Robert Wagner (Gauleiter)

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Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner (* October 13, 1895 as Robert Heinrich Backfisch in Lindach near Eberbach am Neckar; † August 14, 1946 in Fort Ney north of Strasbourg ) was a German politician (NSDAP), Member of the Reich, Reichsstatthalter in Baden and Gauleiter. He took part in the Hitler putsch in 1923 and was then instrumental in building up the NSDAP in Baden . After the takeover of the Nazis he was Baden Reich Governor and Gauleiter , after the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in France in 1940 also also head of the civil administration in occupied Alsace . He tried to reintegrate Alsace into the German Empire . He was jointly responsible for the mass deportation of Jews from Alsace, Lorraine , Baden and the Palatinate , known as the Wagner-Bürckel Action . In 1946 he was sentenced to death by a French military tribunal and executed .

origin

Wagner was the second of five children of farmer Peter Backfisch and his wife Katharina, nee Wagner. He attended elementary school and entered the Heidelberg Preparatory Institute in 1910 . After a three-year course, he started a three-year course at the Heidelberg teachers' seminar .

First World War

With the outbreak of World War I , Wagner broke off his teacher training and volunteered . He remained without a completed vocational training all his life. Wagner fought a. a. in the 2nd Baden Grenadier Regiment "Kaiser Wilhelm I." No. 110 in Flanders , in the Battle of Verdun , the Battle of the Somme , the Loretto Battle and in Champagne and thus experienced some of the bloodiest battles on the Western Front . In 1916 he had reached the rank of lieutenant in the reserve and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st class in November 1917 . In addition, he had been awarded the Wound Badge in Black and the Knight's Cross 2nd Class of the Order of the Zähringer Lions with Swords. He felt the surrender as a " stab in the back" through the wavering home front. At least from his later point of view, this experience reinforced his hatred of “ November criminals ”, leftists and deserters .

Weimar Republic

Wagner was released from the army on December 23, 1918 after demobilization and in February 1919 he joined the 2nd Baden Volunteer Battalion, with which he was involved in the suppression of revolutionary unrest in Mannheim and Karlsruhe . In August 1919 he was sworn in again as a lieutenant in the Provisional Reichswehr and initially used in the Reichswehr-Schützen-Regiment 113 in Karlsruhe. With the formation of the actual Reichswehr , he was transferred to the 14th Infantry Regiment in Constance . There he took his mother's maiden name in 1921. The reasons for the name change from Backfisch to Wagner are probably teasing in the officers' mess .

In September 1923 he was sent to the Infantry School in Munich , which was then the most important officer training facility in Germany. In Munich Wagner met Hitler and Ludendorff , whom he soon adored. A personal friendship connected him with Ludendorff's stepson Heinz Pernet , who persuaded him to take part in the Hitler putsch in November 1923.

Hitler putsch

Wagner (far right) next to the other defendants in the Hitler trial (1924)

In the Hitler putsch of November 9, 1923, Wagner took part as the leader of the infantry school teams, which saw themselves as Ludendorff's personal assault detachment. After the failure of the coup, Wagner was arrested and arrested in Landsberg with others who had been arrested . At the trial from February 26, 1924 he brought his participation in the coup on April 1, 1924, sentenced to one year and three months imprisonment one, but he did not settle, because the net of custody remaining two months and three weeks remaining prison sentence was suspended for four years . In July 1924 another criminal case followed because of an insult against Otto von Lossow which Wagner had pronounced during the putsch process .

From that time on Wagner had excellent relations with Hitler and Goebbels . Hitler let him do it later and supported him in disputes with central government bodies in accordance with his general principle of rule of competing centers of power. For his “merits” in 1923, Wagner received the NSDAP's highest medal of honor as an “ old fighter ” in 1934 , the so-called blood order with the award number 83 .

Development of the NSDAP in Baden

Even after his discharge from the Reichswehr in May 1924, Wagner was no longer able to gain a foothold in the bourgeois world of work. Rather, he founded the Baden Gau of the NSDAP in 1925 and worked intensively as an organizer and party speaker.

The temporarily as a substitute organization for the banned SA created, according to Albert Leo Schlageter named Schlageterbund in which he had collected the remains of the banned NSDAP, he led back into the SA. He ensured that Baden received its own Gau newspaper with the Führer , which appeared for the first time on November 5, 1927 , which was to develop into the central Nazi propaganda organ in Baden. He appointed Franz Moraller as editor .

In 1928 Wagner became Gauleiter of the National Socialist Society for German Culture .

In 1931 Wagner appointed the Lahr businessman, self-taught mechanical engineer and inventor of the Wankel engine Felix Wankel as Gauleiter of the Hitler Youth in Baden.

