Wolfgang Diewerge

Wolfgang Diewerge (born January 12, 1906 in Stettin , † December 4, 1977 in Essen ) was a National Socialist propagandist in Joseph Goebbels ' Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda . His specialty was anti-Semitic public relations , especially in connection with lawsuits abroad that could be used for propaganda purposes. He also played an essential role in preparing a show trial against Herschel Grynszpanwhose assassination attempt on a German embassy employee in Paris was used by the National Socialists to trigger the November pogroms in 1938. His pamphlets on the so-called Kaufman Plan and the Soviet Union appeared in millions in circulation in 1941 . After the war, Diewerge managed to re-enter politics through the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia . However, with the intervention of the British occupation authorities and a commission from the FDP's federal executive committee, this interlude was abruptly ended. In 1966 Diewerge was given oath on account of the Nazis' planned Grynszpan trial for perjurysentenced. After all, as managing director of two associations, he was involved in the Flick donation affair.

Origin and early years

The Gröning secondary school in Stargard

Diewerges father was Wilhelm Diewerge, a Szczecin middle school teacher and later school principal in Stargard in Pomerania ; his mother's name was Hedwig, nee Grell. Wolfgang Diewerge had a brother three years his junior, Heinz Diewerge, who made a career as folklorist , teacher trainer and member of the party official examination commission for the protection of National Socialist literature during the Nazi regime ; Heinz Diewerge died in 1939 of a war wound that he suffered during the Polish campaign .

Wolfgang Diewerge attended the traditional Gröningsche Gymnasium in Stargard and passed his Abitur there in 1924. He then studied law in Jena and Berlin . The first state examination he graduated in 1929. It was followed by the clerkship at the Supreme Court in Berlin, with a multi-month stay abroad as a court clerk at the German consular directional in Cairo as well as the German lawyer Felix Dahm, of there the Joint Court was approved. In the spring of 1933 Diewerge applied for an abbreviation of the state legal examination, and in November of the same year he finally passed his assessor examination.

Politically oriented Diewerge at an early stage turned to ethnic and National Socialist groups. According to his own statements, he became a member of the Schlageter Memorial Association at the age of 17 in October 1923, i.e. still as a student, and joined the Black Reichswehr in Leipzig in August 1924 . Since 1927 he wrote occasionally for National Socialist newspapers and magazines, such as for the attack , the Völkischer Beobachter , the Westdeutscher Beobachter , the National Socialist monthly and the anti-Semitic satirical magazine Die Brennessel . On August 1, 1930 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 278.234); he is said to have been a member of the NSDAP under the code name Diege. Even before 1933, Diewerge took over various party offices in Berlin, from the district propaganda officer to the training manager to the deputy local group leader . In addition, he made his legal knowledge available to various National Socialist organizations, such as the Gaurechtsstelle Berlin of the NSDAP and the prisoner care of the SA , and appeared as a Gau speaker .

National Socialist propagandist

In 1933 Diewerge became Reich Managing Director of the German Gymnastics Association and celebrated the Stuttgart Gymnastics Festival , which took place at the end of July, as a “folk festival in the National Socialist sense”, in which “a true community of people and fate” manifested itself. In that year he also became head of the legal department of the " National Socialist Combat League for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses - Gau Greater Berlin". Diewerge was also a department head in the NSDAP's foreign organization . In early 1934 he made his first public appearance. The occasion was a highly politicized process in Cairo - he was already familiar with the Egyptian capital from his traineeship.

Profiling in Anti-Semitic Public Relations: The Cairo Process

→ Main article : Jabès versus van Meeteren and Safarowsky

The head of Cairo Siemens Neopost branch and President of the German Association in Cairo, Wilhelm van Meeteren had there in mid-1933 published an anti-Semitic pamphlet entitled "The Jewish question in Germany." As a result, the Jewish businessman Umberto Jabès, with the support of the Ligue Internationale Contre l'Antisémitisme (LICA, ie the International League Against Anti-Semitism) sued van Meeteren for compensation for insults . The hearing should take place before a so-called mixed court , an Egyptian instance for the settlement of legal disputes with the participation of foreigners. On August 30, 1933, a meeting of the forthcoming trial took place at the Foreign Office in Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse , to which representatives of the Propaganda Ministry were invited. The young lawyer Diewerge was commissioned by this ministry to provide “preparatory support” for the legal dispute.

The headquarters of the Propaganda Ministry at Wilhelmplatz 8/9 in Berlin (1936)

Troubled by the news that Jabès had won the internationally renowned Parisian lawyer Henri Torrés as legal representative, the German Foreign Ministry initially pursued a cautious strategy and tried, in particular, to keep the subject out of the public debate. Diewerge, on the other hand, sent the Foreign Office a ten-page report on September 29, 1933, entitled “The press support for the Cairo trial”, which, on the contrary, aimed at exploiting the trial as effectively as possible: it was supposed to be branded as “Judaism's weapon against the National Socialist uprising”. Diewerge designed a detailed public relations strategy for this. He named the media, target groups and costs and suggested a uniform label under which the trial should appear in the National Socialist press: "Cairo Jewish Trial". According to him, the entire plan was coordinated in every detail with the regional group leader of the NSDAP in Egypt, Alfred Hess ( Rudolf Hess's brother ). The aim of the projected press work emerged from an enclosed sample text, which was entitled “International Jewish conspiracy against Germany uncovered in Egypt”. Diewerge immediately used this sample text in public: for a lecture on October 5, 1933 on the radio and a largely text-identical article in the Völkischer Beobachter , which appeared on October 6 . He also sent the text to selected Arabic and French-language newspapers in Cairo through the lawyer of trust for the German legation in Cairo, in order to generate the desired press coverage in Egypt as well. Among other things, he arranged for the newspaper La Liberté, which is close to the Egyptian King Fu'ad I , to publish an interview with Goebbels on the day of the trial.

Diewerge succeeded in asserting himself with his ideas. In early 1934 he was appointed as the person responsible for preparing and carrying out the trial. He traveled to Cairo as special rapporteur for the Volkischer Beobachter . He wrote newspaper reports, gave an interview to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram and, after Jabès' complaint had been dismissed, gave a radio speech from Cairo on January 31, 1934 about all German broadcasters celebrating the “German victory over world Jewry”. In 1935, after Jabès had also failed in the appeal instance, Diewerge wrote a propaganda report with the subtitle "Judicially substantiated material on the Jewish question" in the party publisher of the NSDAP.

