Rudolf Lodgman von Auen

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Rudolf Lodgman

Rudolf Vinzenz Maria Ritter Lodgman von Auen , also Rudolph Lodgman , (born December 21, 1877 in Königgrätz , Bohemia , † December 11, 1962 in Munich ) was a German-Bohemian politician. He was a co-founder of the German National Party in Czechoslovakia. In 1952 he became chairman of the Union of Landsmannschaften (VdL), a forerunner of the Association of Expellees (BdV).

Life

In the Habsburg Empire

Rudolf Lodgman von Auen was born on December 21, 1877 in Königgrätz, Bohemia, as the second son of the lawyer Dr. Josef Lodgman Ritter von Auen (* 1839; † 1887) and his wife Maria (* 1843; †?), A native of Waldrecht. He comes from the old noble family Lodgman von Auen , originally from Spain , who settled in England around the 15th century and adopted the English name "Lodgman of Owen" there. The ancestor and founder of the Bohemian line was Robert Lodgman of Owen, who was expelled from England between 1550 and 1575 in the course of the religious battles under Elizabeth I and immigrated to Bohemia. Melchior Lodgman von Auen, probably a son of Robert, belonged to the court of Emperor Maximilian II at the Reichstag in Regensburg in 1576 . The title of nobility of the family in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was officially recognized in 1593 in Regensburg. The family had been living in Bohemia since the early 17th century and mainly engaged in academic professions and civil service.

Rudolf Lodgman von Auen (5th from right) with the father of the German students in Prague around 1900

After the early death of their father in 1887, the aristocratic family from Königgrätz moved to Prague . There Lodgman studied law and political science after attending elementary school and high school . As an active student, he joined the University Singing Association Liedertafel der Deutschen Studenten in Prague (UGV) in the winter semester of 1895 (today: Prager Universitäts- Sängerschaft Barden zu München in the German Singers Association ). He was known as "a feared saber-fencer and gifted singer". In 1901 received his doctorate Lodgman of floodplains for Dr. jur. at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. Since 1661 he was the 23rd Lodgman von Auen to be awarded a doctorate at Prague University.

He began his professional career in 1901 serving the Habsburg monarchy in the Bohemian administration. As part of his work as an administrative clerk, Lodgman took a political stance in connection with the increasing national tensions in Bohemia. Since his liberal, German-national sentiments did not correspond to an activity as an Austro-Hungarian state official, Lodgman left the civil service in 1906 and in the same year became the head of the central office of the German districts of Bohemia in Aussig and finally chairman of the district council of Aussig. In 1909 Lodgman married Anny Filipek, a daughter of a jeweler, in Vienna. The marriage resulted in a son and two daughters.

In June 1911 he was elected as a non-party member of the Austrian Reichsrat . There he was the spokesman for German-speaking members of parliament from Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia . From 1912 he was also a member of the Bohemian Parliament . He mostly represented liberal views and recognized quite early on that the preservation of the Habsburg Empire would only be possible through a far-reaching national compromise with the various peoples, similar to what happened with Hungary in 1867 .

At the beginning of the First World War , Lodgman volunteered and served as a lieutenant on the Russian and Italian fronts until 1917. In 1917 he called on the new Emperor Karl I to convert Austria into a federal state of nationalities. Since Karl had similar intentions, he is said to have had the idea of ​​appointing Lodgman as Prime Minister, but could not get his way.

In Czechoslovakia

On October 28, 1918, the Czechoslovak Republic proclaimed itself a separate state, independent of Austria-Hungary . The Germans living in the outskirts of Bohemia and Moravia in predominantly closed settlement areas tried to create their own administrative structures and to incorporate them into the German Empire or German Austria . In this context, the provinces German Bohemia and Sudetenland as well as the districts Böhmerwaldgau and German South Moravia were created . On November 2, 1918 , Lodgman was appointed governor of German Bohemia by the German -Bohemian delegates of the Reichsrat who met in Vienna as the successor to Raphael Pacher, who had only been in office for a few days .