Wagner as a parliamentarian

From 1927 onwards, the NSDAP also achieved greater success in Baden, in the respective Reichstag elections even in comparison with the other countries. In 1929 she received 7% of the vote in the state elections , which enabled Wagner to move into the state parliament as a member.

Wagner rarely took part in parliamentary debates. For him and his party it was essentially a matter of ridiculing and obstructing the parliamentary system. On December 18, 1930, he stated clearly and prophetically in the state parliament that the Weimar Constitution and the Baden Constitution were only the path to the goal. “The day will come when the work of Weimar and your so-called state will collapse.” On June 2, 1932, Wagner declared in a public session of the Baden state parliament that the “value-destroying” parliamentarianism had to be dismantled: “We National Socialists do not value any value On the other hand, what was important to him were the advantages associated with his position as a parliamentarian, namely diets and free rides on the Reichsbahn .

His parliamentary immunity also protected him several times from legal prosecution for acts of violence in which he was involved with other National Socialists. On January 14, 1930, the Baden state parliament dealt with an application by the Baden public prosecutor's office to initiate and conduct criminal proceedings against Wagner “for bodily harm , insults , disturbance of the peace and gross mischief ”. On December 19, 1929, Wagner, together with the Führer -creditor Moraller and two other National Socialists, instigated a brawl with representatives of an international railway officials' representation.

In 1932 Wagner was appointed to the Reich leadership of the NSDAP . There in December 1932 he became Robert Ley's deputy and head of the NSDAP's main personnel office on Rudolf Hess's staff .

In National Socialism

On March 9, 1933, Wagner returned to Baden with the powers of the highest state authority granted by Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick the day before . The “ seizure of power ” in the country was completed within a few days : Wagner formed a provisional government on March 11 and took over the office of President. On 5 May 1933, he became the Reich governor of Baden and at the same time one of the Gauleiter of the NSDAP in the German Reich appointed and announced - this as a sign towards SA - the end of the revolution.

Elimination of political opponents

The resistance of the SPD -Abgeordneten Christian Nussbaum , who against his detention in " protective custody struggled" and the two arresting policemen shot dead, took Wagner as a pretext "with all the brutal austerity" the state assembly and parliament deputies from KPD and SPD to arrest and Convict concentration camp. In 1934, Wagner had Ludwig Marum murdered the Jew in the sense of the National Socialist concept of race and long-time leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the Baden state parliament . An internal party opponent, the inventor Felix Wankel , who was an early member of the NSDAP and who had accused Wagner of corruption , had Wagner temporarily imprisoned, but could not eliminate him permanently, as he was supported by Hermann Göring and the Reich Aviation Ministry .

anti-Semitism

Immediately after the “seizure of power”, the ardent anti-Semite Wagner ordered the immediate suspension of all civil servants of “Jewish descent ” in anticipation of the so-called law for the restoration of the civil service of April 7, 1933 and more radical than that .

On April 1, 1933, the Nazi regime decreed the first state-approved boycotts against Jewish businesses throughout Germany with the “ Jewish boycott ”.

During the November pogroms of 1938 , Wagner initially gave free rein to the Nazi mob and personally prevented attempts to prevent the Karlsruhe synagogue from burning down . Then he pulled the reins back on, typically for his style of rule, and took care of the bureaucratic legalistic processing of the " Aryanization " of Jewish businesses and assets.

As Gauleiter of the Gaus Baden , who was responsible for the formation of a new Gaus "Upper Rhine" including Alsace , Wagner significantly pursued and organized its "de-Jewification".

Cultural policy in Alsace

With the occupation of Alsace in the summer of 1940, Robert Wagner became head of civil administration there with extensive political freedom. His main goal was to make Alsace "German" again, to make it the "first outstanding cultural center of the German Empire". The means to finance the cultural sector exceeded the means paid in the Reich area by a considerable amount. His aim pursued Wagner as in the performing arts (general manager of the current through the establishment of several theater Théâtre national de Strasbourg was Ingolf Kuntze ), the appointment of the modern for his performances music became known Hans Rosbaud as music director of the Orchester Philharmonique De Strasbourg , the establishment of numerous German libraries combined with the ban on speaking French in public and with the restoration of the old German place names that existed until 1918. In the field of museums, Kurt Martin was given the leading position and was involved in preparing Wagner's "vision of a cultural model district of Alsace-Baden (...)."