In this court case, a division of labor was established for the first time, which was continued in further processes: The internationally known international lawyer Friedrich Grimm took over the legal side of the proceedings and appeared in the main hearing , Diewerge took care of the journalistic and political planning in the sense of the Propaganda Ministry.

In March 1934 Diewerge was hired as a government assessor in Goebbels' Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. In mid-1935 he was listed in various lists for Cuno Horkenbach's yearbooks as a “speaker” in Department VII of this ministry, which was titled as “defense” or “defense against lies”. For Diewerge it began a continuous rise. In 1936 he was promoted to government councilor in 1939 to senior government councilor. In 1941 he reached the career level of a ministerial councilor . He married in 1936, and by 1941 the couple had three children. An undated assessment of Diewerge by the ministry turned out to be very positive, in particular his attitude to the National Socialist worldview was recognized as "unconditional". His tasks included propaganda lectures abroad, including in connection with a three-month trip to Africa in 1937. Again and again, his activities revolved around incidents, trials and publications abroad that gave rise to anti-Semitic campaigns against so-called World Jewry .

The Gustloff case: anti-Semitic politicization of a murder trial

In 1936, Diewerges responsibility in Department VII of the Propaganda Ministry, now called "Abroad", extended to France, the French possessions in North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia), Morocco, Egypt, Monaco and Switzerland. When David Frankfurter shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, the National Socialist group leader, in Davos on February 4, 1936 , Diewerge had a new opportunity to demonstrate his skills in anti-Semitic propaganda. As early as February 18, he asked the Foreign Office for material on the attack and the situation of the National Socialist group in Switzerland in order to produce a brochure on the subject. In April he had finished this brochure, again in cooperation with the foreign organization of the NSDAP. It was published under the title Der Fall Gustloff: Prehistory and Backgrounds of the Bloody Act of Davos in the house publishing house of the NSDAP, the Franz-Eher-Verlag . As in the Cairo affair, tensions arose between the Propaganda Ministry and the Foreign Office, which in this case was supported by the Reich Ministry of Economics . However, it was not about the content of the brochure, but only about the official publication date. With reference to important business negotiations with Switzerland and the occupation of the Rhineland , the foreign and economic politicians demanded that the booklet should not be distributed until the summer. They could prevail with it.

The aim of the brochure was to put the blame for the attack on Swiss politics and the critical reporting in the Swiss press on the one hand, and on a Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy on the other , whose agent was allegedly Frankfurter. Since a large part of the brochure consisted of - tendentiously selected - press quotes, which Diewerge then commented on from a National Socialist perspective, the Nazi propaganda could hope that the distribution of the work in Switzerland would not be banned. In fact, there was never a state ban. Only the Swiss Federal Railways forbade sales through station kiosks, which led to an - unsuccessful - official protest by the German Legation Councilor Carl Werner Dankwort . Diewerge's work was particularly aggressive against 125 Swiss parliamentarians who had spoken out in favor of being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Carl von Ossietzky , who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp :

"And these shepherd boys take pleasure in attacking and insulting the government of Germany for a notorious criminal."

The old building - seat of the cantonal court in Chur, where the trial against Frankfurter took place

When the trial of David Frankfurter took place in Chur in December 1936 , Diewerge and Friedrich Grimm shared the work again. Diewerge directed and organized the press work, Grimm created a role for himself as representative of Gustloff's widow in the accompanying civil suit , which enabled him at least a brief appearance in Chur. Together they looked for and found a Swiss lawyer (Werner Ursprung) for the criminal case against Frankfurters. Diewerge gave instructions for the German newspapers and wrote there himself, again as a special reporter for the Völkischer Beobachter , launched press releases in Switzerland and headed the German press delegation in Chur. Even in the run-up to the trial, he had the idea of ​​inviting selected Swiss journalists on an “information trip” to a German concentration camp and also offering them an interview with Roland Freisler (then still State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Justice ). This plan worked: on November 22, 1936, four journalists set off for the Börgermoor concentration camp at the expense of the Propaganda Ministry , accompanied by employees from the Ministry's press department. The Freisler interview also came about. And in fact, on November 29th , the Basler Nachrichten published an article about the camp in line with German intentions, in which, among other things, the “surprisingly low percentage of sick people” and “neat red farmhouses” were praised.

The duo Diewerge / Grimm was in Chur, as in Cairo, on a “paradoxical mission”: On the one hand, it was supposed to prevent the process from developing into a tribunal over German anti-Semitism; on the other hand, it should use the process as a starting point for anti-Semitic propaganda at home and abroad. According to his diary, Goebbels was of the opinion that they had done this undertaking "excellently" and "brilliantly".

In 1937 Diewerge published a second propaganda brochure about the trial with a title borrowed from Friedrich Sieburg : A Jew shot ... He was able to rely on the complete trial files that were available to him on Grimm and Ursprung, and among other things, quote from the letters for pages, the Frankfurter had received in prison. Here Diewerge emphatically advocated the thesis of the Jewish world conspiracy, with a particular focus on the German émigré and Swiss citizen Emil Ludwig , who had published a book about Frankfurt's deed: The Book of Ludwig, which Diewerge consistently referred to as "Ludwig-Cohn" In order to highlight his Judaism, "one of the most valuable and best pieces of evidence for the correctness of the National Socialist racial legislation and the need to eradicate Judaism from German cultural life." Frankfurters' defender and the psychiatric expert also appeared at Diewerge as agents of Judaism with a Star of David even though they had no Jewish background whatsoever.

Diewerge's offensive attacks on Swiss citizens, journalists, lawyers and politicians have not been forgotten in Switzerland; The Neue Zürcher Zeitung in particular repeatedly referred to the experiences of 1936 and 1937 in detailed reports on Diewerge's activities in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War .

