Rudolf Zilkens

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Zilken's signature in 1934

Rudolf Zilkens (born October 18, 1899 in Cologne-Ehrenfeld ; † 1948 , Soviet Union ) was a German National Socialist politician and writer . He was a member of the Prussian Landtag ( NSDAP , 1932–33 ) and a member of the Reichstag . Zilkens was best known as a " Reich speaker of the NSDAP ".

Live and act

Youth and education

Zilkens was the twelfth child of the well-known Rhenish politician Franz Joseph Zilkens (1847–1915). He was a city councilor in Cologne for the German Center Party and was considered "the uncrowned King of Ehrenfeld" because of his social position as a brickworks owner and large landowner. Franz Zilkens had made a special contribution to developing Ehrenfeld into a residential area for high demands ( Ehrenfeldgürtel , Eichendorffstrasse ).

Rudolf Zilkens volunteered at the front of the First World War in 1917 and was immediately assigned to a regiment troop. He was badly wounded in fighting near Reims , so that he had to stay in a hospital until 1919 .

From 1919 Zilkens studied medicine, art and political science before working successively as an earthworker, commercial apprentice, director and journalist .

Political activity

Essener SA on the way to the Nazi party rally in Weimar, July 1926. Including Josef Terboven (front, middle, in civilian clothes) and possibly also Zilkens (unidentified)

Politically, Zilkens began to be active in circles of the extreme political right after the First World War: After he had temporarily belonged to the Stahlhelm-Kampfbund , he joined the NSDAP, for which he developed an extensive activity as a political promotional speaker. He moved to Essen and, as the “Reich speaker” of the NSDAP, spoke 1,500 times in five years in meetings and, according to his own statements, devoted himself to the propagandistic “struggle for the workers' souls”. In his Westphalian homeland, this earned him the title “Drummer of the Ruhr Area ” in National Socialist circles , which he also gave his works. In March 1929 the Duisburg police president Heinrich Meyer (SPD) filed a criminal complaint against Zilkens under the Republic Protection Act for allegedly insulting the Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski .

Along with NSDAP Gauleiter Josef Terboven, Zilkens became one of the most important National Socialist speakers and politicians in the Rhineland and was a “prime example” of National Socialist advertising among the workers. How this advertising took place is described in a report by a KPD comrade for his Gauleitung Ruhr from November 1932:

“The local group chairman of the NSDAP, Zilkens [...] invited communists to a restaurant in Essen. In order to gain their trust, he first dealt with the communist idea. Although there are fundamental contradictions between the two views, overall there are also numerous similarities. The idea of ​​battle is common to both movements. However, it must be considered a utopia to want to achieve the goals of the working class on an international basis. Only the National Socialists could be considered as saviors of the working class, since their worldview is not materialistic. "

As early as December 12, 1930, an extended jury in Oberhausen was negotiating against Zilkens, because he had announced in a meeting months earlier that heads would roll when the NSDAP came to power. a. that of State Secretary Otto Meissner . The police then broke up the meeting. Since Zilkens did not appear for the trial, the trial was adjourned and an arrest warrant was issued against Zilkens.

Joseph Goebbels , then Reich Propaganda Leader of the NSDAP , wrote in his diary about a speech by Zilken in July 1931:

“ Dresden . On the cycling track. 40,000 people. Imposing and gorgeous rally. First Zilkens-Essen speaks. Very weak and stupid. Too overloaded with 'joke'. How embarassing! Then I will speak for an hour. [...] Late in the evening, Zilkens tells me that Göring and Auwi are rushing against me on the Ruhr. Shall they."

In October 1931, Zilkens yelled at a left-wing heckler at a Nazi rally:

"We will grind your eggs in the Third Reich so that you can hear the angels whistling in heaven."

Also in 1931, as the local group leader of Essen, the Zilkens were said to have "permanent carousing feasts", "moral offenses", " undermining meeting money" and "carving debts". Which is why 46 NSDAP members split from him and the party in Essen in the same year and founded a local group of the “Revolutionary NSDAP” (also “Black Front”) under Otto Strasser .

Zilkens was involved in numerous hall battles. In early 1932, for example, as a speaker at a KPD meeting in Duisburg, he was knocked down and stabbed several times.

