Wilhelm Hamkens

This article deals with the leader of the rural people movement, Wilhelm Hamkens. The Nazi politician of the same name can be found under Wilhelm Hamkens (District President) .

Wilhelm Cornelius Hamkens (born June 9, 1896 in Kotzenbüll , † June 19, 1955 in Flensburg ) was a German farmer and political activist. Hamkens became known as one of the leaders of the Schleswig-Holstein rural people movement .

Live and act

Wilhelm Cornelius Hamkens was the son of the farmer Boye Janns Hamkens (1871-1943) and his wife Anna Catharina Hamkens (née Peters) (1874-1938). Boye Janns Hamkens ran a farm in Kotzenbüll and was head of the three municipalities of Kating , Kotzenbüll and parish Tönning from 1906 until his death . As head of office, he was neutral towards the rural people's movement. After attending school, Wilhelm Cornelius Hamkens was trained as a farmer. In 1914 he volunteered to take part in the First World War , in which he was promoted from simple soldier to lieutenant by the end of the war and received several awards. In 1921 he inherited a third of his grandfather's 40 hectare farm, Peter Wilhelm Hamkens (1846–1921) in Tetenbüll on Eiderstedt , which he then managed for the community of heirs. On June 4, 1924, he married Margarete Luise Doepner in Mattischken / East Prussia. Her brother Friedrich Doepner later became the leader of the East Prussian rural people movement.

Hamkens joined right-wing extremist military associations in the post-war period, such as the " Organization Escherich ", the Tannenbergbund and the Stahlhelm West Coast , the radical wing of the steel helmet in Schleswig-Holstein influenced by the Wiking Bund . These memberships, about which official information is available, were denied by his widow. Gerhard Stoltenberg does not question the membership, but notes that Hamkens did not excel in the association work at "Organization Escherich" and "Stahlhelm Westüste".

In 1924 Hamkens became the district chairman of the Eiderstedt young farmers 'association, from which he resigned after having had difficulties with the Eiderstedt farmers' association.

Leader of the rural people movement

After agriculture had got into a crisis since 1927 due to overproduction, a drop in sales prices and excessive indebtedness, and the local banks tried to get their loans back through land confiscations and auctions, a farmers opposition formed around Claus Heim and Wilhelm in the winter of 1927 alongside the traditional farmers' organizations Hamkens. Hamkens, too, ran into economic difficulties in 1927 and headed the unification and demonstration movement in Eiderstedt. Between January and July 1928 the struggle against the government was organized through meetings with shop stewards. The first cadres included members from Erich Ludendorffs Tannenbergbund . Hamkens sought to unite all rural professional groups on the basis of an anti-parliamentary and ethnic ideology, according to which a strong state should support a renewed agriculture. His polemic against the institutions was virulently racist. Hamkens, for example, lamented the corruption of the system through “Jewish poisonous spirits”. In the fall of 1928 he called his movement the "rural people movement".

Hamkens relied on passive resistance, boycotts and tax refusal as a means of political struggle. A one-month prison sentence imposed on him in March 1929 for calling for a tax strike made him appear as a martyr of the movement. Hamkens served his sentence in the summer of 1929, first in Husum, then in Neumünster prison . On August 1st, the day he was released from prison, the rural people's movement called for a large rally in Neumünster, which was attended by over a thousand people. Originally they wanted to pick up Hamkens from prison, but he only came to the rally later. The day before, the justice administration had secretly transported him to the Flensburg prison , from which he was then released. He then took the train to Neumünster. At the rally there, there were serious clashes with the police and the country people's flag was confiscated, which resulted in a month-long boycott of the city by the peasantry, which only ended with the solemn return of the flag on November 7, 1930. The events of Neumünster initially helped the rural people movement to a “tremendous upswing”.

Hamknes soon came into conflict with Heim and Bruno von Salomon , who, as leaders of the radical wing of the rural people's movement , backed terrorist attacks and were responsible for a series of bomb attacks with which they hoped to bring about the collapse of the system. Although he was not one of the bombers, Hamkens was charged in the “bomber trial” of the Altona jury, but on October 31, 1930 he was only sentenced to a fine (“instead of 2 months in prison 500 RM fine”). Claus Heim was sentenced to seven years in prison.

After the Altona Trial, the activities of the rural people's movement flagged; their newspaper Das Landvolk also stopped appearing. Hamkens concentrated on his home region of Eiderstedt, where from 1930 to 1933 he was chairman of the "Landvolkvereinigung", the relatively autonomous, uniform professional association of farmers. This association was the only one of the Schleswig-Holstein farmers' associations that initially went into opposition to the coordination that was operated in 1933 . At a meeting in Garding on May 30th, Hamkens replied to Wilhelm Struve , the "Gaufach advisor" charged with bringing into line , that "Hosanna" had previously been shouted to him and that he and his association were now being violently overturned. He invoked the active years of the rural people's movement and called to Struve: “Where were you then and where I?” It was only at a subsequent internal meeting that Hamkens and his fellow board members announced their resignation in the face of overwhelming political pressure.