The Case of Herschel Grynszpan: Propaganda and Process Planning

On November 7, 1938, the day Herschel Grynszpan's assassination attempt on Ernst Eduard vom Rath , the legation secretary of the German embassy in Paris, the German news office issued the instruction that this incident should be featured in all German newspapers "in the greatest form". Particular emphasis was placed on the political evaluation: "In your own comments it should be pointed out that the assassination attempt must have the most serious consequences for the Jews in Germany ..." Wolfgang Diewerge, the journalist in his office in the Reich Propaganda Ministry, was given as the contact for information was available; Background literature was also recommended to the reporters: the anti-Semitic brochures Diewerges on the assassination attempt on Gustloff.

Head of the Volkisch Observer

On the same day, Diewerge must have written a model for such a comment, because on the following day, November 8, the Völkischer Beobachter appeared with an editorial he had drawn . Under the headline “Criminals in the Peace of Europe” Diewerge wrote:

“It is clear that the German people will draw their conclusions from this new act. It is an impossible state of affairs that hundreds of thousands of Jews still dominate entire shopping streets within our borders, populate entertainment venues and pocket the money of German tenants as 'foreign' homeowners, while their racial comrades outside call for war against Germany and shoot German officials. The line from David Frankfurter to Herschel Grünspan is clearly drawn. [...] We will remember the names of those who confess to this cowardly murder [...] The same forces as in Cairo and Davos, they are Jews and not French . The shots at the German Embassy in Paris will not only mark the beginning of a new stance on the Jewish question , but will hopefully also be a signal for those foreigners who have not yet recognized that ultimately only the international Jew stands between the understanding of the peoples. "

On November 8th, Diewerge himself appeared in the Reich Press Conference and gave more precise instructions on reporting, in particular on her anti-Semitic tendencies ( Emil Ludwig was to be identified as one of the intellectual authors of the assassination; as already practiced in 1937, always with the nickname “Cohn "). In retrospect, Diewerge's activities are to be understood as the population's attunement to the November pogroms , which took place on the so-called Reichskristallnacht from November 9 to 10, 1938.

When the trial against Grynszpan was being prepared in France, Friedrich Grimm was to take part as a lawyer for the German Reich, while Diewerge took over the journalistic support. And Diewerge's propaganda writings again came down to the already known tenor: The accused had carried out the act as a tool of world Jewry, according to Diewerge in his work on "Grünspan und seine Helfershelfer", which appeared in 1939.

There was of course no longer a hearing, as the French public prosecutor's indictment was only brought on June 8, 1940, a few days before the Germans marched into Paris. When Grynszpan was apprehended in unoccupied France, Grimm successfully demanded its extradition from the Vichy regime and Grynszpan was brought to Berlin. There, Joseph Goebbels intended to hold a large show trial , to which, among other things, the former French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet was to be summoned as a witness. Diewerge was entrusted with planning this process: "Ministerialrat Diewerge from the Propaganda Ministry has the special task of processing the trial against the murderer Grünspan from a propaganda point of view." In fact, Diewerge pushed the planning forward, there was already a detailed schedule and performance plan Court hearing to be staged, in which Diewerge himself also played a role, namely as a speaker "on the preparation of world Jewry for war against the Reich, especially through Grünspan's act". But in May 1942 the project was stopped, apparently for two reasons: The Nazi leadership feared that Grynszpan would publicly portray his act as an act in the hustler's milieu and thus thwart the propaganda intention of the show trial; and the concept of suggesting credibility with the appearance of a French politician was rejected as politically unsuitable.

Jewish plutocracy, Jewish Bolshevism: anti-Semitic propaganda in millions

Diewerge continued to receive prestigious commissions in the Propaganda Ministry, for example preparing the radio broadcast for Hitler's 50th birthday on April 20, 1939. In August 1939, one month before the attack on Poland , he was appointed director of the Danzig radio station on the grounds that a “politician” was now required at the head of the institution in this area of ​​tension. Under his directorship, the station reported for the first time as "Reichssender Danzig" on the occasion of the Hitler speech on the attack on Poland on September 1st. Diewerges successor as director was Carl-Heinz Boese , while he himself took over the management of the Reich Propaganda Office in Danzig in September 1939 . There Diewerge organized the establishment of a network of Reich , Gau and district speakers for the NSDAP. Diewerge stayed in Gdansk until February 1941, with a brief interruption due to a front-line assignment as a war correspondent in the summer of 1940. Then Goebbels brought him back to Berlin and appointed him head of the radio department in the Propaganda Ministry. Diewerge had thus reached the peak of his career: he was now responsible for the entire political department of broadcasting, in particular for the news and propaganda broadcasts. The historian and Goebbels biographer Peter Longerich judges that Diewerge as "one of the most prominent propagandists in the ministry" was entrusted by Goebbels not only with the management of the radio department, but also with the "overall responsibility for the political-propagandistic broadcasts of the Großdeutscher Rundfunk".

In addition to this activity, Diewerge worked with two high-volume publications for the National Socialist regime on the construction of a Jewish threat to the world: He wrote a 32-page brochure The War Aim of World Plutocracy , which, according to Goebbels' diary, was distributed in no fewer than five million copies. In it he used quotes from a small edition self-published, otherwise hardly noticed brochure by the American Theodore Newman Kaufman , which, among other things, demanded the sterilization of all Germans in the event of an American-German war . He dramatized this pamphlet on the demonic Kaufman Plan , in which Judaism dictated the annihilation of Germanness to the Americans, and incorrectly gave the Jewish name Nathan as Kaufman's middle name . Diewerges comment contained this undisguised threat under the heading "Who should die - the Germans or the Jews?"

“How about treating these 20 million Jews instead of 80 million Germans according to the recipe of their racial comrade Kaufman? Then peace would be secured in any case. Because the troublemaker, the peacemaker, all over the world is the Jew. "

Goebbels expressed himself very satisfied and said that the brochure would "finally do away with the last rudiments of any existing indulgence, because even the stupidest can see from this brochure what threatens us if we become weak".

In the same year, Diewerge published an alleged collection of letters from German soldiers in the field under the title German soldiers see the Soviet Union , which served to conjure up a Jewish-Bolshevik threat to the world on the basis of carefully selected and edited or even invented contemporary witness reports. In the texts contained therein, pogroms and genocide of the Jews were greeted with enthusiastic words:

“What happened in Lviv was repeated in the smallest villages. Ukrainians and Poles were exterminated everywhere [ie the 'Bolsheviks'], but never a Jew. This is indicative of the true authors. But the popular anger was directed against this criminal people. They were beaten to death like dogs, just as they deserved. "

And further

"It will be necessary to burn out the plague bump radically, because these animals will always be a danger ..."