As the political editor of the National Socialist newspaper Die neue Front , Zilkens joined the Prussian Landtag in May 1932 , to which he belonged until 1933. At the end of October 1932 a criminal complaint was filed against Zilkens because he should have insulted Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen in Osnabrück on October 22, 1932 . After his work as a member of the state parliament, Zilkens was archivist for the National Socialist parliamentary group in the Prussian state parliament.

As a NSDAP functionary and “ old fighter ” of the party, Zilkens was a local group leader, district leader , Gau propaganda leader and city ​​councilor in Essen . He was also a member of the Reichstag and was first on the list of candidates of the NSDAP for the Düsseldorf-West constituency.

After the " seizure of power ", Zilkens was a department head in the Reich Propaganda Office in Berlin and was noticed because he was said to have behaved badly in front of the guests of a hotel when he was drunk.

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Time from 1933 until death
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Rudolf Zilkens died in 1948 in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Soviet Union. His wife Eva Josephine Zilkens (* 1899, nee Annen) died in 1986 in Nowra ( Australia ). In addition to their son of the same name, both had another child.

Writing activity

As a writer, Zilkens published a number of writings that were in the spirit of blood-and-soil poetry : his novel Das Klingende Herz (1933) was described as the “first great Nazi confessional novel ”. He dedicated the foreword to his work German Songs of Freedom, Love and Death (1934) to Georg Sluyterman von Langeweyde , who illustrated the book with thirteen woodcuts and the cover picture. In this foreword he writes revealingly:

"[...] that our great time has a right like no other to have the youth sing in it, because precisely now the youth have found a future again. But I want this youth, for whom we fought and bled too, to sing songs that arose from our time and the spirit of our struggle. "

After the Second World War , Zilkens found little response. In the Soviet occupation zone , most of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be discarded.

Fonts (selection)

  • Prometheus . RZ Verlag am Rhein, Cologne 1925.
  • The struggle for the working soul . In: Our will and way. Issue 6 / June 1933, p. 152 ff.
  • Against national kitsch . In: freedom struggle . Dresden, May 19, 1933.
  • The ringing heart . Korn, Breslau 1933.
  • German songs of freedom, love and death . JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1934.
  • Drumming on the Ruhr . Weber, Essen 1935.
  • Holidays in Masuria: A Book of Comradeship . Publishing house Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, Berlin-Schöneberg 1935.
  • Always a soldier: poems from war and fighting times . Küster & Co., Essen 1937.

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Baldur von Schirach : Pioneers of the Third Reich . Central Office for the German Struggle for Freedom, Essen 1933, p. 243 ff . (with a photograph by Zilken).
  • Herbert Kühr: Parties and elections in the city and district of Essen during the Weimar Republic . Droste, 1973, ISBN 3-7700-5072-X .
  • Ruhr Area Literature Prize : Literature Atlas NRW 1992 . Volksbl.-Verlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-923243-96-0 .
  • Enno Stahl, Cornelia Ilbrig: Literary life on the Rhine. Volume 3: Commentary and Register . Heinrich Heine Institute, Düsseldorf 2008, ISBN 978-3-936698-08-4 .
  • President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Office Files 1933-1945 , Part 5: The John Franklin Carter Files on German Nazi Party Members , Reel 23, List of Key Nazis, Entry 1044. In: Microfilm Edition of Research Collections in American Politics . Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections, General Editor: William E. Leuchtenburg

