Wilhelm Steputat

This article is about a German publisher, lawyer and politician; for the German wrestler and sports official see Willi Steputat .

Wilhelm Steputat

Wilhelm "Willy" Steputat (born February 29, 1868 on the manor Bokellen (today Frunsenskoje ), Gerdauen district in East Prussia ; † January 1, 1941 ibid) was a German publisher, lawyer and politician of Prussian-Lithuanian descent.

Life

Wilhelm Steputat attended grammar school in Insterburg and studied law and business administration in Königsberg , Geneva and Greifswald . In addition, he was interested in literature and poetry. He wrote his own poems and in 1891, while still a student, he published his first book, the “Reim Lexikon”, with the Philipp Reclam Verlag in Leipzig. The rhyming lexicon , which appeared for the first time at this time, has been revised and published again and again today. In 1892 he submitted his dissertation on the subject of "The constitutional position of the German rulers on German jurisdiction" at the University of Greifswald. After graduating as Dr. jur. In 1906 he became a councilor in Gumbinnen .

From 1913 to 1918, Wilhelm Steputat was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives , in which he represented the constituency of Gumbinnen 1 (city and district of Tilsit). As a Prussian member of parliament, he tried (in vain) to have Lithuanian admitted to primary schools. He was a member of the German conservative parliamentary group. He finished his military service with the rank of captain.

First World War

At the First World War Wilhelm Steputat took over as captain in part. He was assigned to the staff of the High Command East as head of Press Office III, based in Tilsit . The content-related tasks of the press office were determined by Section IIIb in the General Staff, then from 1916 by the war press office and by the Central Office for Foreign Service founded in October 1914 in the Foreign Office in Berlin . The head of the central office was the former ambassador Baron Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein (1859-1924). The press office included the paymaster Stigliorus, the Lithuanian book printer Jagomast and several soldiers who had worked in the printing industry before the war. The task of the press office consisted in the preparation, production and distribution of posters, leaflets and pamphlets on war propaganda in the interests of Germany. The press products were primarily intended for the population in the occupied territories, i.e. for Russians and Lithuanians. Furthermore, he was responsible for the press censorship of the locally published print products in the area of ​​responsibility of the "OberOst". From 1915 onwards, the press office published the “Dabartis” - the present - intended for Lithuania. This German-friendly propaganda magazine was first published weekly and then as a daily edition until 1918. Up to No. 88 Steputat was responsible as editor. In April 1916, Press Office III moved to Kaunas, which was occupied by German troops, and then organized its work from here.

In addition to managing the press office, Wilhelm Steputat also acted on the staff of the High Command East as a liaison between the Supreme Army Command in Berlin and the Foreign Office. Here his superior was the head of the Central Office for Foreign Service in the Foreign Office Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein (1859-1924). However, Matthias Erzberger (1875–1921) held the threads for the intelligence service created in October 1914 in the Foreign Office . The central office published a dispatch service for foreign newspapers at regular intervals, and had foreign publishers print brochures, books, articles or posters about German culture and Germany's “love of peace”. For certain groups of people in the occupied territories or for German minorities, she published magazines herself, often in camouflage. And especially for the population in the occupied territories of Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, she had anti-Russian posters and leaflets made and distributed. As the propaganda work abroad was often inseparable from the gathering of information from the respective areas, she also worked with secret sources of information or multipliers to influence the formation of opinion in the respective territories. One such person was the Lithuanian journalist and politician Juozas Gabrys (1880–1951). A first joint meeting between Steputat and Gabrys took place on November 9, 1915 in Stuttgart. At that time Gabrys was still living in Lausanne and at this meeting agreed to work alongside Germany for the freedom of Lithuania. This cooperation extended above all to the obligation to carry out propaganda work for Germany. Including the agitation against Russia in order to drive a wedge between the relations of Russians and Lithuanians. And he was ready to work in his political networks in Lithuania to win his country and parts of the population as an ally for Germany. For this collaboration he chose the code name "Buyer" and got a promise from Steputat for a monthly payment of 1,000 marks. In addition, special services for certain expenses in the implementation of the agreements were agreed. In January 1916, Juozas Gabrys took up his work in Lithuania after more detailed instructions. He organized certain political campaigns, launched the first Lithuanian conference and published appeals, memoranda and journalistic texts. He also wrote several articles and texts for the magazine "Dabartis". A special service rendered for Steputat was the handing over of the protocols of the Lithuanian National Congress, for which he received 40,000 marks. However, the cooperation became more and more difficult from the time when the German military in the occupied part of Lithuania increasingly exercised political power. The decisive turning point here was the implementation of German power interests from Kaunas from April 1916 and then from March 1917 in Vilnius. Examples of cruel treatment of the Lithuanian population increased, military attacks, compulsory ordinances and, last but not least, the dire supply situation in which the people living in Lithuania found themselves, led Gabrys to sided with his compatriots.