This brochure, too, was distributed in the millions and, following instructions from the Reich Press Conference, was recommended to all journalists in the German Reich.

In his position as head of the radio department, Diewerge had permanent disputes over competence with Heinrich Glasmeier , the Reichsintendent of the German radio. The mutual intrigues were repeatedly reflected in Goebbels' diary, who wanted his head of department to be more assertive, but on the other hand also did not want to comply with Diewerg's wish to drop Glasmeier. Ultimately, Diewerge could only hold his own in this function until October 1942; at this point in time Hans Fritzsche replaced him as "Goebbels' man on the radio". This was apparently also related to the fact that in the course of the war the entertainment content of the radio program grew significantly compared to direct political propaganda. A member of the SS since September 1936 , Diewerge then volunteered to work at the front in the Waffen SS divisions Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and Wiking . As a war correspondent, he wrote and spoke about 30 radio reports from the Caucasus under titles such as “Hussar coup on Volkswagen”. After a stay in a hospital in Krakow , Goebbels had him declared indispensable, and his front line assignment was over. The Propaganda Ministry used Diewerge in the following years for a number of tasks, including lecture tours and reports from occupied and neutral countries. Among other things, he traveled to Turkey with propaganda speeches and then reported to Goebbels about the mood there. In the last year of the war he was again commissioned to go to Danzig.

In the course of his propaganda activities, Diewerge received a number of other functions and awards: from 1935 he was a Reich speaker , later also a foreign speaker of the NSDAP. On September 19, 1939, he received the NSDAP's golden party badge as an honorary member, wore the SS honorary dagger and ring of honor, and had held the rank of SS standard leader since 1943 . He is often referred to in the literature as the bearer of the NSDAP blood order , but this cannot be regarded as certain. Diewerge is said to have belonged to the narrow circle of those who were present on April 30, 1945 when Goebbels said goodbye in Berlin's ' Führerbunker '. According to his own statements, on May 1st he “managed to break through to the west”.

In the Federal Republic of Germany

After the war, Diewerge would have fallen under the automatic arrest of the Allies because of his state and SS functions . He went into hiding and is said to have worked as an office manager for a lawyer in Hesse until his old colleague Friedrich Grimm found a new career opportunity at the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia.

The national collection of the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP and the Naumann district

In 1951, Grimm introduced Ernst Achenbach to Diewerge , who was head of the political department at the embassy in Paris during the Nazi era and was now the FDP's foreign policy spokesman. On Achenbach's recommendation, Diewerge obtained the position of personal secretary to the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP state chairman Friedrich Middelhauve . This personnel decision was not an isolated case, but part of Middelhauve's attempt to establish a “national collection” to the right of the CDU and the SPD, which in particular should also include Nazi officials. According to Middelhauve's later statements, she was made in full knowledge of Diewerges' activities during the National Socialist period; The decisive factor was his “professional qualification”. The historian Kristian Buchna commented: "Not precisely , but just the experienced former Goebbels staff seemed predestined in courses lasting several days, systematically new and additional train speakers', which should in future be used as multiples of the national collection rate."

In his new position, Diewerge published, among other things, central training materials for election speakers (“Rednerschnellbrief”); from September to December 1952 he was even entrusted with the speaker training of the federal FDP at Middelhauve's suggestion. He also designed speech manuscripts for Middelhauve. In addition, Diewerge wrote articles for the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP magazine Die Deutsche Zukunft and did major editorial work on a “German program” that was supposed to make the planned “national collection” binding for the federal FDP; according to Lutz Hachmeister , he was even the main author of this program. Speaker seminars organized by Diewerge served, for example, to train officials of the FDP youth organization, the young democrats , on the content of the German program. He invited Paul Hausser , among others, to such seminars ; Middelhauve also offered to use Diewerges competencies for the “press-related preparation” of an event organized by Hausser's mutual aid community for members of the former Waffen SS .

At the same time, Diewerge acted - at least partly with Middelhauve's knowledge - as a liaison for the Naumann circle . This group of former National Socialist functionaries around Diewerges former superiors, the former State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry Werner Naumann , tried to reshape the FDP in the National Socialist sense: “Whether you can turn a liberal party into a Nazi fighting group [...], I doubt, we But we have to give it a try, "said a manuscript of Naumann's speech from November 18, 1952. Diewerge kept Naumann constantly up to date in telephone calls - which were bugged by the British secret service - and made numerous FDP materials available to him (including the "Speaker Quick Letter"). When the FDP provided him with a car for the speaker training course, Diewerge Naumann told him over the phone that he could now visit all the “Gau capitals” to refresh his contacts from the Nazi era. Diewerge also submitted the draft of the “German Program” to Naumann and Hans Fritzsche for assessment.

On 14./15. On January 1st, 1953, several members of the Naumann Circle, then also known as the Gauleiter Conspiracy, were arrested by the British High Commissioner in accordance with his allied rights of reservation . Thereupon a commission of the federal executive committee of the FDP under the direction of Thomas Dehler began to examine the personnel policy of the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP and the connections between the FDP and the Naumann district. In particular, Diewerge's personality was now increasingly discussed within the party as well as publicly, in the FDP Diewerge was chosen as a victim and demands for him to be dismissed increased. This then offered Middelhauve to renounce his position on his own initiative, but Middelhauve initially stuck to his employee tenaciously. It was only when it became clear that Diewerge was politically unsustainable in the FDP that Middelhauve finally accepted his resignation on April 1, 1953. Diewerge himself spoke in a letter to the editor of “mutual agreement”. The preliminary report of the FDP Federal Executive Committee also called for Diewerges to be excluded from the party. Only when this was discussed in the board on June 7, 1953, it turned out that Diewerge was “definitely not” a member of the FDP, which a number of board members noted with great astonishment. Thomas Dehler stated that this information "took his breath away" and combined this with bitter reproaches to the address of Middelhauve: "You really want to say, Dr. Middelhauve, that you are not responsible for the fact that such a man, who was not a member of the party, was put in front of us by you as a trainer for the whole party? It is outrageous! "

Diewerge felt that he was being treated unfairly by the FDP and the public, as he wrote in several letters to Thomas Dehler. He demanded understanding for "that 20 years ago a young assessor, full of zest for action and ambition, rushed to his first major assignment," and complained that the public scandal made his behavior in the FDP seem "negative", although it did but "with normal further development it would have been regarded as harmless, if not even as appropriate". In 1956 he asked Dehler to rehabilitate because the affair had caused him professional disadvantages. He was compelled to "familiarize himself with a completely foreign industry without the possibility of utilizing my training and my previous knowledge". Apparently the advertising industry was meant, because in the following years Diewerge worked as an advertising manager in Essen .

