Rudolf Formis

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Rudolf Formis (born December 25, 1894 in Stuttgart , † January 23, 1935 in Slapy nad Vltavou ) was a German engineer and radio technician at the Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG ( SÜRAG ) and a pioneer of the German movement of radio amateurs . During the time of National Socialism , he broadcast anti-National Socialist radio programs from what was then Czechoslovakia with the help of a self-made shortwave transmitter . Formis was murdered by the SD on behalf of Heydrich .

Life

Formis came from an upper-class Stuttgart family; his grandfather, Christian Friedrich von Leins , was a well-known architect who designed the Villa Berg in Stuttgart, among other things . During the First World War , Formis belonged to the German Asia Corps and fought together with Ottoman troops in Arabia.

After the end of the war, Formis set up the first SÜRAG transmitter systems in the spring of 1923.

Rudolf Formis introduced the German amateur radio designation DE (DE = German receiving station) in 1925. He himself had the sign DE 0100. Rudolf Formis' call sign as a broadcast amateur was K-Y4.

In 1928 he set up the SÜRAG remote reception center on the Solitude near Stuttgart, which was used to transmit reports from overseas. From January 1932 at the latest, Formis was head of the technical department at SÜRAG.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, Formis took part in the occupation of the Stuttgart radio station on March 7, 1933 as an SA member. He gave a speech in the spirit of the National Socialists, without having previously appeared publicly as a National Socialist, and turned against the previous director Bofinger. Formis later came into conflict with the National Socialists because his grandmother, the wife of the architect Leins, was Jewish.

Allegedly last imprisoned in Germany, Formis fled and tried to get to Turkey, but was intercepted in Bulgaria and sent to Prague . Here he joined the Black Front around Otto Strasser , an opposition group that had split off from the NSDAP . Formis headed the distribution of the newspaper Die deutsche Revolution published by Strasser and set up an underground station in the former Hotel Záhoří near Slapy nad Vltavou . The shortwave transmitter had been built by Formis, came from his Stuttgart workshop and had been brought to Czechoslovakia by friends or himself. Regular operations began on December 2, 1934, following trial shipments from September.

The station is the first verifiable German underground station during the Nazi era. He used frequencies similar to those of the Königs Wusterhausen transmitter and pretended to broadcast from Berlin. Formis was a technician, speaker and author at the same time; he obtained his information from press compilations from the Prague office of the “Black Front” and from radio broadcasts he had listened to himself. The program included appeals against the National Socialist regime , replies to the National Socialist propaganda and calls for resistance and sabotage . In addition, situation reports were transmitted by Strasser, in which he also tried to make the NSDAP ridiculous. Strasser drew on his knowledge of leading National Socialists from the time of his party membership before 1930; a circumstance that should have made Hitler particularly angry. From the National Socialists' point of view, broadcasting was particularly annoying, as radio broadcasts, as the most modern form of propaganda at the time, were given great importance.

Formis had set the transmitter's antenna so that it could not be received within a radius of around 20 kilometers, which should make it difficult to locate the transmitter. Nevertheless, the monitoring service of the German defense was able to locate the transmitter, which was working with an output of only 100 watts . In addition, the Prague exile group of the Black Front was riddled with Gestapo agents; the crucial information about the location of the transmitter and the operator should come from Strasser's employee Franke.

The German government asked the Czechoslovak government to take action against the broadcaster. In a letter dated December 12, 1934, signed by State Secretary Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow , it was stated that the transmitter was a “hate speech center” that should be banned by the authorities. Recordings of the broadcasts were played to radio employees in Stuttgart who recognized Formis' "snarling Swabian dignitaries".

In January 1935, SD chief Reinhard Heydrich gave SS squad leader Alfred Naujocks the order to destroy the underground transmitter. Disguised as a tourist, Naujocks drove to Czechoslovakia, accompanied by a friend, where they succeeded in winning Formis' trust and making a wax impression of the key to the transmission room. Naujocks returned to Germany for a short time, had a duplicate key made and went back to Slapy nad Vltavou with Werner Göttsch . The plan was to break into the transmitter room unnoticed, destroy the transmitter with acid, stun and kidnap Formis. Contrary to planning, Formis stayed in the broadcasting room and shot the intruding SD agent Naujocks. Formis was shot dead in the subsequent exchange of fire. The rushing of a waiter prevented the SD agents from finding the transmitter hidden in a mattress.

Aftermath

The SD agents Naujocks and Göttsch managed to escape to Germany; diplomatic protests by the Prague government had no consequences. Naujocks was questioned by a British-Czech commission in 1945; In 1946 he escaped from internment . From 1961 onwards, German authorities began investigating Naujocks into Formis' death without bringing charges before his death in April 1966. An indictment was brought against Göttsch in Hamburg in 1967. According to the indictment, it has not been established who fired the fatal shots at Formis.

