Willi Heer

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Wilhelm Army
Architectural drawing “House for three families”, which Heer made between 1909 and 1914 as part of his activities (bricklayer, stonemason, model maker, structural engineer).

Wilhelm Heer , called Willi Heer (born June 21, 1894 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber ; † June 5, 1961 there ), was a German politician ( NSDAP ).

Live and act

After attending elementary school and the Progymnasium , Heer was trained as a bricklayer, stone cutter and model maker at the municipal building school in Nuremberg . He then earned his living as a structural engineer. From November 1914 to December 1918 Wilhelm Heer took part in the First World War, in which he was wounded twice and was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. After the end of the war he joined the Epp Freikorps , with which he took part in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . On April 15, 1921 he became construction manager for the city of Kitzingen am Main.

Between 1919 and 1921 Heer was a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund . On March 1, 1921, he joined the NSDAP. In March 1921 he founded the local group Rothenburg ob der Tauber and in September 1921, in collaboration with the later NSDAP Gauleiter for Lower Franconia, Otto Hellmuth , the local group Kitzingen. Heer dominated the Kitzingen local group, in which he worked "as a tireless organizer and mastermind in the background". Compared to other party functionaries and agitators, he had limited ability as a speaker and, as such, hardly appeared in public. Instead, he organized appearances by prominent foreign speakers such as Hermann Esser , Joseph Goebbels , Julius Streicher and the völkisch agitator Andrea Ellendt . Some of the speeches were accompanied by violent riots; In November 1922, before Ellendt performed in Hohenfeld , several people were stabbed with a knife. In his self-portrayal in the Reichstag handbook, Heer stated in 1933 that he had been seriously injured in Hohenfeld. He also claimed to have taken part in "all street fights and battles in the Main Triangle " and in October 1922 in the so-called March on Coburg .

After the ban imposed on the NSDAP as a result of the Hitler putsch had been lifted, the army rejoined the party in 1925 (membership number 19.786). In the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer , Heer claimed in September 1927 that Kitzingen was the place "where Judah is Lord, the Jew rules everything and everyone", and wished for the "return of the good old days", in which the Jew, "To protect yourself from the people's anger [...] no longer daring to go out into the street alone in the dark". A complaint by the Jewish community to the city about their officials was without consequences for the army; the city council disapproved of the Striker article with five votes against.

In 1932 Heer, who was the bearer of the Koburg Decoration and the Golden Decoration of Honor of the NSDAP , became an honorary NSDAP district leader for the Kitzingen district . After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, he became city councilor or councilor of the city of Kitzingen and deputy president of the district assembly of Lower Franconia . From November 1933 until the end of Nazi rule in spring 1945, Heer was a member of the National Socialist Reichstag for constituency 26 (Franconia) . From 1934 he was also NSDAP district leader for Gerolzhofen and from 1941 also for Ochsenfurt .

At the “ Jewish boycott ” on April 1, 1933, Heer appeared as a speaker. In August 1933, he initiated a city council resolution banning Jews from using the municipal swimming pool. The decision, initially seen as too far, was implemented two years later.

Heer played a leading role in the November pogroms of 1938 in Kitzingen and Gerolzhofen: According to eyewitnesses, Heer was in the Kitzingen synagogue on the morning of November 10 when SS members devastated the interior of the synagogue, which was later set on fire. The previous evening, the army had attended meetings and instructed the police and fire brigade not to intervene. The riots in Gerolzhofen were delayed by Heer's presence in Kitzingen. According to the chairman of the historical association there and former city archivist, Stephan Oettermann , Heer, as district leader, called on the local group leader to act more sharply against the Jews in Gerolzhofen. As a result, 40 SA and SS men devastated the city's synagogue and mistreated a Jewish woman. After the pogrom, the army demanded the use of commissioners to monitor Jewish companies. He wanted to remove bottlenecks on the housing market by “ aryanizing ” Jewish houses. In June 1939, Heer opposed the reopening of the Jewish school in Gerolzhofen, which the Würzburg branch of the Gestapo had previously approved. Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War , he unsuccessfully demanded that all Jews be sent to a concentration camp .

In October 1944, after years of conflict, Heer succeeded in replacing the Kitzingen District Administrator, Raimund Rüth . As early as 1941, Heer had accused the NSDAP member Rüth of being too passive politically and, in particular , of being too accommodating to the clergy in the administration of the expropriated Münsterschwarzach Abbey . At the end of the war, shortly before the arrival of American troops on April 5, 1945, Heer fled Kitzingen. He had previously tried to use perseverance propaganda and threats to strengthen the population's will to resist.

On March 23, 1948, the district court of Würzburg sentenced Heer to five years in prison and deprivation of civil rights for his participation in the 1938 November pogroms in Kitzingen . In September 1950, the Bamberg Higher Regional Court confirmed the sentence against which Heer's previous internment in accordance with automatic arrest was not counted. Heer, who served almost the entire prison term in poor health, died in June 1961 in his place of birth in Rothenburg.

The prosecutor in Heer's denazification proceedings called him "especially in the period from 1932 onwards, intolerant to the highest degree towards those with a different mindset", especially towards Jews, but also towards pastors and BVP members. According to the judgment of the Würzburg regional court, Heer was an "unconditionally loyal follower of Adolf Hitler ". In the Würzburg trial, Heer described himself as a “National Socialist with all my soul and all my heart”. Heer saw himself as “innocent” because he “acted in good faith”. According to the historian Elmar Schwinger, Heer took over the role of National Socialist whip and guard from 1921 "with an almost fanatical zeal". Heer radicalized himself during the Nazi era; Since 1939 at the latest, he has surpassed all Main Franconian district leaders "in denunciating impetus and anti-Semitic venom," said Schwinger.

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , p. 217 .

Web links

  • Willi Heer in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elmar Schwinger: From Kitzingen to Izbica. Rise and catastrophe of the Main Franconian Israelite Community of Kitzingen. (= Writings of the Kitzingen City Archives , Volume 9; Ma'ayān , Volume 6) Sauerbrey, Kitzingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-924694-21-0 , p. 134.
  2. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 134 f.
  3. ^ Entry Heer, Willi in the Reichstag Handbuch November 1933.
  4. ↑ Quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 151.
  5. ^ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 205.
  6. ^ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 222, 229.
  7. ^ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 296, 298, 300, 341.
  8. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 309.
  9. ↑ Matthias Endriss: Gerolzhofen: The day when Gerolzhofen did not exist. Stephan Oettermann gave a lecture on the 1938 pogrom in Gerolzhofen and Frankenwinheim. Mainpost , November 22, 2009 (accessed August 14, 2013).
  10. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 342, 349 f.
  11. ^ Claudia Roth: Party group and district leader of the NSDAP with special consideration of Bavaria. (= Series of publications on Bavarian national history , volume 107) Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-10688-9 , p. 265 f.
  12. ^ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 516.
  13. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , pp. 533, 543.
  14. ↑ Quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 341.
  15. ↑ Quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 340.
  16. ↑ Quoted in Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 541.
  17. ↑ Schwinger, Kitzingen , p. 340.
personal data
SURNAME Army, Willi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heer, Willy; Heer, Wilhelm (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Rothenburg ob der Tauber
DATE OF DEATH 5th June 1961
Place of death Rothenburg ob der Tauber