Overtaken by the past: the Essen perjury trial

The Essen District Court, place of the perjury trial

In 1966, his Nazi past caught up with him again: the Essen district court initiated a perjury trial against Diewerge. The occasion was testimony from Diewerges in 1959 in a trial against the author Michael Graf Soltikow , who had claimed in various publications that the assassination attempt by Herschel Grynszpan was demonstrably the result of homosexual relationships between Grynszpan and vom Rath - a brother vom Rath had sued Soltikow for this. The indictment against Diewerge was essentially based on two points: First, Diewerge had declared under oath in the Soltikov trial that he had heard of an alleged homosexual motive late and that he was not aware of such a statement about the termination of the Grynszpan trial contributed. Second, he had "resolutely" denied having known anything about propaganda "secondary intentions" in 1941 and 1942, in particular that the process was intended to justify "anti-Jewish measures". Kristian Buchna sums up in retrospect: Diewerge had presented himself in the interrogation in 1959 as an “ignorant, by no means anti-Semitic recipient of orders”.

In the Essen trial, Diewerge stuck to his claims and stated that he first heard of the Final Solution from an English newspaper in Stockholm in 1944. After a series of testimony from high-ranking Nazi functionaries, including Ernst Lautz , Leopold Gutterer , Heinrich Hunke , Walter Jagusch , Ewald Krümmer and Franz Schlegelberger , the court came to the conclusion that Diewerge could not prove any false testimony with regard to the alleged homosexual motive. On the other hand, Diewerge had deliberately told the untruth with his assurance that he had no idea that the show trial against Grynszpan was intended to justify measures against Jews. By judgment of 17 February 1966 Diewerge was sentenced for perjury to one year's imprisonment, later for parole was suspended.

In the same year the Wiesbaden public prosecutor received another criminal complaint against Diewerge. It also referred to the show trial against Grynszpan prepared by Diewerge. Although the investigation was quickly discontinued, the Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer ordered his authority to take over the proceedings. But processing was slow; it was not until 1969 that the attorney general's office finally took over the investigation. She sought a conviction for complicity in murder : Diewerge had promoted the mass murder of the Jews through the planning and propaganda use of the show trial . Since the Grynszpan trial did not materialize and the unsuccessful attempt at aiding and abetting, the authorities closed the proceedings on November 20, 1969 .

Entanglement in the Flick affair

Diewerges ties to the FDP were not severed during this time. This became evident when he took over the management of two newly founded associations in 1968 : the Society for European Economic Policy eV (GfEW), a tax-exempt professional association according to the statutes , and the International Business Club eV (IWC), which was recognized as non-profit and therefore also tax-exempt . Otto Graf Lambsdorff was deputy chairman of the GfEW, another high-ranking FDP politician, Wolfram Dorn , deputy chairman of the IWC. As the Bonn Regional Court held in 1987, years after Diewerges death, in the judgment against Eberhard von Brauchitsch , Hans Friderichs and Lambsdorff in the so-called Flick affair , these associations were only pursuing their statutory goals in an appearance: in truth, they were used to receive tax-exempt industrial donations and to pass them on to the FDP in a roundabout way, that is, they operated aiding and abetting tax evasion .

Diewerge retained the management of both associations for five years and, according to the findings of the regional court, was actively involved in obscuring their true purposes. On January 27, 1971 , he wrote to the Neuwied tax office , which was planning a tax audit , “contrary to the truth” that the GfEW had started its activities as a professional association as planned, and drew up a list of relevant activities. In 1973, at the age of 67, he resigned as managing director of both clubs and was replaced by Joachim Friedrich von Stojentin , later by Friedrich Karl Patterson . He died in 1977, four years before the prosecutor's investigation into the Flick affair began. In the week before his death, on 26./27. November 1977, he was planned as an external speaker for an event of the HIAG to train the members of this traditional organization of the Waffen-SS in "public relations", but had to cancel at short notice.

Afterlife

Some of Diewerge's propaganda writings were digitized in the Internet age and can be found on various right-wing extremist and revisionist websites. In particular, the contents of the brochures on the “Gustloff Case” and the “Kaufman Plan” are still frequently used as a means of propaganda in the neo-Nazi scene.

This situation is the starting point for the 2002 published novel Crabwalk by Gunter Grass . The narrator gets on the right site "www.blutzeuge.de" in a chatroom , the Wilhelm Gustloff and the fate of the same ship as its theme. There he meets a chatter who repeatedly cites "Party comrade and imperial speaker Wolfgang Diewerge" as a source. In connection with Diewerge, other chatters briefly touch on his connection with the Naumann circle and with the Flick affair.

Research and literature situation

There is no comprehensive biography of Diewerge. In addition to the short, inexact abstracts in Ernst Klee's personal dictionary on the Third Reich and Wolfgang Benz 's Handbook of Antisemitism, there is a relatively extensive description of Diewerg's curriculum vitae in Kristian Buchna's 2010 study.