This project to partition Bohemia and Moravia was supported by the majority of the German-speaking population, but was forcibly suppressed by armed Czech associations at the turn of 1918/19. Lodgman and his government fled Reichenberg - the seat of the state government - via Dresden to Vienna in December 1918 ; Lodgman participated in the Austrian delegation in the peace negotiations of Saint-Germain from May to September 1919 , but could not prevent the decision of the victorious powers to include the predominantly German-speaking regions of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia in the Czechoslovak state.

On September 24, 1919 Austria finally recognized the cession of the Sudetenland, so that Lodgman had to officially resign from his position as governor. However, he was allowed to return to Czechoslovakia and to be politically active there.

On September 21, 1919, the German National Party of Bohemia (DNP) was founded in Olomouc . From the beginning, Lodgman was its most important leader, from 1922 also its chairman. With this formation he entered the first elections to the Czechoslovak House of Representatives on April 18, 1920 and received 5.3% of the votes (i.e. about 23% of the votes in the German-speaking settlement area) and 11 of the 300 seats to be awarded. Together with the German National Socialist Workers' Party (DNSAP), which won 5 mandates, he represented the " negativist " part of the German-speaking population in the following years , who rejected the Czechoslovak state in its existing form and a separation (or at least extensive autonomy) for the German-speaking parts of the country demanded. Already at this election, however, were the " activist " parties (especially the German Social Democratic Workers' Party / DSAP, the German Christian Social People's Party / DCSVP and the Bund der Landwirte / BdL) - which had come to terms with the existing political order and a cooperation sought with the Czechoslovak government - in the majority. As a member of parliament, he repeatedly distinguished himself through anti-Semitic motions aimed at the disenfranchisement of Jews.

Before the next parliamentary elections on November 15, 1925, Lodgman tried to unite all German parties in Bohemia in a joint association and to orientate them "negativist". He failed, and in the elections Lodgman only got 3.5% of the vote with the DNP. Disappointed, he withdrew from active politics and resigned the chairmanship of the DNP. However, until 1938 he remained managing director of the Association of German Self-Governing Bodies in Czechoslovakia, a lobby group for German-speaking cities and municipalities.

In the thirties he observed the rise of the Sudeten German Party (SdP) under Konrad Henlein with a distanced view; On the one hand, because he found the SdP's policy to be too indulgent towards the Czechoslovak government, and on the other, probably because of personal antipathy towards Henlein. Lodgman came up against Henlein's postulate of a “Sudeten German tribe”, a thought that he regarded as “ swissing ”. In a detailed letter to Adolf Hitler , he justified his differences with Henlein and revealed himself to be a sympathizer of National Socialism .

In the Reichsgau Sudetenland

Rudolf Lodgman

In October 1938, Lodgman welcomed the invasion of German troops into Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich Agreement in a personal telegram to Hitler . However, he was critical of the National Socialists' further expansion efforts, also because they endangered the membership of the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia in Germany in the long term. Without any political functions, Lodgman lived in Teplitz-Schönau until the end of the war . During the war, Wenzel Jaksch , the chairman of the DSAP who had emigrated to London , tried to persuade Lodgman to follow him into exile. Jaksch's aim was to counter the already recognizable efforts of Beneš to expel the Germans in the event that Germany lost the annexed Czech territories again by creating a Sudeten German government in exile . Lodgman, however, refused.

After the collapse of the German Empire

In June 1945 Lodgman shared the fate of the majority of his German-speaking compatriots and was expelled to Germany by the authorities of Czechoslovakia, which was rebuilt with Allied help . First he settled in Saxony - that is, in the Soviet zone of occupation - where he worked as a hall guard. In August 1947 he was able to move to Freising in Bavaria .

