Werner von Alvensleben (politician, 1875)

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Werner von Alvensleben

Werner von Alvensleben (born July 4, 1875 in Neugattersleben , † June 30, 1947 in Bremen-Vegesack ) was a German businessman and politician.

Life

He came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was the second son of Werner Graf von Alvensleben (1840–1929) and Anna von Veltheim (1853–1897). His younger brother was Bodo Graf von Alvensleben-Neugattersleben , who later became president of the German men's club. After studying law, he entered the army, was a lieutenant in Infantry Regiment No. 24 and attended the War Academy in 1904/05. He then retired from military service, fell out with his father, who disinherited him, and went to Vancouver / Canada. His younger brother Gustav Konstantin von Alvensleben , who had worked his way up from simple worker to successful entrepreneur, already lived there. Since then he has been active as a businessman with export and financing transactions. In 1909 he married Countess Alexandra von Einsiedel (1888–1947). The three daughters Alexandra (1910–1968), Anna Caroline (1911–2003) and Harriet and their son Werner emerged from the marriage. His daughter Alexandra married the manager Wilhelm Roloff in 1934 . One grandson is the photographer Christian von Alvensleben (son of Anna Caroline).

During the First World War he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, was later Ordonnanzoffizier in the Army Group Gallwitz, Adjutant of the Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine Hermann von Eichhorn and finally personal adjutant of the Emperor to Pavlo Skoropadskyj , the Hetman of the Ukraine in Kiev . In this capacity he campaigned for an independent Ukraine.

After the war he became more and more involved in politics in addition to his professional activity. If he was a member of the Conservative Party before the war, now he has not joined any political party and mainly worked in the background. He was also not a member of the men's club, whose president was his younger brother Bodo. Instead, he had his own inconspicuous office at Magdeburger Strasse 33 in Berlin, in the immediate vicinity of the Reichswehr Ministry, from where he worked as a political thread spinner and subcarrier. His right hand was his secretary Maud Volmer. In May 1932, Hitler and Kurt von Schleicher met in this office to agree on the overthrow of the Brüning government - which was then carried out at the turn of the month - and to determine the modalities under which the NSDAP would be willing to tolerate the successor government (repeal of the then existing SA ban on dissolving the Reichstag, etc.).

In June 1930 the "German Association for the Protection of Occidental Culture" was founded. Werner von Alvensleben became its chairman. His goal was to gather all conservative forces in a comprehensive conservative party with a plan for fundamental “class” reforms in the state and economy. Politically he belonged to the inner circle around the later Reichswehr Minister and Reich Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher . As part of the “taming concept” pursued by Schleicher, he was also in contact with leading National Socialists. So he was u. a. worked as a courier between Berlin and Gut Neudeck (private residence of Reich President Hindenburg) during the negotiations between Schleicher and the NSDAP in May 1932. This was confirmed by the then Chancellor Heinrich Brüning : "I learned that a courier from Schleicher had been driving to Neudeck every day for eight days." He also had close contacts with the Chief of Army Command, Colonel General Kurt Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord .

After Adolf Hitler came to power, however, he soon fell out of favor. In connection with the so-called Röhm putsch and the murder of Schleicher on June 30, 1934, Hitler said in a speech in the Reichstag on July 13, 1934: “ Röhm took over the relationship with General von through the mediation of a thoroughly corrupt impostor, Mr. von A. Sneak up. ”Werner von Alvensleben was meant. He was imprisoned for four weeks on June 30, 1934, but escaped shooting - probably due to an intervention by Himmler (Glum, 1964, p. 456/457). After the death of Reich President Hindenburg on August 2, 1934, as captain of the reserve, he refused to take the legally prescribed oath of allegiance to Hitler (Bielenberg, 1969, p. 230) and was arrested again for a few months. With reference to the Hitler speech in the Reichstag, he remained the target of public attacks by the Nazi press. In January 1937 he was once again put into "protective custody" for "state abuse" (Jacobson, 1984, p. 778). When he was released on August 19, 1937, he was ordered to leave Neugattersleben only with the permission of the Secret State Police. His passport was confiscated.

