Robert Ley

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Robert Ley in 1933

Robert Ley (born February 15, 1890 in Niederbreidenbach , Rhine Province ; † October 25, 1945 in Nuremberg ) was one of the leading politicians during the Nazi era as part of his positions as Reichsleiter of the NSDAP and head of the German Labor Front .

The Ley-Haus , the Ley-Siedlung type of settlement and the passenger ship Robert Ley were named after him. He was among the 24 in the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal accused and committed before the trial suicide .

Life

Ley grew up as the son of the farmer Friedrich Ley and his wife Emilie (née Wald) in the Oberbergisches Land east of Cologne as the seventh of eleven children. At the age of six he was shaken by a formative experience: his father committed an insurance fraud by setting fire to his own farm . The sentencing of his father to several years in prison is said to have led to a lifelong fear of social decline and, on the other hand, to unlimited ambition and extreme self-expression.

After graduating from high school in 1910, Ley enrolled in natural sciences at the universities of Jena (5 semesters) and Bonn (2 semesters) and then moved to the Wilhelms University of Münster . In Jena he became a member of the St. Pauli Jena choir . By the beginning of the First World War in 1914, he succeeded in advancing his studies in food chemistry in Münster before he graduated (state examination). He then took part in the First World War as a volunteer - as an artilleryman he was used in the battles of Verdun and on the Somme .

Ley was shot down as an aerial observer in Fliegerabteilung 202 (artillery) and on July 29, 1917, he was taken prisoner by the French , from which he returned to Germany in 1920. He suffered permanent damage from a broken leg and a serious brain injury. His alcohol addiction and tendency to stutter could be a result of his war injuries. Repeated surgical operations were required for his recovery.

After returning to the University of Münster and successfully completing his doctorate in chemistry through contributions to the knowledge of mixed glycerides , Ley got a lucrative job at Bayer in Leverkusen in 1920 .

Ley was married twice, from 1921 to the divorce in 1938 with Elisabeth Schmidt and from 1938 to her suicide in 1942 with the singer Inga Spilcker . This marriage resulted in three children: his daughter Lore Ley (born 1938; based on Loreley ), his son Wolf (born 1940; based on Hitler's headquarters Wolfsschlucht 1 / Wolfsschanze ) and daughter Gloria (born 1941). Renate Wald (1922-2004) came from her first marriage . With the dancer Madeleine Farr (Wanderer) (1926-2007) he had their son Rolf-Robert (born 1944).

Party career

from left to right: Philipp Bouhler , his adjutant Karl Freiherr Michel von Tüßling , Robert Ley with his wife Inga; Munich, July 1939

The NSDAP joined Ley in 1923 when, and Adolf Hitler appointed him in June 1925 to Gauleiter of Rhineland-South .

Due to his alcohol addiction and anti-Semitic attacks on a banker, he lost his job in 1928 at the Bayer branch of IG Farben . In the same year he was appointed full-time organizational leader of the NSDAP in the Cologne-Aachen district , and he became a member of the Prussian state parliament . During these years Ley developed into a fanatical speaker and agitator.

He was involved in street battles and other tumults. He used the party newspaper Westdeutscher Beobachter for hateful attacks against Jewish department stores and against “Jewish financial power”. Ley specialized in defamatory articles, especially those directed against Jews. In 1930 he founded the Nationalblatt in Koblenz , a propaganda newspaper of the NSDAP in the Gau Moselland. In a speech in Karlsruhe in May 1942, he declared that it was not enough to isolate the Jewish "enemy of humanity". In addition, he said in a speech on June 2, 1942 at the Siemens works in Berlin: “Judah will and must fall. Judah will and must be destroyed. That is our holy belief. ”In his speeches, Ley mostly emphasized that the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe was a declared goal of National Socialism.

Ley was notoriously inclined - regardless of the topic - to talk himself into a blind rage and to lose all reference to reality, for example by attesting Hitler's literal omniscience or announcing the imminent conquest of the moon and all planets.

