Theodor Casella

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Theodor Casella (born August 8, 1900 , † November 9, 1923 in Munich ) was a participant in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch and a German putschist. He became known as one of the killed participants in the Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch of 1923, to whom Adolf Hitler later dedicated the first volume of his book Mein Kampf .

Life

The putschists killed on November 9, 1923 were honored between 1933 and 1945 as " martyrs of the movement " and at the same time instrumentalized by Nazi propaganda ; Casella 2nd row from the top, 1st from the left.

Theodor Casella's father was a professional soldier and fell to the rank of major in the First World War . Trained in the Cadet Corps , Casella joined the 7th Field Artillery Regiment in Munich in 1917 as a flag junior and came to the Western Front , where he took part in the 1918 spring offensive . Casella was promoted to lieutenant and was awarded the Iron Cross II. Class , the Cross of Merit with Swords . After suffering a serious wound in October 1918, shortly before the end of the war, Casella retired from the army in 1919.

In 1919 he enrolled at the University of Munich and also worked as a bank clerk. After the proclamation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he joined the Freikorps Epp , with which he participated in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . Then he was a member of the resident army for the 4th Munich district. In 1920 and 1921 he fought with the Freikorps in the Ruhr area and in Upper Silesia .

Around 1922 Casella joined the Wehrverband Reichskriegsflagge , which was founded by Ernst Röhm as a spin-off from the Wehrverband Reichsflagge , in which he finally took over duties as a company commander. On May 1, 1923, he took part in the planned deployment of the right-wing military organizations on the Munich Oberwiesenfeld as a start-up for a (ultimately not triggered) völkisch putsch.

In November 1923 Casella participated with other members of the Reich War Flag in the failed Hitler putsch in Munich. On the night of November 8th to 9th, 1923, he took part in the occupation of the Munich military district command, led by Röhm, by a raiding party of the Reich war flag. When, late in the morning of November 9, some of the occupiers of the military district command fired at members of the Reichswehr who demanded the handover of the building, the army opened fire on the building: First of all, Casella's fellow putschist Martin Faust , who was standing in the courtyard of the building, fatally hit. Casella himself was badly injured when he tried to take Faust for cover. After the fire ended shortly afterwards, some of the remaining putschists, including Heinrich Himmler , Karl Osswald and Walther Lembert, recovered the two men and took them across Schönfeldstrasse to the Josephinum Hospital , where Casella died an hour later.

Hitler dedicated the first volume of his book Mein Kampf to Casella and 15 other killed coup participants as early as 1925 , where they were named in the foreword. After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 was at the Feldherrnhalle a plaque with the names of such persons placed in Munich, by a guard of honor of the SS was honored. Every passer-by who passed this board was obliged to honor it with the Hitler salute. In 1935, two "Temples of Honor" were erected on Königsplatz as a common grave for this group of people. In the same year Casella was exhumed , taken there along with the rest of the dead and reburied in bronze sarcophagi . Until 1945 they were included in the National Socialist cult of the "martyrs of the movement" .

During the Nazi era, a number of streets in the German Reich were named after Casella. Theodor Casella streets were in Düsseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Heilbronn , Leverkusen, Recklinghausen, Leslau (in the Wartheland ) and Wuppertal.

literature

• Georg Franz-Willing : Putsch and period of prohibition of the Hitler movement, November 1923 - February 1925 . KW Schütz-Verlag , Preußisch Oldendorf 1977, ISBN 3-87725-085-8 .
• Peter Köpf : The Königsplatz in Munich. A German place. Ch.links, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8615-3372-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ State Archives Munich: Police Directorate Munich No. 6705, Bl. 110f. (Digitized version) .
2. ^ Street directory Düsseldorf 1935, letter T
3. ↑ ^{a b} Marcus Weidner: The street naming practice in Westphalia and Lippe during National Socialism (as of July 14, 2014)
4. ↑ Alexander Renz: Chronicle of the city of Heilbronn. 1995, p. 513.
5. ↑ Theodor-Casella-Str. (formerly) on www.leverkusen.com
6. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from February 27, 2016 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. 
7. ^ Ludger Breitbach: Historical traces on site. Gelsenkirchen under National Socialism. 1998, p. 98.