On the other hand, there are already detailed research reports on the political activities in which Diewerge was involved, which at least marginally address Diewerge's actions. The studies by Gudrun Krämer , Albrecht Fueß and Mahmoud Kassim deal with the Cairo Process from different perspectives, the latter two in particular providing material on Diewerg's propaganda activities and also dealing with his cooperation with the National Socialist organization abroad and the differences to the line of the Foreign Office. The Gustloff affair is dealt with in Peter O. Chotjewitz 's extensive essay Mord als Katharsis and a study by Mathieu Gillabert. Here, too, the relationship between the Propaganda Ministry, the foreign organization of the NSDAP and the Foreign Office plays an essential role. In 2012, Armin Fuhrer published a book based on archival research, especially in Swiss newspaper archives, providing new information about Diewerg's activities in the Gustloff case. Helmut Heiber's study from 1957 is still essential for Diewerge's role in the planned Grynszpan trial, and Alan E. Steinweis ' book on Kristallnacht 1938 provides additions . In 1981, Wolfgang Benz analyzed Diewerges' brochure on the Kaufman Plan in the quarterly magazine for contemporary history . In his book from 2010, Kristian Buchna evaluated numerous archive sources on the "National Collection" of the FDP North Rhine-Westphalia and can therefore present Diewerg's activities in this context in great detail. The book by journalist Hans Leyendecker remains an important source for Diewerg's role in the Flick affair .

Contemporary reports such as Cuno Horkenbach's handbook Das Deutsche Reich from 1918 to today from 1935 or the press reports in particular in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the Essen perjury trial provide material for the phases of life that are not or hardly affected by these scientific publications. There are files on Diewerge at the Institute for Contemporary History . A collection containing notes from a conversation between Helmut Heiber and Diewerge and his testimony in the Soltikow trial is accessible online. Another inventory with the estate of the Essen public prosecutor Hans-Ulrich Behm , the prosecutor in the Essen trial, has not yet been evaluated.

Fonts (selection)

• As a special reporter on the Cairo Jewish trial. Judicially hardened material on the Jewish question. Munich: More likely , 1935.
• The Gustloff case. Prehistory and background to the bloody deed in Davos. Munich: More like, 1936.
• A Jew shot. Eyewitness report from the trial of David Frankfurter. Munich, Rather, 1937.
• Attack against Peace. A yellow book on verdigris and his accomplices. Munich, Rather, 1939.
• The new Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. A work report from the structure in the east of Germany. Junker and Dünnhaupt, 1940.
• The war goal of the world plutocracy. Documentary publication on the book of the President of the American Peace Society Theodore Nathan Kaufman "Deutschland muss die" ("Germany must perish"). Munich: More like, 1941.
• German soldiers see the Soviet Union. Field post letters from the east. Berlin: Limpert, 1941.
• Hubert Kogge. Path of an entrepreneur. With drawings by Josef Arens. Presented to Mr. Hubert Kogge by his employees on his 25th business anniversary. Cologne: Business publisher Dr. Sinz, 1959.

