Rudolf Dietz

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Rudolf Dietz's birthplace in Fondetter Strasse, later the town hall, now the seat of the local administration

Georg Christian Conrad Theodor Hermann Rudolf Otto Dietz (born February 22, 1863 in Naurod ; † December 14, 1942 in Wiesbaden ) was a German teacher, textbook author and local poet who wrote in the Nassau dialect .

Since he was also a member of the NSDAP and the anti-democratic German Confederation , his Nazi past has been discussed in Wiesbaden since 2004 and in Bad Camberg since 2012 . Despite his numerous anti-Jewish poems, published in the 1920s, politicians deny that he was an anti-Semite .

In addition to poems about the region of his origin, his family and everyday events, Dietz also wrote poems about the First World War , about the lost Empire and the reparations claims to be made by the German Reich in the context of the Versailles Treaty . About 30 streets, a school and two squares are named after Rudolf Dietz in Nassauer Land .

Life

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Dietz was born in Naurod as the son of the village school teacher Carl Wilhelm Dietz. From 1869 to 1877 he attended the elementary school in Naurod. After training at the Herborn Preparation Institute (1878 to 1880) and at the Usingen seminar , he became a teacher in Freiendiez in 1883 . There he began to write, in addition to poems and a play, he also wrote school books. After the second teacher examination (1885), military service in Mainz (1886) and further training in Leipzig (1890 and 1894), he was transferred to Wiesbaden in 1898. In 1923 he was appointed deputy principal and retired in 1925. In April 1933, at the age of 70, Dietz joined the NSDAP (membership no. 2367714), later also other NS organizations, e.g. B. in the 'National Socialist People's Welfare'.

Dietz was married twice, first to Anna Auler, whom he married in 1900. Together they had three sons and a daughter. After Anna died in 1913, Dietz remarried in 1917; with Frieda Frick he had two sons.

He is buried next to his two wives in the Wiesbaden North Cemetery.

Debate about his political beliefs

Rudolf Dietz had already become a member of the ethnic- fascist, racist and anti-Semitic ' Deutschbund ' at the beginning of the Weimar Republic . This association was recognized by the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP in 1934 as the "oldest ethnic association" and anticipated "Hitler's expressions and thoughts."

Dietz spread the ideological ideas of the Deutschbund in the years from 1933 until his death through poems in which, among other things, he expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler . He also wrote dozen of verses with anti-Jewish content. “Rudolf Dietz reproduced anti-Jewish resentments and clichés in a number of his poems. The Jewish minority became the target of unmistakably racist ridicule. He left no doubt in his opinion that membership of the Jewish minority was racially determined, ”said the Wiesbaden City Archives in a statement dated September 4, 2003.

In several poems he cheered Hitler's seizure of power, for example in the 'Deutsche Reichslied' of July 30, 1933. a. "There was a proud and steep ascent in the German people / Our leader Sieg und Heil. In the poem he conjures the unity" under the swastika ". The last two lines of the propaganda rhymes:" Never again does a foreign wedge separate, our loyalty. - Hitler Heil! "

After the seizure of power , Rudolf Dietz appeared in schools, primarily to recite those poems that supported the dictatorship but vilified people of Jewish religious faith. In order to be able to recite his poems, Dietz served himself offensively with the National Socialists and the regional switching centers of power. For example, in 1934 with the "Gau Propaganda Leader and Head of the State Office Hessen-Nassau of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda" or in 1935 with the "SA der NSDAP - Sturm 8/80 - Wiesbaden Dotzheim".

From 2003, a public debate about the renaming of the Rudolf-Dietz-Grundschule broke out in Wiesbaden. The Wiesbaden city archives had pointed out that Dietz could not be a role model for young people and therefore could not give the primary school its name.

In order to “objectify the debate”, Lord Mayor Hildebrand Diehl (CDU) commissioned the Karlsruhe historian Peter Steinbach to write an opinion on Dietz . Steinbach, who only checked some of the available sources, came to the conclusion that Dietz was a follower of the Nazi regime. Therefore, he argued against renaming the school.

Steinbach's point of view was heavily criticized by many experts. After the report was presented, further incriminating facts against Rudolf Dietz emerged. In March 2006, Steinbach himself presented an evaluation of Dietz's diaries. Notes prove the poet's membership in the 'Deutschbund'. Dietz benefited economically from the connections maintained by Rudolf Dietz with influential and convinced Wiesbaden National Socialists such as Walter Minor , who was responsible for the "conformity" of the Volkshochschule and the Volksbildungsverein Wiesbaden. After writers of Jewish creed and “non-Aryan” descent were excluded from publication in the Wiesbadener Volksblätter, Walter Minor advocated that Rudolf Dietz, who before the Nazi era only self-published, could publish there.

