Wilhelm Fanderl

Wilhelm Fanderl (born February 6, 1911 in Austria ; †?) Was a National Socialist writer , journalist , favorite of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , "Hauptschriftleiter" (editor-in-chief) of 12 Uhr Blatt , a Berlin tabloid, and possibly editor of the last NS - Hold on newspaper Der Panzerbär .

Life

Promotion in the NSDAP

In 1929, at the age of 18, Fanderl joined the illegal Austrian branch of the NSDAP , switched to the German mother party in 1932 and received the Golden Party Badge in 1933. He worked for the Nazi newspaper The Attack , wrote propaganda books and, after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, became the head of the 12 o'clock newspaper , which was already quite sensational during the Weimar Republic and which henceforth preferred the social life of the Nazi crowd, as well as Dedicated to sports and film topics. The good-looking and still youthful Fanderl was vain and in need of recognition, always appeared elegant and was considered a completely unpredictable and dangerous “psychopath who was prone to nervous breakdowns” ( Michael H. Kater ). The influential Nazi journalist liked to surround himself with celebrities and looked for a glamorous appearance: Fanderl went hunting with boxer Max Schmeling , with actor Heinrich George at the film ball, the legendary and "martial" Nuremberg soccer star Hans Kalb ("good-natured giant") he portrayed. As a passionate visitor to nightclubs, Fanderl was also a regular in the Roxy-Bar in Joachimsthaler Straße 25/26 in Berlin and settled disputes in which Schmeling was involved. It was about a legal dispute between the artists Rolf von Goth and the chamber singer Michael Bohnen , both regulars' table members who had quarreled in 1938 over the consequences of a possible outbreak of war. As a close confidante of Goebbels, Fanderl was a sought-after but opaque interlocutor when it came to clearing up difficulties with the Nazi authorities.

Goebbels confidante

The zealous and fanatical Fanderl had direct access to Goebbels and, in the opinion of Goebbels biographer Werner Stephan, played a kind of "court jester role" and was welcomed by the minister frequently and gladly: "Just as with Hitler, a man was needed in this circle too, With which one could play jokes and who, for lack of any achievements or merits, had to put up with it for better or for worse. " There had been criticism in "journalist circles" of Fanderl's appointment as head of the 12-Uhr-Blatt : "Everyone knew that the German publishing house had only stopped and kept this non-expert at Goebbels' request." In fact, Goebbels apparently did not take his favorite very seriously: "Fanderl is also there as a newspaper magnate. He has become fat. But he is doing well." Fanderl is also received in a semi-private setting by the minister in his villa “Bogensee”: “[Wilhelm] Fanderl has also arrived. The interview lasts 3 hours and brings a lot of good things to light. ”The minister talks“ about the old days ”on longer car trips with Fanderl and gets the latest reports from the 12 o'clock newspaper , but is sometimes annoyed by the apparently talkative companion:“ Fanderl goes with [to Hamburg] and tells me the latest from Berlin's newspaper and art life. All insignificant little things. ”The journalist also makes himself important to Goebbels with his trips abroad:“ Fanderl reports from the Balkans : more fear of us than love of us. Italians very unpopular. ”Fanderl knew what he owed his patron and wrote eulogies on the minister, such as the article Dr. Goebbels as a journalist and was also available as (unofficial) press spokesman: “Fanderl worked out an interview. It got excellent. "

Denunciation by Otto Stenzel

In October 1939, Fanderl betrayed the conductor at the Scala Revuetheater, Otto Stenzel , to the Gestapo and justified this denunciation with the words that he was a National Socialist and placed "this belief above everything". Fanderl benefited personally from the conductor. Stenzel, concerned about his public image, had made a “pact” with the editor -in- chief of the 12-Uhr-Blatt and allowed him to watch all the shows in the Scala from the orchestra pit free of charge, which Fanderl was very interested in because of the good-looking Revue girls. He even married one of the actresses, the Sudeten German singer, film actress and dancer Charlotte Treml (Charlotta Tremlová), who performed under the stage name Kary Barnet , but divorced her in 1944. At a private party after a Scala performance, which Fanderl also attended, the drunk Stenzel made derogatory comments on National Socialism on October 12, 1939 and made a toast to the “Fourth Reich”. The following morning he was picked up and on the orders of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp brought, where he was interned three weeks. In addition to Stenzel, the Gestapo arrested other Scala employees, including the press chief Will Meyer and the dancer Anita Spada, the then favorite and later wife of the SS officer and later Reich film director Hans Hinkel , with whom Fanderl was friends for several years before the two, also because of the denunciation, became opponents.