He sought connection to the political representatives of the expellees' associations and quickly became one of their most prominent exponents on the national-conservative wing. For example, he refused to sign the Eichstätt Declaration , which was passed by 17 Sudeten German personalities on November 30, 1949 , because it seemed too vague to him in its demands on Czechoslovakia, which was newly founded in 1945. On January 24, 1950 Lodgman became the first spokesman for the Federal Association of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft . Here he pushed through the adoption of the Detmold Declaration, which was formulated much more sharply and irreconcilably than the Eichstätter Declaration . In 1951 he helped found the Sudetendeutsche Zeitung and was its editor for a time. After the Second World War he was one of the signatories of the Charter of German Expellees and the advocate of the Munich Agreement of 1938.

The declared aim of Lodgman in his new job was to enable the Sudeten Germans to return to their homeland, although he recognized that a solution could only be found through an understanding between the USA and the Soviet Union . At the same time he tried to make contacts with exiled Czech politicians. So he joined in August 1950 with the resident in London Chairman of the Czech National Committee , General Lev Prchala , the Wiesbaden agreement and where. a. the possibility of the return of the Sudeten Germans was fixed. However, Prchala was and remained without any influence on the development in Czechoslovakia, so that the agreement was ultimately nothing more than a declaration of intent. Lodgman's advocacy of the Munich Agreement , which in his opinion was still valid, seemed unrealistic, especially since it had already been broken by Hitler in March 1939 in the course of the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia .

In 1952 Lodgman became chairman of the "Verband der Landsmannschaften" (VdL), the umbrella organization of the various Landsmannschaften and predecessor organization of the Federation of Expellees (BdV). He held this office until 1954, when Georg Baron Manteuffel-Szoege was his successor . Lodgmann did not join any party after 1945, nor did he belong to any of the three Sudeten German "ideological communities" ( Ackermann community , Seliger community , Witikobund ). He rejected the establishment of a party for displaced persons or the affiliation with the Association of Displaced Persons and Disenfranchised (BHE), founded in 1950 , because he believed that the problem of displacement should be a matter for all political parties.

In 1959 Lodgman resigned as spokesman for the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft for health reasons. In 1960 he criticized the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli secret service with anti-Jewish undertones .

Quotes from Lodgman

  • "Therefore ... you will not deceive anyone by declaring that I am a chauvinist and not a democrat." (Speech to the Czechoslovak House of Representatives, 1920)
  • “There will be few examples in the history of mankind in which a moral idea has been championed with such moral means as in the triumphant advance of the National Socialist idea, it has already become a religion for the masses today.” (Why not me to Konrad Henlein found, April 1938)
  • "Both parts (ie the Czech National Committee and the Working Group for the Protection of Sudeten German Interests) are based on the democratic worldview and reject any totalitarian system." (From the Wiesbaden Agreement co-authored and signed by Lodgman, 1950)
  • “In 1938 we Sudeten Germans only had the choice between Beneš and Hitler.” (My answer to the ČSSR, 1961)
  • "The starting point of any German policy in the East are the actual borders of Germany when it entered the war in 1939."

Quotes about Lodgman

“In general, the low level of global political and socio-political training that Dr. Lodgman decrees. "

- Assessment of the German ambassador in Prague, Saenger, in a report of November 4, 1919.

"He is a later representative of the tradition of national liberalism and conservatism, which after the decline of 1945, when he was almost seventy, enabled him to redefine the situation and pursue a cautious policy of concern."

