Ulrich Wille junior

Ulrich Sigmund Robert Georges Wille (born October 12, 1877 in Thun , † February 14, 1959 in Meilen ) was a Swiss officer.

Career and politics

Wille studied law and received a doctorate in this subject. He then embarked on a military career and initially became an instruction officer in the Swiss Army . Since 1931 he was chief of arms of the infantry and since 1933 high corps commander . Wille was the son of the Swiss general Ulrich Wille and, like his father, was regarded as pro-German during the First World War .

Shortly after the World War he made contact with Adolf Hitler and in August 1923 invited Hitler and Rudolf Hess to a lecture in the Villa Schönberg, which belonged to the Wille family, in Zurich . Hitler is said to have succeeded in organizing a very large amount of donations from industrialists and private individuals, which were used to finance the Hitler putsch in Munich two months later .

At the beginning of the Second World War , Wille was seen as an opponent of General Henri Guisan , the commander in chief of the Swiss Army . Even then, he was still considered to be pro-German and a sympathizer of National Socialism. In 1942, Guisan Wille dismissed the army. In the following year, the head of the SS main office considered Wille to be too old for political leadership tasks in the service of National Socialist Germany in Switzerland.

family

Villa Schönberg , family seat until 1945

Ulrich Wille juniors grandparents on his father's side were the writer Eliza Wille geb. Sloman and the journalist François Wille and on the maternal side the military and diplomat Friedrich Wilhelm von Bismarck and Amalie Julie Thibaut . His parents were the officer Ulrich Wille and Clara Countess von Bismarck. The equestrian and amateur photographer Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille was Willes' sister and her daughter, the writer, photographer and globetrotter Annemarie Schwarzenbach , was his niece. Wille was married twice, first to Inez Rieter (1879–1941) and later to Klara Bachmann. His daughter Gundalena (1908–2000) married the German physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker in 1937 .

The Wille couple lived in the Schönberg villa on Zurich's Rietberg . Richard Wagner lived here for a short time. In the neighboring Villa Wesendonck in 1912 Kaiser Wilhelm II was the guest of Wille's mother-in-law.

The archive of the Wille family is not accessible for historical research.

Co-founder of Pro Juventute

In November 1912 Wille was involved in founding the organization Pro Juventute ( lat. "For the youth"). He was President of the Foundation Commission and Vice-President of the Foundation Council, which he held until his death.

literature

• Pro Juventute (Ed.): Ulrich Wille (1877–1959): In memory of Oberstkorpsommandant Ulrich Wille, President of the Pro Juventute Foundation Commission, 1912–1959. Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1960.
• Rudolf Jaun , Michael Olsansky: Will, Ulrich. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Alexis Schwarzenbach : "On the situation in Germany": Hitler's speech in Zurich on August 30, 1923 . In: Traverse 13/1 (2006). Pp. 176-189.
• Beat Grossrieder: The man who brought Hitler to Switzerland . In: Observer , 8/2012 of April 5, 2012.

Web links

• Archive of Pro Juventute in the finding aids of the Swiss Social Archives
• Ulrich Wille in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Newspaper article about Ulrich Wille junior in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tina Fassbind: Where Wagner loved . Tages-Anzeiger , October 17, 2011
2. ^ Willi Gautschi : Hitler's visit to Zurich in 1923 , separate print from the NZZ on December 29, 1978
3. ↑ Markus Somm: Battle of the Generals . ( Memento of the original from March 13, 2013 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. World Week 34/2009. 
4. ↑ Jakob Tanner: "Réduit national" and foreign trade: interactions between military dissuasion and economic cooperation with the Axis powers. In: Philipp Sarasin , Regina Wecker (eds.): Raubgold, Reduit, refugees. On the history of Switzerland in the Second World War. Chronos, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-905312-56-5 , pp. 81-103.
5. ↑ Beat Grossrieder: Pro Juventute founder Ulrich Wille: The man who brought Hitler to Switzerland . Observer 8/2012 from April 11, 2012
6. ^ Museum Rietberg : HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM RIETBERG AND ITS VILLAS
7. ^ Rudolf Jaun, Michael Olsansky: Ulrich Wille. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . May 10, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2019 .
8. ^ Museum Rietberg : HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM RIETBERG AND ITS VILLAS