PC rapporteur in Paris and on the Eastern Front

In a Paris café, Fanderl wanted to get to know the French sergeant Jean Gontier de Vassé, whose anti-British diary he published in 1941, supplemented by an involuntarily funny "encounter with the author": "You speak French as only the French speak it. " Shortly before the Russian campaign , Fanderl was "called up" in May 1941, but was probably not on duty at the front, but only as a war correspondent. He wrote propaganda articles, a. a. for the yearbook of the foreign organization of the NSDAP (1942): How it came to the extermination battle against the Soviet armies east of Kiev . Like many other journalists and artists, Fanderl is said to have tried in vain in 1943 to prevent the execution of the actor Robert Dorsay (birth name Robert Stampa), who had been sentenced to death for undermining military strength. The Gestapo had monitored his correspondence and discovered the sentence: "When will this idiocy finally end?"

Last days of the war

It is controversial whether Fanderl was involved in the last Nazi newspaper to appear in Berlin, the Panzerbär holdout sheet (April 22-29 , 1945). The press historian Peter de Mendelssohn assumes that the “Goebbels favorite” Fanderl is behind the anonymous “Dienststelle Fp.-Nr. 67 700 ”, which was stated as the publisher in the short-lived Panzerbär , especially since an old 12 o'clock printing press was used. Fanderl himself wrote down his experiences for Erich Kuby's book The Russians in Berlin . There he is referred to as a “bright head”: “Fanderl was no further than holding out until five minutes to twelve.” According to this, Fanderl lived in the Berlin Hotel Adlon during the last days of the war and worked in the printing house in Tempelhof with his travel typewriter on the Berliner Morgenpost : "(...) but nobody carried them out anymore, and soon we were only making the twenty or so deposit copies for the Propaganda Ministry." According to his own statement, Fanderl forged the signature of Goebbels en masse in order to produce special ID cards that protected his colleagues from being recruited by the Wehrmacht (" hero theft "). On April 21, he claims to have been present at the Propaganda Minister's last "press conference" in his apartment on Hermann-Göring-Strasse: "He passed by without paying any attention to us." Fanderl was slightly wounded in the head while driving through the bombed-out Berlin. He survived the end of the war in the “basement of the Propaganda Ministry”, finally tried to break through “north” with some soldiers at the last minute and was captured by Russia “three hundred meters from Lehrter Bahnhof”, which is said to have lasted eight and a half years.

Career after 1945

When he returned to Germany, Fanderl took over the "Motor and Sport" department in the 1950s at Nordpress-Verlag Walter Glaue in Hamburg , a semi-official organization of the Federal Government's Press and Information Office for the distribution of news. Nothing is publicly known about his further professional activity.

Works

• Wilhelm Fanderl: From seven men to the people. Illustrated history of the NSDAP and the SA , Oldenburg 1933
• Ders .: Hitler Youth is marching! The new Hitler Youth book , Berlin 1935
• Ders .: Der tote Kamerad and Auf Haus Wachenfeld , in: Reading book for elementary schools in Alsace 1940, 5th to 8th school year . Moritz Schauenburg Publishing House, 1940
• Ders .: I've just come from England! Diary of the French Dunkirk fighter Sergeant Jean Gontier de Vassé. Meeting with the author of Wilhelm Fanderl , Berlin / Leipzig 1941

