Rudolf Pechel

Rudolf Ludwig August Martin Pechel (born October 30, 1882 in Güstrow , † December 28, 1961 in Zweisimmen , Canton Bern , Switzerland ) was a German journalist and resistance fighter against the Nazi regime .

Apprenticeship and first years of employment

Rudolf Pechel was the son of the high school teacher Ludwig Pechel and his wife Elisabeth, b. Firnhaber. He received his school education with a high school diploma in Güstrow. After the compulsory military service, which Pechel performed as a sea ​​cadet , he studied philosophy, German, English and economics at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin from 1902 , where he received his doctorate in philosophy in 1908. After several years of academic work at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar and freelance writing, he took over the editing of the " Deutsche Rundschau ", founded by Julius Rodenberg in 1874, and was in the following years as an assistant at the Märkisches Museum and editor of the " Literary Echoes “busy.

Pechel experienced the First World War with the Marine Corps in Flanders and as the commander of a sea ​​flying unit . In April 1919 he took over the editor-in-chief of the "Deutsche Rundschau". which at that time appeared in Gebrüder Paetel Verlag and from 1924 in Pechel's own publishing house.

Criticism of National Socialism - Path to Resistance

Pechel developed contacts to numerous personalities from the most diverse political camps and thus managed to form a comprehensive opinion. His real spiritual home was the June club around Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , the theoretician of the “Conservative Revolution” . An encounter with Adolf Hitler in 1922 led to growing criticism of the emerging National Socialism and to its total rejection.

The lawyer, publicist and politician Edgar Jung , who tried to influence the political development as an advisor to Franz von Papen, was one of his closest friends and the group of authors of the “Deutsche Rundschau” . Jung was arrested in 1934 for spreading ideas critical of the regime and shot by the SS a few days later in connection with the alleged Röhm putsch . Pechel was also constantly observed by the Gestapo .

In 1936 he made the acquaintance of the then mayor of Leipzig, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , who in the following years became a driving force in the conservative opposition circles against the Nazi regime. Pechel made Goerdeler available not only the pages of the “Deutsche Rundschau” for covertly critical articles, but also his office and apartment for discussions with other Hitler opponents.

Pechel himself also had connections to members of the military such as Colonel Siegfried Wagner and General Friedrich Olbricht , who later were among the leading figures in the attempted coup of July 20, 1944 . He was also able to rely on friends of political opinion in the defense against foreign countries of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, who helped him on his trips abroad.

Pechel's travel destinations were mainly Switzerland, France and England. He met with émigré politicians and displaced journalists and repeatedly warned his foreign interlocutors about Hitler and his war preparations.

With the support of Karl Haushofer, Pechel remained in the Senate of the German Academy in Munich after 1933 . However, he withdrew from the “ Volksdeutsche Rat ” ( Volksdeutscher Rat ) for the protection of German interests abroad, as this body increasingly developed into an instrument of National Socialist revision and living space policy.

Private life

Pechel's marriage, which was entered into in 1919 and later divorced, resulted in two sons, Eberhard, born in 1920 (given name Peter) and Jürgen, born in 1925. In his second marriage he was with Madleen Pechel , born in 1938 . Mayser, divorced Feßmann, married.

Journalistic Resistance

It is a consistent pattern of Pechel's contributions in the Deutsche Rundschau that he summarized his criticism in older and old, above all foreign disguises and thus became a master of camouflage , the skillful camouflage.

Pechel hardly missed an opportunity in historical comparisons, often quoted in the wording of older authors or at least lectured, to attack and ridicule the Nazi personnel and their structures, and the radius of those who were reached by this intellectual pleasure is likely to be very large have been. It was not uncommon for his journalistic composite pieces to attain the rank of satire, for example when he heard the French revolutionary guards' fashionable decoration, their cockades; Used rosettes and sashes to trigger associations with Nazi uniform inflation or when he pointed out that in England a war minister also had a sense of proportion and could even write books. When he wrote about Robespierre , he conveyed his criticism of Hitler, which left nothing to be desired in terms of clarity. And again and again the lieutenant commander warned. R. in the renewed war hysteria before a new armed conflict , used texts by Montesquieu and Marc Aurel . Some lines of thought are reminiscent of the German cabaret artist and actor Werner Finck , for whom Pechel felt great admiration, especially for his coining of the word “radical center”.

Particular suspicion from the Propaganda Ministry and the Gestapo aroused, for example, an article by Pechel with the title “Siberia”, published in September 1937 in the “Deutsche Rundschau”, in which he explained, analyzed and criticized the practice of the Stalinist terror system, all of which also applied to the NS Regime applies.

