Theodor Duesterberg

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Alfred Hugenberg (left) and Theodor Duesterberg at the meeting of the German Nationalists for the presidential election in the Sportpalast in Berlin (March 1932)

Theodor Duesterberg (born October 19, 1875 in Darmstadt , † November 4, 1950 in Hameln ) was a top functionary in the Weimar Republic and long-time chairman of the German national paramilitary steel helmets .

Life

Theodor Duesterberg was the son of General Doctor Georg Duesterberg and his wife Elis, née Collmann. In 1893 he joined the Prussian army after training at the cadet institutes in Potsdam and Groß-Lichterfelde . 1900/01 he was a member of the East Asian expeditionary corps sent to China for the Boxer Rebellion . Two years later, Duesterberg was made an officer .

During the First World War , Duesterberg worked in the War Ministry as head of the Allied Armies department and was eventually promoted to lieutenant colonel.

Election advertising for Duesterberg in 1932

In protest against the Versailles peace treaty, he resigned in 1919, attended history lectures at Berlin University and decided to become politically active. In the same year he joined the German National People's Party (DNVP) and was appointed party secretary in Halle (Saale) in October. He left the party in 1923 after several disagreements with the party leadership and now joined the monarchist- nationalist military association Stahlhelm. Duesterberg quickly made a career here, in the year of his accession he became leader of the Central Germany Association he had built up and one year later one of the two federal leaders alongside Franz Seldte .

"The Stahlhelm and Hitler" by Duesterberg from 1949.

In 1929, the Stahlhelm initiated a referendum against the Young Plan together with the DNVP and the NSDAP . Two years later, Duesterberg advocated the collaboration of the Stahlhelm with DNVP, NSDAP and other anti-republican groups of the extreme right in the rather fragile Harzburg Front and in society for the study of fascism . In the Reich presidential election in 1932 Duesterberg was nominated by the DNVP as a candidate, but, perhaps influenced by the discrediting by the NSDAP as a “ quarter Jew ”, it did poorly with 6.8% of the votes in the first ballot and withdrew his candidacy for Reich President . Despite the campaign, he was offered a post in the hastily formed Hitler cabinet as Minister of Labor in 1933 , which Franz Seldte then took. Due to the synchronization of the steel helmet, Duesterberg gave up the chairmanship there.

During the Röhm affair in 1934 Duesterberg was briefly imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp . After his release, things became quiet around him. It is known that he sought contact with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , but never became a member of the resistance .

In 1949 he published the work Der Stahlhelm und Hitler , in which he defended his political activities and emphasized his distance from National Socialism.

Fonts

  • The Stahlhelm and Hitler. With a foreword by Wolfgang Müller. Wolfenbütteler Verlagsanstalt, Wolfenbüttel and Hanover 1949.

literature

Web links

Commons : Theodor Duesterberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Brüning : Memoirs 1918-1934 , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt GmbH, Stuttgart, 1970, p. 467.
personal data
SURNAME Duesterberg, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Top functionary in the Weimar Republic; Chairman of the Stahlhelmbund
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH November 4th 1950
Place of death Hamelin