- Harald Seubert

"Dr. Peters and Lodgman preach a fanatical hatred - as if we were in Bohemia - when in Slovakia, especially in Pressburg, between Hungarians, Germans and Slovaks there was never general hatred, but harmonious cooperation. "

- Comment in the "Pressburger Presse", April 12, 1920

“Indeed, he is not a nationalist, if only for historical reasons ... He had nothing to do with Hitler, he stayed away from the Henlein group, his name does not appear on any leader list, and high offices that the Third Reich gives him offered, he refused. "

- Volkmar von Zühlsdorff in “Die Zeit” from June 10, 1954

Honors

editor

  • as governor of German Bohemia: German Bohemia . Publishing house Ullstein & Co., Berlin 1919.

literature

  • Horst Glassl :  Lodgman von Auen, Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 10 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Harald Lönnecker : From “Ghibellinia goes, Germania is coming!” To “People want to people!”. Mentalities, structures and organizations in the German student body in Prague, 1866–1914. In: Sudetendeutsches Archiv München (ed.), Yearbook for Sudeten German Museums and Archives 1995–2001, Munich 2001, pp. 34–77.
  • Harald Lönnecker: From “The city was German, German was its most beautiful time!” To “The iron breaks need!”. Mentalities, structures and organizations in the German student body in Prague 1918–1933. In: Sudetendeutsches Archiv München (ed.), Yearbook for Sudeten German Museums and Archives 2002, Munich 2003, pp. 29–80.
  • Harald Lönnecker: "... it is important to celebrate the jubilee of our alma mater ..." - the student participation and tradition on university anniversaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Jens Blecher, Gerald Wiemers (ed.), Universities and Anniversaries. From the benefit of historical archives, Leipzig 2004 (= publications of the Leipzig University Archives, Volume 4), pp. 129–175.
  • Harald Lönnecker: From “German your time!” To “O golden Prague, - we have forgiven you.” - Mentalities, structures and organizations in the German student body in Prague 1933–1945. In: then and now. Yearbook of the Association for Corporate Student History Research 52 (2007), pp. 223-312.
  • Harald Lönnecker: “Honor, freedom, men’s song!” - The German academic singers of East Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Erik Fischer (ed.), Choral Singing as a Medium of Interculturality: Forms. Kanal, Diskurse, Stuttgart 2007 (= reports of the intercultural research project "German Music Culture in Eastern Europe", Volume 3), pp. 99–148.
  • Harald Lönnecker: "... voluntarily never to leave here ..." The Prague German student body 1867–1945. Cologne 2008 (= treatises on student and higher education, volume 16)
  • Ferdinand Seibt : Germany and the Czechs. History of a neighborhood in the middle of Europe , Piper-Verlag Munich 1993.
  • Hermann Hubert Knoblich: Bard History 1869-1969 - One Hundred Years of Prague University Singers Bards in Munich. Old gentlemen's association of the Prague university choirs Barden, Munich 1973, DNB 740665863
  • Sudeten German Archive in Munich: Rudolf Lodgman von Auen - A life for law and freedom and the self-determination of the Sudeten Germans. Helmut Preußler Verlag Nuremberg 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Knoblich (1973), pp. 205-208.
  2. ↑ a b Lodgman von Auen, Rudolf , deutsche-biographie.de, accessed on July 9, 2018.
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (offline) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ideon.cz
  4. ↑ "Historical Stereotype Research" department at the Institute for History at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg: Biographical Sketches , bohemistik.de, August 14, 2003, accessed on July 9, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b Lönnecker (2001), p. 56f.
  6. ↑ Micha Brumlik : Who sows a storm. The expulsion of the Germans. Structure, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-351-02580-7 , p. 105.
  7. ↑ bohemistik.de
  8. ↑ Micha Brumlik: Who sows a storm. The expulsion of the Germans. Structure, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-351-02580-7 , p. 105.
  9. ↑ SPIEGEL Special, June 1, 2002 , origin of the quote: Neues Deutschland from May 20, 1961.
  10. ^ Publications of the Collegium Carolinum: German Legation Reports from Prague, Part I. Oldenbourg-Verlag 2003, p. 217.
personal data
SURNAME Lodgman von Auen, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lodgman von Auen, Rudolf Vinzenz Maria Ritter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sudeten German politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Königgrätz , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1962
Place of death Munich