Later he had contacts to Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Ludwig Beck through Hammerstein and - as Rudolf Pechel wrote in his book "German Resistance" - at the end of 1941 he was privy to the plans for a coup. On June 20, 1944, he was arrested again on other grounds and charged. In the trial before the People's Court on February 1, 1945, he could not be proven that he was complicit in the assassination plans, but he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for defeatist statements during a tea party in August 1943, whereby his age and poor health were mitigated affected the sentence (Jacobson, 1984, pp. 774-780).

In April 1945 the Americans freed him from Magdeburg prison. After Neugattersleben had become a Soviet zone of occupation, he moved to live with his daughter in Bremen-Vegesack and died there on June 30, 1947.

literature

  • Hellmut Kretzschmar : Historical news of the Alvensleben family since 1800 . Castle b. M. 1930, p. 75.
  • Rudolf Pechel: German resistance . Erlenberg-Zurich 1947, pp. 175, 299 f.
  • Martin H. Sommerfeldt: I was there . Darmstadt 1949, pp. 13-15, 68-69, 74-75.
  • Eberhard von Vietsch: Arnold Rechberg and the problem of the political orientation towards the West after the 1st World War . 1958, pp. 94, 129.
  • Friedrich Glum: Between Science, Economy and Politics . Bonn 1964, pp. 456/457.
  • Thilo Vogelsang: Kurt von Schleicher. A general as a politician . Göttingen 1965, p. 107.
  • Christabel Bielenberg: When I was German, 1934-1945 . Munich 1969, p. 230.
  • Hans Adolf Jacobson (Ed.): Mirror image of a conspiracy , Volume 2, Stuttgart 1984, pp. 774-780 (reproduction of the judgment of the People's Court of February 1, 1945 in the criminal case against Werner von Alvensleben and Dr. Rudolf Pechel ).
  • Kunrat Frhr. v. Hammerstein: Scouting party . Stuttgart 1963, pp. 50, 55-59, 71, 206-207, 223, 242.
  • Annali von Alvensleben: Lifted off . Hamburg 1998 (autobiography of a daughter of Werner von Alvensleben).
  • Stephan Malinowski : From King to Leader. German nobility under National Socialism . Berlin 2003, pp. 428/429.
  • Antje Vollmer: double life. Heinrich and Gottliebe von Lehndorff in the resistance against Hitler and Ribbentrop Frankfurt / Main 2010 (413 pp.), Pp. 115–117, p. 292.
  • Jörn Jacob Rohner, Vera von Lehndorff: Veruschka. My life . Cologne 2011, pp. 52–56.
  • Barbara Orth (Ed.): Gestapo in the operating room. Report from hospital doctor Charlotte Pommer . Berlin 2013 (deals with the efforts of the daughter Alexandra Roloff to provide her father Werner von Alvensleben with information and food during his imprisonment in 1944/45).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sefton Delmer: The Germans and I , 1963, p. 172.
  2. ^ Sefton Delmer: Die Deutschen und ich , 1963, p. 172 (Delmer erroneously writes Volmer's name Vollmer).
  3. ↑ Vogelsang, 1965, p. 107; Sommerfeldt, 1949, pp. 13-15.
  4. ^ Correspondence in the Gutsarchiv Neugattersleben, LHASA, Rep H 160, No. 225, 1931–34
  5. ^ Heinrich Brüning: Memoirs 1918–1934, Stuttgart, p. 594.
  6. ↑ The Attack , No. 19, January 31, 1935.
  7. ^ Discharge protocol from the Neugattersleben archive
personal data
SURNAME Alvensleben, Werner von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German businessman and politician
DATE OF BIRTH 4th July 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Neugattersleben
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1947
Place of death Bremen-Vegesack