlin by the German-American Otto Strohschein, his son Gotthard (1895–1982) and the American student Donald B. Gray. Otto Strohschein, who emigrated to the USA in 1893, had returned to Berlin in 1921. In the United States he had worked for a Protestant congregation as an auxiliary school teacher, had been ordained in 1914 and then pastor of a German-speaking congregation of the Congregational Church in Herington, Kansas . During the First World War , he came into the FBI's field of vision because of some anti-German statements . He must have made contacts with the Ku Klux Klan, but stated that he had never been a member. In 1924/25 he appeared as a speaker for the German Social Party . His motivation for founding the secret society is unclear, it is quite possible "that he was more of a swindler than a devoted champion for the national cause". In any case, he tried to spread something similar to the Klan in the German Reich. In doing so, he was guided by the structures, forms and titles of the original organization. Some titles were translated into German and Germanic mythology was included, so the “Grand Wizard” became the “Wodan” and the executive committee was called “ Asgard ”. The Senate was then referred to as "Valhalla". The secretary was called "Heimdahl". The symbol of the burning cross, which was already used in the name, was adopted. The symbol of a skull and the white robes that were characteristic of the clan were also introduced.

The knights held meetings and imitated some rituals. In § 1 of the statutes, the purpose of the order was defined as follows: "The order of the Knight of the Fiery Cross has the purpose of uniting all German men of Germanic origin in the common pursuit of German unity." In item 11 of the statute it was said that the members of the order are not just hear words, but finally want to see action. Paragraph 13 said: “Jews must not be tolerated in our fatherland.” The members were recruited from right-wing combat organizations and parties, especially the front line . When exposed, a list of 350 members was found. A photo allegedly also found during the investigation is said to show a recording ritual. However, it was soon considered to have been provided by police officers with found utensils.

As early as June 1925, father and son Strohschein and Don Gray were expelled from the secret society they had founded themselves. It was about financial irregularities and the fact that a ethnic group should not be led by foreigners .

The signal for this first sound grouping in Germany, which still had a branch in Breslau with around six members, was a two-year-old political murder case. Erich Pannier, a member of the Black Reichswehr, was killed in Döberitz in Brandenburg in June 1923 . It was most likely a femicide of a comrade, as Pannier is said to have made himself suspicious. When the police arrested a 20-year-old suspect named Wilhelm Weckerle on September 7, 1925, they found a letterhead with the initials "RFK" and a membership card on him. The suspect was the organization's "Heimdahl". A month earlier, police officers had found a letter from the same "Heimdahl" on a missing person report. This was addressed to Fritz Siebert, a member of the Frontbanns and the Sturmabteilung of the NSDAP , who was reported missing by his father.

The police got on the trail of the clan offshoot. On September 9, 1925, she arrested 18 alleged clan members and seized various clan utensils, the membership list and a few cutting and stabbing weapons. The arrested members denied that the clan was violent and portrayed it as an apolitical group that primarily had sociable beer festivals in mind. Strohschein denied having been influenced by the American clan and the American clan also kept their distance.

19 of the members of the Knights of the Fiery Cross were charged under Section 128 of the Reich Criminal Code . In 1926 the proceedings were discontinued due to a general amnesty by Paul von Hindenburg . Gotthard Strohschein, who also had a US passport, was expelled and Don Gray fled to the United States before the investigation. The remaining organization remained hidden and was dissolved around 1930.

In the heated political situation of 1925, the exposure of the order attracted a great deal of public attention, especially since a connection with the Fememorden, whose backers such as Erich Klapproth and the putschist was established by Küstrin Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker , which had not been verified by a court . The assessment of the group fluctuates. It was certainly not as strong and dangerous as portrayed in the press conference and the resulting articles; on the other hand, it was not an order of fools that one could not take seriously, as the German right portrayed it.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Congregational Year-book 39 (1916), p. 158
  2. ↑ Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation 1908-1922, case # 8000-10588, NARA M1085, accessed from fold3.com on July 29, 2019
  3. ↑ Frankel (lit.), p. 66. That was quite believable, because Strohschein did not meet the requirement of being born in the USA.
  4. ^ Frankel (lit.), p. 65
  5. ↑ Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded men. The Ku Klux Klan in Germany . Munich: DTV. ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 . P. 25f.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Das Jüdische Echo 12 (1925), p. 725
  7. ↑ Bernhard Sauer : Black Reichswehr and Fememorde: a milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic. (= Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin - Documents, Texts, Materials - Vol. 50). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 (Zugl .: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2003), p. 81f; Cover picture at Friedrich Felgen : Femgericht. Munich 1930
  8. ↑ Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded men. The Ku Klux Klan in Germany . Munich: DTV. ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 . P. 24f.
  9. ↑ Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded men. The Ku Klux Klan in Germany . Munich: DTV. ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 . Pp. 17-20.
  10. ↑ Participation in a union whose existence, constitution or purpose is to be kept secret from the state government, or in which obedience to unknown superiors or unconditional obedience to known superiors is promised, is for members with prison for up to six months to the To punish founders and heads of association with prison from one month to one year.
  11. ^ Richard E. Frankel: Klansmen in the Fatherland: A Transnational Episode in the History of Weimar Germany's Right-Wing Political Culture. In: Journal for the Study of Radicalism 7 (2013), pp. 61–78 doi : 10.14321 / jstudradi.7.1.0061 p. 66 ( JSTOR )
  12. ↑ Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded men. The Ku Klux Klan in Germany . Munich: DTV. ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 . P. 28f.
  13. ↑ See the press articles, e.g. B. The Knights of the Fiery Cross , in: Vorwärts , No. 428 of September 10, 1925; Ku Klux Klan in Berlin , in: Vossische Zeitung , No. 217 of September 10, 1925; Lübecker Volksbote with the unoccupied top sentence: "The police assume that the majority of the numerous feminine murders of recent years can be traced back to the knights of the fiery cross."
  14. ↑ See the weighing judgment in Frankel (Lit.), p. 74