In the dungeons of the Nazi regime

In January 1942, Pechel published a critical article in the "Deutsche Rundschau" on Goebbels' German news policy. It says: “Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels found that the current German news policy at home and abroad has such a credit that it can afford to remain silent for a while. ”This article was read not only in a BBC international broadcast, but also in a Swiss newspaper reprinted. This "treason" led to access by the Nazi organs: Pechel was arrested on April 8, 1942 and initially taken to the house prison of the Reich Security Main Office . The "Deutsche Rundschau" was banned a little later. On May 28, 1942, Pechel was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a prisoner , and from August he was held in solitary confinement and in the dark for more than two months in the cell, which led to serious damage to health.

In June 1944, Pechel came to the cell of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp . The notorious Kriminalrat Herbert Lange, as head of a special commission of the Gestapo, had arranged for this to be moved in order to extort incriminating statements against Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler in the neighboring security police school in Drögen in Fürstenberg / Havel . Lange also hoped that Pechel's opposition contacts would be largely exposed.

After the failed assassination attempt and coup attempt on July 20, 1944, Pechel's prison conditions were tightened. In the meantime, his wife was also targeted by the Gestapo because she was in support of the KPD functionary and former Sachsenhausen prisoner Franz Jacob who lived illegally in Berlin . She was arrested and sentenced on October 12, 1944 by the 1st Senate of the People's Court to six years in prison for supporting a communist functionary. She was taken to the Waldheim prison , from which she was only freed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Rudolf Pechel was transferred back from Ravensbrück to the house prison of the Reich Main Security Office on September 24, 1944 and from there four days later to the Tegel prison, which was badly hit in an air raid shortly afterwards, so that Pechel was sent to the prison on October 2, 1944 Gestapo department of the Berlin-Moabit cell prison had to be relocated. At the end of December he received the indictment from the senior Reich attorney at the People's Court for treason and favoring the enemy. She referred to Pechel's general contacts with Carl Goerdeler and to a discussion on the possibilities of a peace treaty with England that had taken place in January 1942 in the house of Colonel General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, who died shortly afterwards . In addition to the landlord and Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck and Werner von Alvensleben also took part.

Contrary to expectations, however, Rudolf Pechel was acquitted in the hearing before the 1st Senate of the People's Court under the chairmanship of Roland Freisler on February 1, 1945, for lack of evidence, as no one could prove that he knew of Goerdeler's subversive plans. Nevertheless, he was brought back to the Moabit cell prison and from there transferred with a collective transport to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was given a new inmate number and had to do duty in the inmate mail room. His older son Eberhard (Peter) did everything in his power to get his father released, especially when he was transferred to the Army High Command in Berlin after hard missions at the front with the rank of captain. Finally, through a personal interview with the head of the Gestapo Heinrich Müller on April 11, 1945, his father was released and released to Güstrow. Only two weeks later the city was occupied by the Red Army. In Güstrow, Rudolf Pechel headed a care center for political prisoners for a few weeks and then returned to Berlin, which was completely destroyed.

Co-founder of the CDU

As early as May 10, 1945, the Soviet occupying power had approved or ordered the establishment of anti-fascist-democratic parties, with the help of which they initially hoped to master the chaotic situation and through whose coordination they later exercised their dictatorship. After the Communist and Social Democratic Parties of Germany , the Berlin Christian Democratic Union was founded on June 26, 1945 by Andreas Hermes , Jakob Kaiser , Ferdinand Sauerbruch , Ferdinand Friedensburg , Rudolf Pechel and others.

Time after 1945

For Rudolf Pechel there was again a journalistic activity as editor in the daily newspaper Neue Zeit, which was also newly founded as an organ of the CDU . On September 1, 1945 he took over the office of editor-in-chief, which he resigned after a few months, as he could not identify with the development of the CDU and the political course in the Soviet zone of occupation .

As early as April 1946, Rudolf Pechel published the Deutsche Rundschau in Berlin again with a British license. When the British military government could no longer provide the paper contingent required for the magazine, Pechel moved his residence and editorial office to Stuttgart in September 1948. In the meantime he had written the book “German Resistance”, one of the earliest accounts of the movements directed against Hitler and the Nazi regime, in which his own concern still resonates.