Back home

On November 30, 1917, Wilhelm Steputat took part in the founding event of the German-Lithuanian Society (DLG) in the building of the Berlin Reichstag. Between 1921 and 1923 he was state president in the Memelland state directorate of the Memelland, which was separated from East Prussia . After the annexation of Memelland by Lithuania in 1923, he withdrew to his estate in Bokellen.

Wilhelm Steputat died on January 1, 1941 at the Bokellen manor in East Prussia.

Works

• German rhyming dictionary. Philipp Reclam Verlag, Leipzig [1891]; as rhyming dictionary , Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-018622-0 .
• The constitutional position of the German rulers in relation to German jurisdiction , 1892
• The Trappists, also a career. Curt Wigand, Leipzig 1904.
• Lithuanian phrasebook. Lituania, Tilsit 1915

literature

• Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik and Propaganda in the First World War, European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt / Main, 2002
• Eberhard Demm, Christina Nikolajw (ed.), On guard for the nation. Memories, Peter Lang GmbH, European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt / Main 2013
• Bernhard Mann : Biographical Handbook for the Prussian House of Representatives (1867-1918). Droste, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-7700-5146-7 (= manuals on the history of parliamentarism and political parties, volume 3)
• Abba Stazhas, German Ostpolitik in the First World War: the OberOst case 1915-1917, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag Wiesbaden, 1993

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Steputat in the catalog of the German National Library
• Over 100 years of “Steputat” - East Prussian Gazette
• Frunzenskoe - Bokellen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eberhard Demm: Three Lithuanians loyal to the king on the 25th anniversary of Wilhelm II's reign. In: Annaberger Annalen , No. 18 (2010), pp. 97–107, here p. 98. [1] (PDF; 94 kB).
2. ↑ Nijolė Strakauskaitė: The Influence of Political Factors on the Lithuanian Little School System 1871-1933 . In: Robert Traba (ed.): Self-confidence and modernization. Social-cultural change in Prussian-Lithuania before and after the First World War . Osnabrück 2000. ISBN 3-929759-44-6 . Pp. 69–82, here p. 74.
3. ↑ Bernhard Mann (edit.): Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives. 1867-1918 . Droste, Düsseldorf 1988, p. 376.
4. ^ Eberhard Demm, Ostpolitik and Propaganda in the First World War, European Publishing House of Science, Frankfurt / Main, 2002, pp. 172ff.
5. ↑ Eberhard Demm, Christina Nikolajw (ed.), On guard for the nation. Memories, Peter Lang GmbH, European Science Publishing House, Frankfurt / Main 2013, p. 8 and p.116ff.
6. ^ Spencer C. Tucker and Mary Priscilla Roberts, Encyclopedia of the First World War, ABC-Clio Verlag 2005, pp. 457ff.
7. ↑ Eberhard Demm: Three Lithuanians loyal to the king on the 25th anniversary of Wilhelm II's reign. In: Annaberger Annalen , No. 18 (2010), pp. 97-107, here p. 103. [2] (PDF; 94 kB).