Sklarek scandal
The Sklarek scandal describes a corruption process that began with the arrest of the brothers Max, Leo and Willi Sklarek on September 26, 1929, and its consequences. The scandal played a major role in the political disputes before and during the Great Depression , influenced the local elections in Berlin and continued until the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933.
The Sklarek case
In 1926 the Sklarek brothers, three sons of a Russian-Jewish immigrant, acquired the warehouse of the clothing sales company, with which the city of Berlin had covered the needs of its administrative officials during the First World War , and were given the right to continue to supply the city offices. In the years that followed, the company issued numerous forged invoices. When the fraud was discovered, the damage amounted to more than 10 million marks .
consequences
The press of all political directions quickly took up the case, although or precisely because the brothers were well "networked" in every direction. Max Sklarek was a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP), which u. a. provided the mayor of Berlin, Gustav Boess . Leo and Willi Sklarek had been members of the SPD since 1928 , which made up the largest parliamentary group in the city council . Donations to the German National People's Party (DNVP) and the communist Red Aid were soon announced .
Theodor Wolff , editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt , wrote on October 13, 1929:
- “The three Sklarek brothers, like Wilhelm II at a later point in time , no longer knew any parties. Or ... they all knew ... they had republican soup , German national and ethnic drinking, communist crackers. "
As the scandal broadened, the Prussian state parliament decided on October 17, 1929 to set up a parliamentary “ committee of inquiry to clarify the mismanagement in the Berlin city administration”, the first of its kind Resign November 1929.
In the election campaign leading up to the local elections on November 17, 1929, the parties accused each other of being involved in the scandal. The beneficiaries of these disputes were the KPD and the NSDAP , which each gained 13 seats in the city council. Although communists and social democrats continued to have a majority in the Berlin city parliament, their willingness to work together suffered lasting damage from the sharp and personal conflicts during the Sklarek scandal.
The trial against those involved dragged on until 1932 and ended with the Sklarek brothers being sentenced to four years in prison each. Numerous politicians and administrative officials also resigned, were dismissed from service or convicted.
In 1933 the National Socialists butchered the Sklarek case again for themselves when the trial was resumed. Among other things, Lord Mayor Gustav Boess has now been sentenced to nine months of solitary confinement.
Willi Sklarek died in Prague on March 18, 1938 , Leo Sklarek was shot in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on May 22, 1942 , and Max Sklarek was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp on September 30, 1944 .
See also
- Barmat scandal (Barmat Kutisker scandal)
literature
- Donna Harsch: The Sklarek Scandal in 1929 and the Social Democratic Reaction. In: Ludger Heid, Arnold Paucker (Hrsg.): Jews and German labor movement until 1933. Social utopias and religious-cultural traditions (= series of scientific treatises of the Leo-Baeck-Institut , Volume 49). Mohr, Tübingen 1992, ISBN 3-16-140162-X , pp. 194-213.
- Stephan Malinowski : Political scandals as distorting mirrors of democracy. The Barmat and Sklarek cases in the calculation of the Weimar Right. In: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung , 5 (1996), pp. 46-64.
- Bjoern Weigel: Sklarek Scandal (1929) . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Hostility to Jews in the past and present . Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, pp. 381–384.