Anti-Jewish and anti-French measures in Alsace

After the victorious invasion of France by the German Wehrmacht , Wagner became head of the civil administration in Alsace and relocated his main activities to Strasbourg . As Reich Governor of Baden he was always subordinate to the Reich Ministry of the Interior, but in Alsace he had a certain degree of independence from instructions from Berlin. In Alsace he initially took on the repair of war damage, which initially earned him sympathy among the population. It soon became apparent, however, that Wagner's main goal with his involvement in Alsace was to push back the French language. On July 16, 1940, he declared: "Alsace must be cleansed of all elements that are alien to the German race."

Wagner's efforts were initially directed against the Jews in Alsace, taking the opportunity to get rid of the Jews in Baden as well. Together with Josef Bürckel , the civil administration manager in the conquered Lorraine , Wagner deported 6,500 Jews from Baden and Palatinate and 22,000 Alsatian Jews to the unoccupied part of France (see Vichy regime ) in the so-called Wagner-Bürckel campaign in October 1940 . The scheduled deportation of Jews from Germany in the rest of the Reich did not begin until mid-October 1941. The Jews expelled from Baden and Alsace were housed under cruel conditions in the Gurs internment camp at the foot of the Pyrenees . Of the 4,500 Jews from Baden, only 750 survived, and 2,000 were deported to the Majdanek and Auschwitz concentration camps and murdered in 1942 . The same happened to the Jews who stayed behind in Baden. The Nazi propaganda reported that Alsace was “ free of Jews ” .

Wagner's attempt to expel all French and politically hostile Alsatians who moved to Alsace after 1919 failed, even if he expelled at least 100,000 people or did not allow them to return to Alsace. From 1942 onwards, the Nazi administration changed its mind. They no longer wanted to allow “German blood” to migrate to hostile countries. Rather, a total of 17,000 Alsatians - mostly politically or otherwise considered unreliable people, for example people and families whose relatives had evaded the Reich labor service or conscription as soldiers of the Wehrmacht - were forcibly taken to the areas conquered in the east. Special camps were set up for Alsatians in Schelklingen near Ulm . There they were then “mediated” in work.

City and street names were given back their German names, which were valid before 1919. For example, “Fort-Louis” became “Ludwigsfeste” again. Some citizens with French-sounding family names were forced by a decree of January 15, 1943 to change their family names into German-sounding ones. The use of the French language was banned. Anyone who violated this could end up in the so-called " Vorbruck-Schirmeck security camp ".

On Wagner's initiative, in August 1942, with the "Ordinance on citizenship in Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg of August 23, 1942" ( RGBl. IS 533), Alsatian men who, after the terms of the Armistice of Compiègne, were still French citizens were declared German citizens . This was the legalistic basis for their illegal forced recruitment ( Malgré-nous ). Many young Alsatians born between 1908 and 1910 were drafted into the Waffen SS instead of the Wehrmacht . In January 1944 Wagner agreed with Himmler - the Wehrmacht under Keitel had refused to do so - to call up the former French reserve officers to the Waffen SS. He had 42 officers who were not influenced by pressure, sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp ; 22 of the 42 died there.

The total number of conscripts from the respective age groups was 200,000. 40,000 of these were able to evade calling. Around 100,000 Alsatians served as soldiers in the German Empire. 20,000 of these soldiers died in the war, 22,000 were reported missing and 10,000 were seriously wounded in the field.

Wagner had a special court set up in Strasbourg for political education . Only the death penalty come deterrent to - so Wagner - and so imposed this special court particularly large number of death sentences. Before the sessions of the special court, Wagner inspected the investigation files and used to determine the sentence with the president of the court, Huber, and the public prosecutor , Simon.

As early as 1940 Wagner had the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp built in Alsace for the imprisonment of political opponents , over which he (despite several attempts by the SS to integrate the camp into the concentration camp system) remained in charge. This camp had 650 inmates in August 1941. In September 1942 it was occupied by about 1,000 men and 400 women.

In addition , several thousand prisoners of war , political opponents and resistance fighters were murdered in the Struthof concentration camp in Alsace , which was run by the SS .

Relationship with the Christian churches

Wagner's family was Protestant . Wagner himself, however, had resigned from the Protestant regional church and described himself as “ believing in God ” from the late 1930s .

Wagner initially had a rather orderly relationship with the Catholic Church under the Freiburg Archbishop Conrad Gröber , because the latter saw the real enemy in Bolshevism and wanted to affirm the new Nazi state. This changed over time, as Wagner was a staunch opponent of the churches and wanted to push back their influence in accordance with National Socialist ideology. His attempts to anticipate the general development and to condemn Gröber in 1940 for his New Year's Eve sermon and to imprison him for his pastoral letter of February 12, 1941 failed because of Hitler's veto, who wanted to save the church struggle for the time after the " final victory ".

