Wilhelm Gutmann

This article deals with the politician Wilhelm Gutmann. For the entrepreneur see Wilhelm von Gutmann .

Wilhelm Gutmann (born June 9, 1900 in Basel , † February 16, 1976 in Karlsruhe ) was a German politician ( NPD ). At times executive federal chairman and parliamentary group chairman in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg , Gutmann resigned in 1968 after allegations of his work as mayor during the Nazi era.

Life

The son of a German conductor took part in the First World War as a volunteer . Having trained as a business graduate , Gutmann initially worked in industry, before moving to the Reich Finance Administration in 1927 and later to the municipal administration. Gutmann was married; the marriage resulted in six children.

Gutmann initially worked politically in the Protestant People's Service, the Baden regional group of the Christian Social People's Service (CSVD). In 1931 he became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 966.564). During the National Socialist era, Gutmann was mayor of the city of Tiengen on the Upper Rhine from 1935 to 1945 . An anti-Jewish local charter issued by Gutmann in 1935 was repealed by higher-level authorities as being too largely. In the "Ortssatzung" Jews and "Jewish tribes" were forbidden to move to Tiengen, they were not allowed to buy new property in the Tiengen district, lease or rent municipal property there, or use municipal facilities. They were also banned from entering or supplying markets in Tiengen, and anyone who did business with them or had personal relationships with them was banned from public or wage labor for the community. Gutmann is said to have been active in the defense office during the Second World War . At the end of the war in 1945, according to the Tübingen public prosecutor's office, he is said to have "fanatically called for senseless resistance against the advancing French troops" and threatened residents of Tiengen who wanted to raise white flags .

Arrested and interned in 1945 , Gutmann was sentenced to one and a half years in prison by the Waldshut district court in 1947 for “ breach of the peace ”, “ inciting class struggle ” and “ deprivation of liberty ”. The subject of the proceedings was the November 1938 pogroms in Tiengen. According to the court's findings, Gutmann had called the Jews an "international gang of murderers" at a party meeting . He was also responsible for the arrest of two dozen Jewish residents of Tiengen. The arrested had been taken to the nearest Gestapo office; the men arrested were transported to concentration camps , where two of them died.

In 1949 Gutmann moved to Karlsruhe , where he and Franz Kienle founded the German Therapy Week medical congress . Until 1965 he was the exhibition director of the therapeutic products exhibition associated with the therapy week. First, in the movement of displaced persons , former internees and the denazification actively concerned, Gutmann worked in from 1949 Notgemeinschaft Wuerttemberg-Baden by Franz Ott with. At the end of 1949, together with the former Baden Finance Minister Wilhelm Mattes, he founded the Karlsruhe local association of the DG / BHE, an electoral alliance of the German Community (DG) and the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (GB / BHE). 1955 Gutmann was district association chairman of the GB / BHE; a year later he was elected to the Karlsruhe city council. From 1961 Gutmann was a member of the All-German Party ; which arose from the merger of the GB / BHE with the German Party (DP).

In November 1964 Gutmann took part in the founding of the NPD and became deputy federal chairman and in April 1965 chairman of the Baden-Württemberg regional association . After Friedrich Thielen's impeachment in March 1967, he served as executive federal chairman of the NPD until Adolf von Thadden was elected in November 1967.

In the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in 1968 , Gutmann was elected to the Stuttgart state parliament in constituency 9 ( Leonberg ) on April 28 , where he took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group. Before the election, the Tübingen working group for protection against right-wing radicalism had pointed out Gutmann's work as mayor of Tiengen and his conviction in 1947. In the state parliament, all other parliamentary groups rejected intergroup cooperation with the NPD, referring to Gutmann's conviction. Nevertheless, according to the historian Lutz Niethammer , Gutmann was the only NPD member “with whom representatives of other parties could communicate on a good-Swabian comfortable level.” In doing so, he largely left the tasks of the parliamentary group chairman to his deputy Peter Stöckicht and limited himself to to act negatively when speeches by other NPD MPs had led to tumult. After resigning as parliamentary group leader at the end of 1968, Gutmann remained a member of the state parliament until 1972. As state and deputy national chairman of the NPD, he had resigned in mid-1968.

literature

• Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - helpers - free riders. Nazi victims from southern Baden (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Band 6 ). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2017, ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7 , pp. 137 ff .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gideon Botsch , Christoph Kopke : The NPD and their milieu. Klemm & Oelschläger, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-932577-41-3 , p. 45; Matthias Fischer: Waldshut-Tiengen: Commemoration of former Jewish life. at haGalil (accessed April 13, 2011)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Wilhelm Gutmann in the Munzinger archive , accessed on April 9, 2011 ( beginning of article freely accessible)
3. ↑ Quoted in: Soft Willi . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1968, p. 36 ( online ).
4. ↑ Soft Willi . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1968, p. 36 ( online ).
5. ↑ Richard Stöss (Ed.): Party handbook. Volume 2: FDP to WAV. (= Writings of the Central Institute for Social Science Research of the Free University of Berlin. Volume 39) Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, ISBN 3-531-11592-8 , p. 1470.
6. ^ Lutz Niethammer: Adapted fascism. Political practice of the NPD. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, p. 210.
7. ^ Niethammer, Faschismus , pp. 209f.