Pechel received a first major appreciation in 1948 when he compiled important of his essays and articles from the “Deutsche Rundschau” until it was banned in 1942 into a volume “Between the Lines”. This publication received a special character and note from the fact that Werner Bergengruen , one of the main representatives of German literature on “inner emigration”, wrote an introduction that goes beyond the scope of a foreword. After the war, Pechel's journalistic work was devoted to reappraising and accounting and trying to restore the German name. His writing style became concise and sober, but lost none of its precision and high standards. His thoughts constantly revolved around the criteria of guilt and atonement, and he did not hesitate to accuse the victorious powers, which had intervened far too little and far too late in the German aggression. Pechel renounced all exaggeration and turned to all pressing needs of the present, the displaced persons problem, the growing Soviet imperialism, the rallying movement of the Nazis, the escalating Cold War and the gradually becoming known dimensions of the Holocaust .

The article “Land im Dunkel”, published in March 1950 in the “Deutsche Rundschau”, refers to the repressive methods that were continued in the Soviet occupation zone after 1945 with the same severity and objectives as before 1945. Together with other democrats, he refused to continue working in the PEN Club Germany in 1947 as long as communists like Stefan Heym were working there, who justified and approved of such means and methods. Again and again, however, he also pointed out the groups of dissatisfied and unteachable people who used the newly developed democratic structures to form a new Nazi network at an early stage. He called this phenomenon a disease, a neurosis, even if this explanation earned him numerous anonymous threats about his connections with the July 20th Circle. The tenor of his post-war publications, of course, was not complaint and indictment, but the endeavor to recognize positive changes with the greatest possible independence and to promote them as best as possible, such as the signals for European integration, Franco-German rapprochement and reconciliation, the development of the Catholic workers' associations.

His temporary function as President of the German Academy for Language and Poetry , whose honorary president he was appointed in 1952, and his election to the Broadcasting Council of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart show the high social esteem he was accorded.

For health reasons, Rudolf Pechel moved to Switzerland in 1958, where he died on December 28, 1961 in Zweisimmen in the canton of Bern.

honors and awards

• 1952 Grand Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• 1952 Honorary President of the German Academy for Language and Poetry
• 1957 Honorary doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Free University of Berlin
• 1957 Goethe plaque from the city of Frankfurt am Main .

Works

• German present. Essays and lectures 1945-1952 . Key note Verlag , Darmstadt 1953.
• Between the lines . A magazine's struggle for freedom and justice. Essays by Rudolf Pechel 1932–1942. Wiesentheid 1948.
• French policy on the Rhine in American lighting. Selected items from the diary of Henry T. Allen, Commander-in-Chief of the American Occupation Forces. Berlin (Reimar Hobbing) 1925.
• Rococo. The gallant age in letters - memoirs - diaries . Collected by Rudolf Pechel. Introduced by Felix Poppenburg. German publishing house. Berlin u. a. 1913.
• German Rundschau. Eight decades of German intellectual life . Rütten & Loening. Hamburg 1961.
• German resistance . Edited by Rudolf Pechel. Zurich 1947.
• German mirror . Berlin-Wedding 1946.
• We are not alone . German publishing house 1949.

literature

• Heidrun Ehrke-Rotermund: Hitler - a mass fraud. Images as a medium of the “hidden writing” in Rudolf Pechel's book review “Lob des Scharlatans” (1938). In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society. Vol. 56, 2012, pp. 227-258.
• Heidrun Ehrke-Rotermund: Rudolf Pechel and Wilmont Haacke - two intellectuals in the “Third Reich” or: From “good acquaintances” to non-persons. In: Euphorion. Journal of the History of Literature. Edited by Wolfgang Adam. Vol. 108, 2014, H. 4, pp. 417-448.
• Andreas Herbst :  Pechel, Rudolf . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Volker Mauersberger : Rudolf Pechel and the "Deutsche Rundschau". A study on conservative-revolutionary journalism in the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) (= studies on journalism. Volume 16). Schünemann, Bremen 1971, ISBN 3-7961-3023-2 .
• Volker Mauersberger: “Between the lines”? Rudolf Pechel and his journalistic struggle for freedom and justice. In Christoph Studt : “servant of the state” or “resistance between the lines”? The role of the press in the 'Third Reich' . XVIII. Königswinterer Conference February 2005. Lit, Berlin 2007 (Series of publications by the Research Association July 20, Vol. 8.)
• Erwin Rotermund : Camouflage and protection in Rudolf Pechel's essay "Siberia" (1937). A study on the “hidden spelling” in the “Third Reich” . In: Textual Criticism and Interpretation. Festschrift for Karl Konrad Polheim on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Edited by Heimo Reinitzer. Bern / Frankfurt a. M./New York / Paris 1987, pp. 417-438.
• Sigrid Schneider:  Pechel, Rudolf Ludwig August Martin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 150 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature about Rudolf Pechel in the state bibliography MV
• Literature by and about Rudolf Pechel in the catalog of the German National Library