In contrast to Württemberg, for example, Wagner had fewer difficulties with the Protestant Church . He himself was responsible for the amalgamation of young National Socialist pastors to form the " Nazi Pastors' Association ", which in 1933 joined the German Christian faith movement.

The end

Wagner escaped the advance of the Allies in November 1944 by fleeing across the Rhine . To the end he tried to offer them military resistance. He first set up a command post in Baden-Baden and even returned to Alsace during the Ardennes offensive . As " Reich Defense Commissioner for the Defense District of Baden and Alsace" he mobilized 22 Volkssturm battalions by the end of the war and had leaflets distributed calling for acts of sabotage in areas already occupied by the Allies. He threatened all leading men of the "Movement" with the death penalty if they tried to flee. On March 31, 1945, he threatened all “criminal elements” with court martial if they “showed white flags when the enemy approached”. He instructed the cities in Baden, following the scorched earth principle , to destroy their infrastructure in order to hinder the advance of the Allies.

After the French occupation of Karlsruhe on April 4, 1945, Wagner's wife and his then twelve-year-old daughter were arrested and driven through the streets of Strasbourg. According to unsubstantiated rumors, Wagner's wife was later abducted to an Algerian brothel in Paris, where she is said to have propped herself up after being raped several times. According to other sources, she threw herself from a Paris prison. Wagner himself initially moved to Schönwald in the Black Forest , later to Bodman , where he dismissed his last employees on April 29, 1945 after the conquest of Constance. The American military government formally dismissed him from all offices in an official notice dated June 14, 1945. After he had been to his place of birth Lindach again on July 25, 1945 and learned of his wife's death, on July 29, 1945 in Stuttgart he faced the Americans, who handed him over to the French.

The trial of Wagner and six other defendants took place from April 23 to May 3, 1946 in nine days before the Strasbourg military court . It sentenced him and five other defendants to death for the crimes committed in Alsace . All convicts appealed, which was rejected in August 1946. Wagner was executed by shooting in Fort de Roppe on the morning of August 14, 1946 , together with the former deputy Gauleiter Hermann Röhn , the former Upper Government Councilor Walter Gaedeke and the former Gaustabsamtsleiter Adolf Schuppel . Wagner's last words were: “Long live Greater Germany , long live Adolf Hitler, long live National Socialism. Our great task found only little judges. Down with the French people and their revenge justice. Long live the German Alsace. ”The bodies of the four executed were buried in the cemetery in the Strasbourg district of Cronenbourg .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Robert Heinrich Wagner  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wagner, Robert Heinrich
  2. ↑ Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Ed .: Reichswehr Ministry . Mittler & Sohn publishing house . Berlin 1924. p. 185.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 651.
  4. ^ Tessa Friederike Rosebrock: "Kurt Martin and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg. Museum and exhibition policy in the “Third Reich” and in the immediate post-war period ”, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2012, pp. 30–34.
  5. ^ Bernhard von Hülsen: Change of scenery in Alsace: Theater and society in Strasbourg between Germany and France 1890-1944 . Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-936522-74-X , PUB-ID 2434977, digitized at Google Books , p. 361.
  6. ↑ Bernhard von Hülsen: Change of scenery in Alsace: Theater and society in Strasbourg between Germany and France 1890-1944. Leipzig 2003, p. 360, 385.
  7. ^ Lothar Kettenacker: "National Socialist Volkstumsppolitik im Elsaß", Stuttgart 1973, pp. 180-183.
  8. ^ Lothar Kettenacker: "National Socialist People's Politics in Alsace", Stuttgart 1973, p. 74.
  9. ^ Tessa Friederike Rosebrock: "Kurt Martin and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg. Museum and exhibition policy in the 'Third Reich' and in the immediate post-war period ”, Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2012, p. 83 f.
  10. ↑ Norbert Haase: From “Ons Jongen”, “Malgré-nous” and others - The fate of the foreign forced recruits in World War II , pdf, lecture at the University of Strasbourg, August 27, 2011
  11. ↑ Ferdinand 1992, p. 152.
  12. ^ Ernst, Robert, report of an Alsatian, 2nd edition, Berlin 1955.
  13. ↑ Bankwitz, Philip Ch.F. Alsatian Autonomist Leaders 1919-1947.
  14. ↑ badische-zeitung.de: How Robert Backfisch became the executioner of Alsace . Badische Zeitung , March 12, 2013 (June 21, 2014)
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Backfisch, Robert Heinrich (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR, Reich Governor in Baden and Gauleiter
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Lindach near Eberbach am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1946
Place of death Fort Ney north of Strasbourg