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralph Trost: A completely destroyed city: National Socialism, war and end of war in Xanten . Waxmann Verlag, Münster 2004, p. 79 ( gwdg.de [PDF]). Also referred to as MdR contemporary but not verifiable according to Peter Brommer: The Diocese of Trier under National Socialism from the perspective of party and state: source publication (=  volume 126 of sources and treatises on the Middle Rhine church history ). Self-published by the Society for Middle Rhine Church History, 2009, ISBN 978-3-929135-61-9 , ISSN  0480-7480 , footnote 1, p. 121 .
  2. ↑ Kölnischer Geschichtsverein (ed.): Yearbook . tape 70 . SH-Verlag, 1999, p. 170 .
  3. ↑ The German Empire from 1918 to the present day . Verlag für Presse, Wirtschaft und Politik, GMBH, 1932, p. 562 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Rudolf Zilkens: German songs of freedom, love and death . JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1934, p. 47 .
  5. ↑ Rudolf Zilkens: The struggle for the workers' soul . In: Our will and way. Issue 6 / June 1933, p. 152 ff.
  6. ^ Wolfram Pyta: Contributions to the history of parliamentarism and political parties . tape 87 . Droste, 1989, ISBN 978-3-7700-5153-3 , footnote 96, p. 303 .
  7. ^ Günter Gleising: Heinz Renner: A political biography. P. 65. RuhrEcho, 2000.
  8. ↑ Hartwig Gebhardt: National Socialist Advertising in the Workers: The Illustrated "ABZ Work in Image and Time" . (PDF) In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 33rd year, 2nd edition (April 1985), pp. 310–338.
  9. ↑ Michael Koth: Speech in Leuna . In: kds-im-netz.net (Kampfbund Deutscher Sozialisten)
  10. ↑ Christian Striefler: Struggle for power: Communists and National Socialists at the end of the Weimar Republic . Propylaea, 1993, ISBN 978-3-549-05208-2 , pp. 78 ff .
  11. ↑ Social Democratic Press Service . Self-published, Berlin December 12, 1930 ( fes.de [PDF; accessed July 20, 2013]).
  12. ↑ Joseph Goebbels, Elke Fröhlich: The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . Saur, 2000, ISBN 978-3-598-23730-0 , pp. 52 .
  13. ↑ Incorrectly identified as Werner Willikens in Joseph Goebbels: Diaries 1924–1945: 1943–1945 . Ed .: Ralf Georg Reuth (=  Volume 5 of Joseph Goebbels Diaries 1924–1945 in five volumes ). Piper, 1992, ISBN 3-492-11515-2 , ISSN  0179-5147 , pp. 2283 .
  14. ↑ Tim Walther: National Socialism in Essen - Terror had long since begun. In: derwesten.de . January 30, 2013, accessed January 12, 2015 .
  15. ↑ March 12, 1931 . In: Social Democratic Press Service . Berlin ( fes.de [PDF]).
  16. ^ Herbert Kühr: Parties and elections in the city and district of Essen during the Weimar Republic, p. 148.Droste, 1973.
  17. ^ Wilhelm Heinz Schröder / Wilhelm Weege / Martina Zech: Collective biography of the members of the Landtag of the Weimar Republic 1918–1933. Extract from the BIOWEIL database. Collection and biographical reconstruction of the approx. 6000 state parliamentarians of the Weimar Republic. URL: (accessed on July 25, 2011) Prussia Total number of representatives: 1382 ( Memento from March 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: hsr-trans.zhsf.uni-koeln.de
  18. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Rogge: Archival sources on the political crisis situation during the Weimar period in the former territories of Lower Saxony: an analytical inventory (=  publications of the Lower Saxony archive administration . Volume 48 ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991, ISBN 978-3-525-35530-5 , pp. 52 .
  19. ^ Franz Josef Heyen: National Socialism in Everyday Life (=  Volume 9 of publications by the State Archives Administration Rhineland-Palatinate ). Boldt, 1967, p. 372 .
  20. ↑ List of candidates of the NSDAP for the 23rd district of Düsseldorf-West (Wahlkreisverband IX Rheinland-Nord). In: BA NS 26/579.
  21. ↑ Ian Kershaw: The Hitler Myth: Volksmeinung u. Propaganda in the Third Reich . Ed .: Institute for Contemporary History (=  quarterly books for contemporary history . Volume 41 ). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980, ISBN 978-3-421-01985-1 , p. 86 .
  22. ↑ Rudolf Zilkens: German songs of freedom, love and death , postscript. JP Bachem Verlag , Cologne 1934.
  23. ^ Rudolf Zilkens: German songs of freedom, love and death . JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 1934, p. 5.
  24. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of the literature to be sorted out 1946: letters Y and Z In: polunbi.de
  25. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of the literature to be sorted out 1947: Letters X, Y and Z In: polunbi.de
  26. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet occupation zone, list of the literature to be sorted out 1948: letters X, Y and Z In: polunbi.de
  27. ↑ Klaus D. Patzwall : The blood order of the NSDAP . Militaria-Archiv Patzwall, Hamburg 1985, p. 83 ( limited preview in the Google book search [accessed on 19 July 2013] " Groß-Gaglow via Cottbus " is noted as the place of residence ).
personal data
SURNAME Zilkens, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, political speaker and NSDAP functionary
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne-Ehrenfeld
DATE OF DEATH 1948
Place of death Soviet Union