literature

• Wolfgang Benz : Extermination of Jews out of self-defense? The legends of Theodore N. Kaufman. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 29, Issue 4, 1981, pp. 615-630, online (PDF; 8.8 MB) .
• Wolfgang Benz: Wolfgang Diewerge. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 2: People. Part 1: A – K. de Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 174-176.
• Kristian Buchna: National Collection on the Rhine and Ruhr. Friedrich Middelhauve and the North Rhine-Westphalian FDP. 1945-1953. Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59802-5 (series of the quarterly books for contemporary history) .
• Peter O. Chotjewitz : murder as catharsis. In: Emil Ludwig , Peter O. Chotjewitz: The murder in Davos. Texts on the David Frankfurter - Wilhelm Gustloff assassination. March, Herbstein 1986, ISBN 3-88880-065-X , pp. 119-209.
• Albrecht Fueß: The German community in Egypt from 1919-1939. Lit, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-8258-2734-8 ( Hamburg Islamic studies and turkological works and texts 8).
• Armin Fuhrer : Death in Davos. David Frankfurter and the assassination attempt on Wilhelm Gustloff. Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-069-1 .
• Matthieu Gillabert: La propagande nazie en Suisse. L'affaire Gustloff 1936. Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne 2008, ISBN 978-2-88074-772-5 ( Le Savoir Suisse 49).
• Helmut Heiber : The Grünspan case. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Vol. 5, Issue 2, 1957, pp. 134–172, online (PDF; 4.36; 4.6 MB) .
• Cuno Horkenbach (Ed.): The German Reich from 1918 to today. Presse- und Wirtschaftsverlag GmbH, Berlin 1935, p. 931. Annual volume 1933.
• Mahmoud Kassim: Germany's diplomatic relations with Egypt, 1919–1936. Lit, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-8258-5168-0 ( Studies on the Contemporary History of the Middle East and North Africa 6), (Simultaneously: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 1999).
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Updated edition, 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 111 ( Fischer 16048 The time of National Socialism ).
• Hans Leyendecker : The nobleman and the Miami connection. The internationally interlinked donation associations of the FDP. In: Hans Leyendecker (Ed.): The Lambsdorff judgment. Steidl, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-88243-111-3 , pp. 113-131.
• Gerhard Mauz : What can also be said of Dr. Goebbels likes to say…. In: Der Spiegel. No. 4 (January 17), 1966, pp. 30-32 (report on the Essen perjury trial, online ).
• Alan E. Steinweis : Kristallnacht 1938. A German pogrom . Reclam, Stuttgart 2011. ISBN 978-3-15-010774-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Diewerge in the catalog of the German National Library
• Criminals in the Peace of Europe (PDF; 6.8 MB) Facsimile of the first two pages of the Völkischer Beobachter from November 8, 1938. Diewerge's leading article begins in two columns on the front page.
• Before the Grünspan trial, facsimile of the Jüdische Welt-Rundschau of July 21, 1939. On p. 2 the article given, which deals relatively extensively with the “specialist in anti-Semitic inflammatory pamphlets” and “young Nazi journalists” Diewerge.
• The Naumann affair (report of the commission of the FDP federal executive committee on the Naumann circle), in: Horst Lummert: Psychologische Kriegführung . Kokkhakiv Press, 2000-2010, pp. 54-72, available from Google Books .
• Institute for Contemporary History : Conversation between Helmut Heiber and Wolfgang Diewerge on June 2, 1955, contained in the folder "Witness literature" (PDF; 4.9 MB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Alexander Hesse: Heinz Diewerge . In: ders .: The professors and lecturers of the Prussian Pedagogical Academies (1926–1933) and colleges for teacher training (1933–1941). Weinheim, Deutscher Studien Verlag 1995, pp. 235–236. In the margin of this short biography Hesse also gives some information about Wolfgang Diewerge.
2. ↑ Otto Hofmann, Hinrich Siuts (ed.): The Gröningsche Gymnasium in Stargard in Pomerania. A school story. Essen 1981, p. 131.
3. ↑ This is also confirmed by his testimony from 1955 in the Soltikow trial, which can be found on the website of the Institute for Contemporary History. Online .
4. ↑ Information on legal training according to Fuhrer 2012, p. 82 f., Who uses files from documents on Diewerge in the Berlin Document Center.
5. ↑ Horkenbach 1935, p. 931; Fuhrer 2012, p. 82 (with reference to documents at the Federal Archives).
6. ↑ Beate Baldow: Episode or Danger? The Naumann affair. Diss. Berlin 2012, p. 135.
7. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 82 f., With reference to information from Diewerges in his application to shorten the state examination.
8. ↑ Hartmut E. Lissinna: National sports events in Nazi Germany . Mainz, Palatium, 1997, p. 135.
9. ↑ Horkenbach 1935, p. 931. The biographical information there is based on communications from Diewerges himself, as can be seen from Horkenbach's foreword; see. ibid., p. 4.
10. ↑ See Albrecht Fuess: Between Internment and Propaganda. The German community in Egypt 1919–1939. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society , Supplement XI. XXVI. German Orientalist Day from 25th to 29th September in Leipzig. Franz Steiner, Stuttgart, 1998, pp. 334–343, here: p. 341.
11. ↑ Kassim 2000, pp. 364-367. The article in the Völkischer Beobachter was entitled: A new edition of the London Jewish theater in Cairo, again an anti-German inflammatory process against international Jewry ; see. Kassim 2000, p. 367.
12. ↑ Fuess 1996, p. 104.
13. ↑ See Kassim 2000, especially p. 364 ff., And Albrecht Fuess: Between Internment and Propaganda. The German community in Egypt 1919–1939. In: ZDMG , Supplement 11, 1995, pp. 334-343, here: p. 341 online
14. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 81.
15. ↑ Horkenbach 1935, who notes in the foreword that the status of the information on the organizations is that of mid-1935; see. also Cuno Horkenbach: Handbook of the Reich and State Authorities, Corporations and Organizations , 1935/1936, Wirtschaftsverlag Berlin.
16. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 84.
17. ↑ See Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part I: Records 1923-1941 . 1997-2005. Volume 3, II, p. 382.
18. ^ Hans-Adolf Jacobsen : National Socialist Foreign Policy 1933–1938. Frankfurt / Berlin: Alfred Metzner, 1968, p. 714.
19. ↑ According to Gillabert 2008, pp. 57–60, and Chotjewitz 1986, p. 128; on the protest of thanks cf. Stephan Schwarz: Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker's relations with Switzerland (1933–1945) . Bern: Peter Lang, 2007, p. 236.
20. ↑ Quoted from Chotjewitz 1986, p. 159; in Diewerges brochure p. 25.
21. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 81 and 95 ff.
22. ↑ Gillabert 2008, pp. 92 and 97-99; Chotjewitz 1986, especially p. 165 ff.
23. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 108 ff.
24. ↑ Gillabert 2008, p. 83.
25. ↑ Diary entry of January 22, 1937. Cf. Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part I: Records 1923-1941 . 1997-2005. Volume 3, II, p. 338.
26. ↑ Chotjewitz 1986, p. 157.
27. ↑ Quoted from Chotjewitz 1986, p. 160 f .; at Diewerge p. 26 f.
28. ↑ Gillabert 2008, p. 86, reproduces a caricature from Diewerges book.
29. ↑ See above all: BS: A perjury trial in Essen. Condemnation of the former imperial speaker Diewerge. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from February 20, 1966.
30. ↑ DNB broadcast 8:37 p.m., November 7, 1938, Zsg. 192/13/10/75; quoted here from: Thomas Goll: The staged outrage. November 9, 1938. Topics and materials. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2010, p. 54. Online (PDF; 4.8 MB).
31. ↑ Italic emphasis in the original (print blocked there). The leading article can be found online (PDF; 6.8 MB) on a website of the Federal Agency for Civic Education .
32. ↑ Thomas Goll: The staged outrage. November 9, 1938. Topics and materials. Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2010, p. 54. Online (PDF; 4.8 MB).