After the Second World War

In the era of National Socialism Hamkens withdrew from public life. After the Second World War he became politically active again. From 1946 he was parliamentary group leader of the CDU in the Eiderstedter district assembly. In 1950 he became the deputy district administrator of the then Eiderstedt district . Also in 1950 he was elected 2nd chairman of the Schleswig-Holstein Community (SHG), a political association that opposed the considerable influence of the Federation of Expellees and Disenfranchised (BHE) in the state and did not orient the Schleswig-Holstein cause towards the Danish Wanted to leave Südschleswigschen Voter Association (SSW) . With the establishment of the Eiderstedter Community , Hamkens initiated the development that led to the emergence of the SHG. Since there was disagreement between the country's CDU and the SHG, Hamkens left the party in June 1951. Until his death, he spent several years as a steward of the Office Tetenbüll active and also officiated since 1948 as chairman of the "Home Federal landscape Eiderstedt".

literature

• Gönna Hamkens: The Hamkens family from Eiderstedt. A chronicle. Weiland, Lübeck 1972.
• Thomas Schäfer: The Schleswig-Holstein Community 1950-1958. With a contribution to the emergence of the “bloc of the displaced and disenfranchised”. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1987, ISBN 3-529-02192-X .
• Christian M. Sörensen: Political development and rise of the NSDAP in the Husum and Eiderstedt districts, 1918–1933. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1995.
• Gerhard Stoltenberg: Political currents in the Schleswig-Holstein rural population 1918–1933. A contribution to the formation of political opinion in the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962.

References and comments

1. ^ Gönna Hamkens: The Hamkens family from Eiderstedt. A chronicle. Weiland, Lübeck 1972, p. 68 f.
2. ↑ Christian M. Sörensen: Political Development and Rise of the NSDAP in the Husum and Eiderstedt districts, 1918–1933. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1995, p. 231.
3. ^ Gönna Hamkens: The Hamkens family from Eiderstedt. A chronicle. Weiland, Lübeck 1972, p. 67.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Christian M. Sörensen: Political development and rise of the NSDAP in the Husum and Eiderstedt districts, 1918–1933. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1995, p. 233.
5. ↑ At the time of taking over the farm as manager, there are different details. Christian M. Sörensen names 1921 as the year of the takeover. Gönna Hamkens says that Wilhelm Cornelius Hamkens only settled at the Tetenbüller Hof after his marriage, cf. Gönna Hamkens: The Hamkens family from Eiderstedt. A chronicle. Weiland, Lübeck 1972, p. 46 .; Klaus-J. Lorenzen-Schmidt mentions 1925 and also mentions that Hamkens had previously been court administrator in East Prussia, cf. Klaus-J. Lorenzen-Schmid: Three letters from the "peasant general" Claus Heim , p. 153
6. ^ Gönna Hamkens: The Hamkens family from Eiderstedt. A chronicle. Weiland, Lübeck 1972, p. 69.
7. ^ Gerhard Stoltenberg : Political currents in the Schleswig-Holstein rural population 1918–1933. A contribution to the formation of political opinion in the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 136.
8. ↑ Thomas Schäfer: The Schleswig-Holstein Community 1950-1958. With a contribution to the emergence of the “bloc of the displaced and disenfranchised” . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1987, p. 106.
9. ^ Gerhard Stoltenberg: Political currents in the Schleswig-Holstein rural population 1918–1933. A contribution to the formation of political opinion in the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 203.
10. ^ Christian M. Sörensen, Political Development and Rise of the NSDAP in the Husum and Eiderstedt districts, 1918–1933. , Wachholtz, Neumünster 1995, p. 60, note 82.
11. ↑ Patrick Moreau : National Socialism from the Left. The "Combat Community of Revolutionary National Socialists" and Otto Strasser's "Black Front" 1930–1935 . DVA, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 118f.
12. ^ Johann Wilhelm Thomsen: Country life in the Weimar Republic. Boysen, Heide, 1989. p. 144 ff.
13. ↑ Hans Fallada worked on the events literarily , see farmers, bigwigs and bombs .
14. ↑ Patrick Moreau : National Socialism from the Left. The "Combat Community of Revolutionary National Socialists" and Otto Strasser's "Black Front" 1930–1935 . DVA, Stuttgart 1985, p. 121.
15. ^ Johann Wilhelm Thomsen: Country life in the Weimar Republic. Boysen, Heide, 1989. pp. 157 f.
16. ↑ Quoted from Gerhard Stoltenberg: Political currents in the Schleswig-Holstein rural population 1918–1933. A contribution to the formation of political opinion in the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 193.
17. ^ Gerhard Stoltenberg: Political currents in the Schleswig-Holstein rural population 1918–1933. A contribution to the formation of political opinion in the Weimar Republic. Droste, Düsseldorf 1962, p. 193.
18. ↑ Christian M. Sörensen: Political Development and Rise of the NSDAP in the Husum and Eiderstedt districts 1918–1933 . Neumünster 1995, p. 234.
19. ↑ The BHE had 23.4 percent of the votes in the state elections in 1950 and formed the state government together with the CDU (19.8 percent), but left the office of prime minister to the smaller partner in order not to trigger a storm of protest.
20. ^ Thomas Schäfer: The Schleswig-Holstein Community 1950-1958 . Neumünster 1987, p. 107 f.
21. ↑ 100 years Heimatbund Landschaft Eiderstedt , in: Nordfriesland , published by Nordfriisk Instituut , No. 184, December 2013, p. 6., online version