At the head of the Nazi regime

After Gregor Strasser's resignation on December 8, 1932, Ley was appointed Reich Organizational Leader (ROL) of the NSDAP by Hitler in December 1932. However, Ley did not reach the level of power of his predecessor. On April 21, 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed Rudolf Hess as his deputy and gave him the power to make decisions on his behalf “on all questions of the party leadership”. Supported by his staff leader Martin Bormann , Hess managed to win the claim to leadership within the party that Ley wanted to claim for himself as head of the "Political Organization of the NSDAP". In November 1934, Hitler restricted the tasks of the head of the Reich organization to "establishing, expanding and monitoring the internal organization [as well as] training and personnel statistics for the party organization". The central management body of the NSDAP, on the other hand, was the staff of the deputy leader (renamed “Party Chancellery” in 1941), which was to be involved in all major decisions in the party and state apparatus.

In 1933 Ley was one of the founding members of the National Socialist Academy for German Law Hans Franks .

He achieved his goal as “educator” and “supervisor” of the party by taking over its organization, training and personnel policy. The " NS-Ordensburgen " and the organization of the Nuremberg Party Rallies were also subordinate to him. During the Second World War , he was also given oversight of the state housing program.

In 1940, referring to his services, he asked Hitler for a grant ; it was granted to him in the amount of 1 million Reichsmarks.

Organizer of the German Labor Front

Tullio Cianetti , Robert Ley, 1936
Advertisement for a colorful evening of the Nazi community "Strength through Joy" in the Gau Kurhessen

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he became head of the Action Committee for the Protection of German Labor , whose task was the dissolution and takeover of the unions. A little later, the action committee was transferred to the German Labor Front (DAF), whose head Robert Ley was until 1945.

After the campaign against the trade unions on May 2, 1933 and their break-up, the DAF was founded in Berlin on May 10, 1933. In the first stage of development until the end of 1933, the newly formed general associations of German workers and German salaried employees as well as the large and small labor convention still contained concessions to the deeply rooted trade union idea. Beginning on November 27, 1933, when the central office of the DAF was founded with the Reichsbetriebsgemeinschaften, the district administrations of the DAF with the Gaubetriebsgemeinschaften and Betriebsgemeinschaften, Ley implemented the principle of leadership and allegiance to the fullest.

In this way, Ley succeeded in spreading the National Socialist ideology in the DAF and militarizing the factories to an increasing extent through company roll calls and so-called work groups. The DAF joined the NSDAP as an association. Their character, however, has been obscured by excessive social demagogy. According to the self-image of the DAF, the image of the worker should correspond to an “organization of all working Germans of the forehead and the fist”, with the claim to have made the worker “an equal and respected member of the nation”. This image, which was linked to the mentality of the front soldier in the trenches of the First World War , was intended to promote combat behavior in the factories, which exactly corresponded to the social Darwinist model of people in the NSDAP: people as fighters against their enemies.

The membership of the DAF was 5,320,000 in July 1933, 16,000,000 in June 1934 and 25,000,000 in December 1942, making it the largest mass organization in the Nazi state . She carried out the harmonization of the work and leisure world of the Germans in the sense of National Socialism (among other things through the organization of social insurance and the Nazi community " Kraft durch Freude ", which became the largest tour operator in the German Empire in the 1930s).

According to Ley's ideas, party schools (" NS-Ordensburg ") were built for young adults until 1935 . a. the Ordensburg Sonthofen in the Allgäu and the Ordensburg Vogelsang in the Eifel. From 1937, in cooperation with the “Reichsjugendführer” Baldur von Schirach, the party-owned Adolf Hitler schools for boys from the age of 12 were added.

Ley giving a speech on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone for the Charlottenburg-Nord housing estate in Berlin on August 1, 1939. Behind them, from left to right, Albert Speer and Julius Lippert .

Ley wanted to make the "largest city between Cologne and Kassel" out of Waldbröl , which was located near his home town and had a population of less than 10,000 at the time. Based on the model of the Volkswagen factory near Fallersleben , a “people's tractor factory” with a motorway connection and an underground train was to be built. In addition, it was planned to expand the two branch lines Aggertalbahn and Wiehltalbahn to double-track main lines .

Ley's service villa became the Villa Leonhart in Königswinter, which was converted for him in 1938 .

Decline

From 1939 onwards, Ley increasingly lost his formerly considerable influence to the Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition Fritz Todt and later his successor Albert Speer . Also Fritz Sauckel as Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment he did dispute important functions. He tried to compensate for his loss of authority by crude anti-Semitic publicity. His alcohol addiction, which has also become known to the public (he often drove a fully drunk car), earned him the nicknames "Reichstrunkenbold" and "Immerblau" - behind the scenes. In 1939 he was made an honorary senator of the TH Karlsruhe .