Numerous reports on Formis' death appeared in the German exile press. The Pariser Tageblatt quoted the Prague newspaper Venkov , for which it was “crimes of this kind” “that expose the true soul of Hitler's Germany”. The writer Fritz Erpenbeck took up the murder of Formis in his novel Emigranten , published in 1939, and portrayed him under the name Dormler . The BBC's German service broadcast a radio play on July 18, 1941 about the death of Formis. Formis was buried in the Slapy cemetery. He is considered a hero among Czech radio amateurs . His grave is still very well cared for today.

In 1974 in the GDR the news district training center of the Society for Sport and Technology in Torgau was named after Formis. The honor was withdrawn after Kurt Hager , a member of the Politburo of the SED from Württemberg , referred to Formis' cooperation with Otto Strasser.

Rudolf Formis's radio station was retained. It was on loan from the National Technical Museum in Prague in 2012 and 2013 in the special exhibition Decently traded. Resistance and Volksgemeinschaft 1933–1945 at the House of History Baden-Württemberg .

Information by Otto Strasser in 1969 that Formis was involved in the Stuttgart cable attack in February 1933 is incorrect . The attack was organized by the KPD and carried out by three workers.

literature

  • Bernhardt Burkhardt: Rudolf Formis. Broadcast technician from Stuttgart. In: Michael Bosch, Wolfgang Niess (ed.): The resistance in the German southwest 1933–1945. (= Writings on political regional studies of Baden-Württemberg , Volume 10), Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-17-008365-1 , pp. 311-317.
  • Andreas Morgenstern: The Stuttgart radio pioneer Rudolf Formis and the station of the Black Front in Czechoslovakia 1934/35 . In: Peter Becher, Anna Knechtel (Ed.): Radio and radio policy in Czechoslovakia and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Frank & Timme, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-7329-0277-4 , pp. 43–58.
  • Andreas Morgenstern: Formis, Karl Erich Rudolf. In: Maria Magdalena Rückert (Ed.): Württembergische biographies including Hohenzollern personalities. Volume III. On behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-17-033572-1 , pp. 67-69.
  • Andreas Morgenstern: “The Black Front is calling!” The path of radio pioneer Rudolf Formis . In: Rundfunk und Geschichte , Heft 3–4, 2016, pp. 15–23.
  • Andreas Morgenstern: Radio broadcasts contradict NS news. In: House of History Baden-Wuerttemberg (Ed.) Acted decently. Resistance and Volksgemeinschaft 1933–1945 , Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-933726-42-1 , pp. 57–60.
  • Reinhard Schneider: The tragic fate of Rolf Formis. , In: Funkgeschichte , publication of the Society of Friends of the History of Radio Being eV, Issue 105 (1996), pp. 15-18.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth and death see Rudolf Formis at the German Resistance Memorial Center (accessed on June 28, 2011) or Václav Pavel Borovička, Atentáty, které měly změnit svět, Baronet as, Prague 2007, deviating from this the year of birth 1896 and the date of death 24 January 1935 in Burkhardt, Formis , p. 311.
  2. ↑ Publications of the working group for amateur radio television AGAV ( Memento from June 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ German Broadcasting Archive : Süddeutsche Rundfunk AG (SÜRAG) , p. 10 (PDF, 192 kB, accessed on July 3, 2011).
  4. ^ Rudolf Formis at the German Resistance Memorial Center (accessed June 28, 2011).
  5. ↑ a b Ing. Rudolf Formis, report on the website of the municipality of Slapy, online at: www.slapynadvltavou.cz , Czech, accessed on June 28, 2011
  6. ↑ a b Václav Pavel Borovička, Atentáty, které měly změnit svět, Baronet as, Prague 2007, p. 200ff., Online at: books.google.de , accessed on June 30, 2011
  7. ↑ a b Morgenstern, radio broadcasts , p. 57.
  8. ^ A b Conrad Pütter: Radio against the "Third Reich". A manual. (= Rundfunkstudien , Volume 3), KG Saur, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-598-10470-7 , p. 36.
  9. ^ Pütter, Rundfunk , p. 35.
  10. ↑ Bülow's letter cited in Burkhardt, Formis , p. 315.
  11. ↑ a b c Morgenstern, radio broadcasts , p. 60.
  12. ↑ Burkhardt, Formis , pp. 316f.
  13. ↑ Quoted in Morgenstern, Rundfunksendung , p. 60
  14. ↑ Pütter, Rundfunk , p. 36f.
  15. ^ House of History Baden-Württemberg (ed.), Decently traded , p. 186.
  16. ↑ Burkhardt, Formis , p. 312.
personal data
SURNAME Formis, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer, radio technician and victim of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1935
Place of death Slapy nad Vltavou