The city council of Wiesbaden decided in 2005, like the school parents' council and the school conference of the Rudolf-Dietz-Schule as well as the affected local councils of Auringen, Medenbach and Naurod to keep the name of the primary school.

Debate and municipal “Sonderweg” in the spa town of Bad Camberg

The parliamentary group Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen Bad Camberg applied for the city council meeting on June 26, 2012 to rename Bad Camberger Rudolf-Dietz Straße. The request was rejected. As a substitute, in April 2013, to supplement the street signs, signs referring to the author's Nazi past were put up. The majority of the CDU and SPD in the city council justified this option with the attempt to “remember” the Nazi era and to create a “memorial of remembrance” to the “dark side of history” in order to “show what happened in To keep memories ”, said one CDU member.

Since the poems of Rudolf Dietz are not easily accessible, the Green parliamentary group in the Wiesbaden city parliament has published some of these poems on its website for documentation purposes.

Works

  • Little friend of the singers - two hundred song texts for school children. Wiesbaden 1894
  • Prince of Hohenzollern. Meyer, Hanover 1895 (digitized version)
  • Made of yellowed leaves. Serious and cheerful incidents and files from the history of the city of Diez and the surrounding areas. 1896
  • Local history of the administrative district of Wiesbaden. 7th edition, Teubner, Leipzig 1909 (digitized version)

Dietz wrote over 1,000 poems. These can be found in the following volumes, among others:

  • No offense! Funny poems in Nassau dialect. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1900
  • Funny people. New joke poems in Nassau dialect. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1906
  • Siwwesache. For ze laugh. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1907
  • Deham is Deham. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1908
  • Pefferniss. Dedicated to the Nassauer in the field. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1914
  • Zwiwwele. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1921
  • Uhrtormspäß. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1922
  • Lettuce. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1925
  • Lachkunrad. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1928
  • AB tab. Dietz, Wiesbaden 1930
  • Deham is Deham. The most beautiful poems in Nassau dialect. Kramer, Frankfurt 1975

The Wiesbaden City Archives came in a statement of April 26, 2003 on the following assessment of Rudolf Dietz: From all of this it can be seen that Rudolf Dietz can be characterized as a staunch anti-democrat and anti-Semite, a person who is convinced of his attitude and who was responsible for maintaining the tradition of the "Third Reich" would have been excellently suited, but should not be sought by a liberal, democratic community which, through the Basic Law, recognizes "inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every human community, of peace and justice in the world" and consequently of every racism issued a sharp refusal.

literature

  • Rudolf Dietz: "Don't talk about it!" In: Ott, Winfried (Ed.): Blaue Blätter . 1st edition. tape 4 . Home care association Blaues Ländchen, Nastätten 1990, ISBN 3-9812486-2-7 .
  • Ott, Winfried: What your smart Nassauer is . Rudolf Dietz died 50 years ago, his dialect poetry lives on. In: Rhein-Lahn-Kreis: Heimatjahrbuch . 1992, ISSN  0931-2897 , pp. 66-68 .

Web links

Wikisource: Rudolf Dietz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives
  2. ↑ Yearbook of the Institute for German History of the Universiṭat Tel-Aviv (1975) Volume 4. P. 384.
  3. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives, statement of September 4, 2003
  4. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives, research, May 2012
  5. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives
  6. ↑ a b Hielscher, Almut: Brown home poet. The double Rudolf. In: spiegel.de. SPIEGEL.online, November 6, 2003, accessed on July 12, 2010 .
  7. ^ "A compliant proclaimer of Nazi ideology", Frankfurter Rundschau of April 1, 2003
  8. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives
  9. ↑ There are several archivists in the Wiesbaden City Archives. The written comments on Rudolf Dietz are all headed: "Statement from the Wiesbaden City Archives ..." Source: Wiesbaden City Archives
  10. ^ "Documentation on the renaming of the Rudolf Dietz School" by Rudolf Janke and Hans-Jürgen Anderle, April 7, 2011
  11. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives
  12. ↑ fnp.de/nnp /.../ die-two-faces-des-rudolf-dietz_rmn01.c.987 ...
  13. ↑ www.fnp.de/nnp /.../ rudolfdietzstrasse-bleibt_rmn01.c.9948830.de.ht ...
  14. ↑ On the problem of the idea of ​​"streets as memorials" and the evaluation of street names under municipal law: Hartmann-Menz, Martina, http://www.gruene-limburg-weilburg.de/index.php/2013/ueber-strassennamen-und- interpretation of history /
  15. ↑ Wiesbaden City Archives
personal data
SURNAME Dietz, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dietz, Georg Christian Conrad Theodor Hermann Rudolf Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher, textbook author and local poet
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1863
PLACE OF BIRTH Naurod
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1942
Place of death Wiesbaden