Only in the area of ​​housing was Ley, who was appointed " Reich Commissioner for Social Housing " by Adolf Hitler on November 15, 1940 , a "Supreme Reich Authority " from then on, and in the spring of 1942, with further expanded powers, was appointed "Reich Housing Commissioner " to maintain its leading position. Against the resistance of Reich Labor Minister Franz Seldte and Martin Bormann (head of the party chancellery of the NSDAP ) and with strategic support from Albert Speer, he was commissioned to set up the German Housing Fund , which was to provide temporary accommodation to the victims of the air warfare from autumn 1943.

Robert Ley awarded war model companies, March 1944

On April 29, 1945, he was confirmed in Hitler's political will as head of the DAF and named as Reich Minister. A few days later, on May 16, 1945, he was arrested by soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division in a hut near Berchtesgaden . He was there under the name of Dr. Ernst Distelmeyer hid with false papers, but could be identified beyond doubt when compared with the NSDAP Reich Treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz . He was first held in Salzburg and then interned in Camp Ashcan in Bad Mondorf , Luxembourg, along with other members of the NSDAP hierarchy and armed forces. He was indicted against the major war criminals in the Nuremberg Trial . Ley evaded a foreseeable conviction before the International Military Tribunal in the Nuremberg Cell Prison by suicide : after he had previously torn his underwear under his sheet unnoticed, he strangled himself with a rope made from strips of fabric, sitting in his cell on the toilet.

literature

Web links

Commons : Robert Ley  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Renate Wald: My father Robert Ley . Nümbrecht 2004, p. 12 .
  2. ^ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Directory of the members of the Association of Alter Sängerschafter in Weimar e. V. Leipzig 1929, p. 10.
  3. ↑ Memorial Koblenz on Memorial Koblenz , accessed on September 15 of 2019.
  4. ↑ a b c Ronald Smelser: “Robert Ley. Hitler's husband on the “labor front”. A biography. "
  5. ^ History of the Tenhumberg family at http://www.tenhumbergreinhard.de , accessed on September 15, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Visit to Vogelsang Castle: Beautiful location, bad spirit" In: Märkische Allgemeine from August 11, 2017, accessed on September 15, 2019.
  7. ^ "The bad wolf and the beetle" In: FAZ of August 27, 2001, accessed on September 15, 2019.
  8. ↑ Hans Horn: An important contemporary witness report. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . July 3, 2004, accessed October 2, 2016.
  9. ^ Susanne Eckelmann: Robert Ley. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  10. ↑ Peter Longerich: Hitler's deputy - leadership of the party and control of the state apparatus by the Hess staff and the party chancellery Bormann . Munich u. a., 1992, ISBN 3-598-11081-2 , p. 8.
  11. ↑ Peter Longerich: Hitler's Deputy ... , p. 16.
  12. ^ Yearbook of the Academy for German Law, 1st year 1933/34. Edited by Hans Frank. (Munich, Berlin, Leipzig: Schweitzer Verlag), p. 255.
  13. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites . Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  14. ↑ Klaus-Peter Hoepke (Ed.): History of the Fridericiana. Stages in the history of the University of Karlsruhe (TH) from its founding in 1825 to the year 2000. Universitätsverlag Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe 2007, ISBN 978-3-86644-138-5 , p. 126.
  15. ↑ Ronald Smelser: Robert Ley. Hitler's husband on the “labor front”. A biography. Schöningh, Paderborn 1989, ISBN 3-506-77481-6 , p. 274.
  16. ↑ Werner-Meier, Draeger (explanation with the help of Mußfeld): The non-profit status in housing. Non-profit Housing Act of February 29, 1940 together with implementing regulations and other relevant regulations . 2nd Edition. Carl Heymann, Berlin 1941, Part VI, pp. 290–295: Decree on the preparation of German housing construction after the war of November 15, 1940, item I (appointment of the Reich Commissioner for Social Housing, who reports directly to the Führer, to carry out the task).
  17. ↑ Joe Heydecker et al. Johannes Leeb: The Nuremberg Trial Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2015, p. 60 f.
personal data
SURNAME Ley, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, head of the German Labor Front in the time of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Niederbreidenbach , Rhine Province
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1945
Place of death Nuremberg