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Date recorded in his NSDAP party files in the Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde, place of birth illegible: Altmühl?
2. ↑ Schiller National Museum and German Literature Archive : Marbacher Magazin , issues 111–116, Marbach 2005, p. 1822
3. ↑ Michael H. Kater: Daring Game: Jazz in National Socialism , Cologne 1995, unpag.E-Book
4. ↑ http://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/boxsportler-d-bei-einem-jagdausflug-mit-dem-nachrichtenfoto/537161893#boxsportler-d-bei-einem-jagdausflug-mit-dem-journalisten-wilhelm -picture-id537161893
5. ↑ http://www.glubberer.de/k/kalb__hans/kalb__hans.html
6. ↑ Volker Kluge: Max Schmeling - a biography in 15 rounds, Berlin 2004, p. 305
7. ^ Werner Stephan: Joseph Goebbels: Demon of a dictatorship , Stuttgart 1949, p. 175
8. ↑ Werner Stephan: Joseph Goebbels: Demon of a dictatorship , Stuttgart 1949, p. 176
9. ^ Diary entry from April 1, 1938, in: The Diaries of Joseph Goebbels: Part 1. Notes 1923–1941 . December 1937 - July 1938, Volume 5, Munich 2000, p. 240
10. ↑ Stefan Berkholz: Goebbels' Waldhof am Bogensee: from love nest to GDR propaganda site, p. 57
11. ↑ https://de.scribd.com/doc/45218080/Dr-Joseph-Goebbels-Aus-Dem-Privaten-Tagebuch-Von-Mai-Bis-August-1939
12. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels: Part 1. Records 1923–1941. March - November 1937 , Volume 4, Munich 2000, p. 393
13. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels: Part 1. Notes 1923–1941. December 1940 - July 1941 , Volume 9, Munich 1998, p. 133
14. ↑ Entry from June 4, 1940, quoted in based on Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.): Joseph Goebbels - Diaries 1924–1945: 1940–1942 , Munich 1992, p. 1429
15. ↑ Deutsche Presse, Vol. 26, No. 44, October 31, 1936
16. ↑ Joseph Goebbels: The diaries: all fragments. Recordings 1924–1941 , Vol. 3, January 1, 1937 - December 31, 1939, Munich 1987, p. 536
17. ↑ https://archive.today/20130206123809/http://www.fuenfzigerjahresaenger.de/Lexikon/Barnet.htm
18. ↑ Michael H. Kater: Daring Game: Jazz in National Socialism , Cologne 1995, p.
19. ↑ Wolfgang Jansen: Das Varieté: the glamorous story of an entertaining art , Berlin 1990, p. 219
20. ↑ I have just come from England! Diary of the French Dunkirk fighter Sergeant Jean Gontier de Vassé. Encounter with the author of Wilhelm Fanderl , Berlin / Leipzig 1941, p. 5
21. ^ Document printed by David Oels: Max Wießner's monthly reports to the central party publisher of the NSDAP Franz Eher Nachf. On important business transactions in the Deutscher Verlag , in: Archive for the history of the book , vol. 69, Berlin / Munich, 2014, p. 208
22. ↑ Yearbook of the Foreign Organization of the NSDAP (1942), p. 311
23. ↑ https://archive.today/20130206123809/http://www.fuenfzigerjahresaenger.de/Lexikon/Barnet.htm
24. ^ Peter de Mendelsohn: Newspaper City Berlin. People and Powers in the History of the German Press, Berlin 1959, p. 417
25. ↑ Erich Kuby: Die Russen in Berlin, Rastatt 1988, p. 266
26. ↑ Fanderl in his manuscript, based on: Erich Kuby: Die Russen in Berlin, Rastatt 1988, p. 265
27. ↑ Fanderl in his manuscript, based on: Erich Kuby: Die Russen in Berlin, Rastatt 1988, p. 264
28. ↑ Erich Kuby: Die Russen in Berlin, Rastatt 1988, p. 271
29. ^ Institute for Journalism at the Free University of Berlin (Ed.): Die Deutsche Presse: Newspapers and Magazines , Berlin 1961, p. 237