33. ↑ Heiber 1957, p. 147, who quotes an internal letter from the Foreign Office.
34. ↑ Heiber 1957, p. 159.
35. ↑ See Heiber 1957, p. 166.
36. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 87.
37. ^ Ansgar Diller: Broadcasting Policy in the Third Reich. DTV, Munich 1980, p. 260 f.
38. ↑ Buchna 2010, p. 85.
39. ^ Peter Longerich: Goebbels. Biography . Siedler, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-88680-887-8 , p. 503 f.
40. ↑ See Jeffrey Herf : The Jewish Enemy. Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust . Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 112; see. also: Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part II: Dictations 1941–1945 . 1993-1996. Volume 1, p. 328.
41. ↑ Diewerge: Kriegsziel der Weltplutokratie , p. 14, quoted here from Benz 1981, p. 623.
42. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part II: Dictations 1941–1945 . 1993-1996. Volume 1, p. 328.
43. ↑ See Michaela Kipp: “Grossreinemachen im Osten.” Enemy images in German field post letters during World War II . Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2014, p. 73. Kipp comes to the conclusion that the individual statements in Diewerges letter collection appeared “imaginable”, but the “density of Nazi propaganda formulas” tends to suggest a forgery. At least Diewerge's edition of letters represents a “very specific selection”. Cf. also with a similar tenor, ibid., P. 43. In particular, anti-Semitic slogans can be found here in a far greater concentration than in the collection of private field mail that Kipp examined, cf. ibid., p. 247.
44. ↑ From an alleged eyewitness report by a captain to an NSDAP district leader dated July 14, 1941, printed in Diewerge, German soldiers see the Soviet Union. Field post letters from the east. Berlin: Limpert, 1941, pp. 41-43; quoted here from Bernd Boll: Zloczow, July 1941: The Wehrmacht and the beginning of the Holocaust in Galicia . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , Vol. 50, No. 10, 2002, pp. 899–917.
45. ↑ German soldiers see the Soviet Union. Field post letters from the east . Berlin: Limpert, 1941, p. 43.
46. ↑ Cf. Thilo Stenzel: The Russian image of the 'little man' . Announcements of the Eastern European Institute Munich, No. 27, June 1998, here p. 20; see. also Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part II: Dictations 1941–1945 . 1993-1996. Volume 2, p. 319.
47. ↑ See Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . KG Saur, Munich. Part I, Volume 9, p. 372 (June 14, 1941); Part II, Volume 3, p. 298 (February 13, 1942), p. 406 (March 3, 1942), p. 451 (June 5, 1942).
48. ↑ See Callis 2005, especially p. 57 ff.
49. ↑ Buchna 2010, p. 83.
50. ↑ Fuhrer 2012, p. 86 f.
51. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The golden party badge and its honorary awards 1934–1944 , Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 67; Buchna 2010, p. 83.
52. ↑ Kristian Buchna could not find any confirmation for this in a recent study. See Buchna 2010, p. 83, footnote 302.
53. ↑ Cf. Max Bonacker: Goebbels' man at the radio . Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007, p. 215. This probably goes back to his own information, which is recorded in a memo from Helmut Heiber. Online .
54. ↑ Memorandum Heiber, online .
55. ↑ See Buchna 2010, p. 85, who quotes a memo for information from Franz Blücher : Bundesarchiv, N 1080/260, p. 87; see. also the report by Fritz Neumayer , Thomas Dehler and Alfred Onnen for the Federal Executive of the FDP, Chapter II, Section 2, archive link ( Memento from August 22, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) and Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past. The beginnings of the Federal Republic and the Nazi past . Munich: Beck, 1996, p. 366.
56. ↑ Cf. Buchna 2010, especially the chapter The North Rhine-Westphalian FDP on the Way to the National Collection and National Collection in Practice , pp. 35–126; see also Jörg Friedrich , Die kalte Amnestie. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic , Piper, Munich 1994, pp. 317–333.
57. ↑ Buchna 2010, pp. 82 and 85.
58. ↑ Buchna, 2010, p. 85; The quotation in the quotation comes from the minutes of the meeting of the executive board of the FDP on April 23, 1952.
59. ↑ Buchna 2010, p. 163 f.
60. ↑ See Buchna 2010, pp. 87 f., P. 113 ff .; see. also Max Bonacker: Goebbels' husband on the radio . Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007, p. 254; Lutz Hachmeister: The enemy researcher. The career of SS leader Franz Alfred Six , Munich: Beck, 1998, p. 308.
61. ↑ Buchna 2010, pp. 119, 132.
62. ↑ See Buchna 2010, p. 129 f.
63. ↑ Quoted from Norbert Frei: Politics of the Past . Munich 1996, p. 361. The British High Commissioner's authorities later confiscated the manuscript when Naumann was arrested. Norbert Frei quotes from copies from the archive of liberalism .
64. ↑ Buchna 2010, pp. 113–118 and 131; Christof Brauers: The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953 , Munich: Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, 2007, p. 581; see. also: Jörg Friedrich, The Cold Amnesty. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic , Piper, Munich 1994, p. 322.
65. ↑ Jörg Friedrich, The cold amnesty. Nazi perpetrators in the Federal Republic , Piper, Munich 1994, p. 322.
66. ↑ Buchna 2010, pp. 163–166.
67. ↑ Cf. Diewerges letter to the editor in Spiegel from May 27, 1953.
68. ^ Udo Wengst (Ed.): Free Democratic Party. Meeting minutes . Part 1: The Liberals chaired by Theodor Heuss and Franz Blücher: 1949–1954. 2nd half band. Droste, Düsseldorf 1990, pp. 1046 and 1048 f.
69. ↑ Both quotations come from a letter from Diewerge to Dehler on February 14, 1953; reproduced here from Buchna 2010, p. 165.
70. ^ Letter from Diewerge to Dehler of December 15, 1956, quoted by Ralph Schleimer (1998): Democracy Foundation and Party Politics. The North Rhine-Westphalian FDP in the prehistory and early history of the Federal Republic . In: Geschichte im Westen , Volume 13, pp. 7–39, here: p. 35. Here reproduced from Buchna 2010, p. 200.
71. ↑ See The Dead Lives , in: Der Spiegel of August 31, 1960. See also the information on the person in the Soltikow trial 1955, online .
72. ↑ See Wolfgang Kuballa: Herschel Grünspan's motive remains unexplained. The murder of the diplomat vom Rath is reopened in the trial against the Nazi official Diewerge. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of January 26, 1966; Gerhard Mauz: What can also be said of Dr. Goebbels may say… Spiegel reporter Gerhard Mauz on the trial against Wolfgang Diewerge. In: Der Spiegel, January 17, 1966; BS: A perjury trial in Essen. Condemnation of the former imperial speaker Diewerge. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of February 20, 1966. The literal quotations come from the most detailed description, the NZZ article. See also the copy of Diewerge's testimony in the IfZ's Diewerge testimony, online .
73. ↑ Buchna 2010, p. 199.
74. ↑ BS: A perjury trial in Essen. Condemnation of the former imperial speaker Diewerge. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from February 20, 1966.
75. ↑ Cf. Matthias Meusch: From dictatorship to democracy. Fritz Bauer and the processing of Nazi crimes in Hesse (1956–1968) , Wiesbaden, 2001, pp. 208–209.
76. ↑ See Leyendecker 1988, who quotes extracts from the judgment, here pp. 114–116.
77. ↑ Leyendecker 1988, p. 120, who here literally quotes the judgment.
78. ↑ Karsten Wilke: The “Aid Community on Mutuality” (HIAG) 1950–1990. Veterans of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic. Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-506-77235-0 (also: Bielefeld, Univ., Diss., 2010), p. 118.
79. ^ Günter Grass: Im Krebsgang , Munich: dtv, 2004 (paperback edition), esp. Pp. 14–15, but also in various other places. See also Paul A. Youngman: The realization of a virtual past in Gunter Grass's Crabwalk . In: Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature , Vol. 32 (2008), No. 1, pp. 179-201, online .
80. ↑ See the Hans-Ulrich Behm inventory in the IfZ archive, Findmittel online (PDF; 127 kB).

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on July 8, 2011 in this version .