Franz Schwede

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Franz Schwede
Franz Schwede-Coburg
Oberbürgermeister of Coburg
In office
1 March 1933 – 1 July 1934
Preceded byErich Unverfähr
Succeeded byOtto Schmidt
Personal details
Born5 March 1888
Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund
Völkischer Block
National Socialist Freedom Movement
OccupationSailor
NicknameNero
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
Branch/serviceImperial German Navy
Reichsmarine
Years of service1907–1919
1920-1921
RankDeckoffizier
Battles/warsWorld War I
AwardsIron Cross, 1st and 2nd class

Franz Reinhold Schwede (5 March 1888 – 19 October 1960)

war crimes
.

Early years

Franz Schwede was born in the small town of Drawöhnen near Memel,

Scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919, Schwede wound up in British custody as a prisoner of war
.

Upon his release on 1 February 1920 he immediately joined the

anti-Semitic organization.[5]

Rise to power in Coburg

The Coburg branch office of the NSDAP pictured in 1937 on the 15th anniversary of its founding

In November 1922 Schwede joined the Nazi Party (membership number 1,581) and in April 1923 co-founded a Local Group (

Kreistag (District Council) of Upper Franconia.[3]

In 1926, Schede founded Der Weckruf ("The Wake-Up Call"), the first Nazi propaganda newspaper at the local level in Germany. Here he ran an extra-parliamentary opposition with lurid articles about alleged "scandals" designed to destabilize the political system of the

Jewish General Director of the Coburg meat company Großmann AG. Friedmann was initially successful in fighting these attacks and managed to get the City Council to fire Schwede from his job at the Municipal Works in 1929. The outraged Nazis demanded Schwede's immediate reinstatement and when the city refused a petition began circulating to dissolve the City Council.[6] On 5 May 1929 the recall passed with 67% of the vote. In the ensuing re-election campaign, which included public speeches in Coburg by Adolf Hitler himself, the Nazis won 43.1% of the popular vote and 13 of the 25 seats in June 1929. This was the first instance where the NSDAP held an absolute majority in a local government in Germany.[9]
At the newly elected Council's opening session, Schwede was promptly rehired to the Municipal Works.

Schwede then managed to get himself elected, after the fifth try, as third deputy mayor (

Bavarian Landtag, succeeding Hans Schemm, and would go on to become the chamber's First Vice-President in March 1932.[3] Early in 1931 he was elected second Bürgermeister of Coburg and, on 16 November 1931, first Bürgermeister. Coburg became the first city in Germany to see the swastika flag raised on a public building, City Hall, which occurred on 18 January 1931 two years before Hitler came to power. Schwede also got the city to grant Hitler an honorary citizenship on 16 October 1932, also the first to do so.[8] All this created a cult of personality
around Schwede, a highlight of which was the 1933 dedication of Coburg City Hall's new bell, bearing the rhyming inscription Zu Adolf Hitler ruf ich dich, Franz Schwede-Glocke heiße ich (roughly translated "To Adolf Hitler I call, I am called the Franz Schwede Bell").

Following the

Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister). In March 1933, a terror campaign was launched under his leadership against Jews and opponents of the Nazis. By the end of April, 152 people had been arrested and harshly mistreated while in "protective custody", many in Schwede's presence.[10] In 1939 Coburg was officially granted the title "First National Socialist City in Germany" (German: Erste nationalsozialistische Stadt Deutschlands). Schwede was also made an honorary citizen of Coburg, as Hitler had been, and was awarded use of the suffix "Coburg" in his name.[11]

Gauleiter of Pomerania

Schwede's political career continued its steady rise when, in November 1933, he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 26, Franconia. He also became a holder of the Golden Party Badge. On 1 July 1934, he was appointed Regierungspräsident (District President) of Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate. Around the same time the existing Gauleiter of the Prussian Province of Pomerania, Wilhelm Karpenstein, ran afoul of NSDAP headquarters and was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives. Schwede's loyalty was rewarded when Hitler appointed him to the powerful NSDAP Gauleiter position in Pomerania on 21 July 1934 and made him Oberpräsident of the provincial government on 30 July.[12][13] He succeeded Rudolf zur Bonsen in the government post, and he also became president of the Pomeranian Provincial Council.[14] Thus Schwede united under his control the highest Party and governmental offices in the province.

Schwede moved to

SS-Stabsführer of SS District XIII Pomerania, and Werner Faber as Lord Mayor of Stettin.[15]

On 8 November 1934, Schwede was named to the

Reichskristallnacht on 9 November 1938, Schwede oversaw the destruction of the Pomeranian synagogues. The next day, all male Stettin Jews were deported to Oranienburg concentration camp and kept there for several weeks in order to increase the level of terror.[12]

World War II and war crimes

At the outbreak of

Baltic States.[18]

After learning of the

Neustadt in Westpreußen to be shot by SS-Kommando Eimann or murdered by Sonderkommando Lange in gas vans.[19]
The mental sanitorium in Meseritz-Obrawalde then was converted into an Aktion T4 center and it is estimated that over 10,000 handicapped persons were killed there. The Director of the facility,
Lublin-Lipowa Reservation that had been set up following the Nisko Plan, to their ultimate demise.[12]

On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and Schwede remained Commissioner only for Gau Pomerania. In 1943 Pomerania became a target of allied air raids and throughout 1944 and early 1945 Stettin's industrial and residential areas were hit. Despite this, the province was regarded as "safe" compared to other parts of the Third Reich and it became a shelter for evacuees from hard hit Berlin and the industrial areas of western Germany. On 25 September 1944, Schwede was made commander of the Nazi Volkssturm forces in his Gau. Hastily organized and poorly equipped, his units had the third worst casualty figures in the Reich.[21]

Pomerania finally turned into a battlefield on 26 January 1945, when

East Pomeranian Offensive. Schwede believed in victory up until the very end, so evacuation orders for the civilian population were issued either too late or not at all. He even ordered authorities to repel any flight attempts as "defeatist". However, even as the Soviets advanced, he managed to get himself onto a ship out of Sassnitz on 4 March 1945 in time to escape towards the direction of Schleswig-Holstein.[12] The official post-war West German Schieder commission estimated civilian losses in Schwede's province at 440,000 dead.[22]

Imprisonment and death

On 13 May 1945, Schwede was captured by the

war crimes in a Bielefeld court and on 25 November 1948 sentenced to nine years in prison for membership in the SA-Führerkorps. On 7 April 1951 a court in Coburg sentenced him to another ten years' imprisonment on 52 counts of abuse of power and grievous bodily harm that he participated in during the terrors of March, 1933. His sentence was commuted to probation on 24 January 1956 on grounds of ill health and he died four years later at the age of 72 in Coburg.[23]

See also

References

  1. ^ Carl-Christian H. Dressel: "Anmerkungen zur Justiz in Coburg von der Errichtung des Landgerichts Coburg bis zur Entnazifizierung", in: Jahrbuch der Coburger Landesstiftung 1997, Coburg 1997, p. 73. (in German)
  2. ISBN 978-1-781-55826-3
    .
  3. ^ a b c d Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 231.
  4. ISBN 3-88741-116-1
    /
  5. ISBN 3-87473-000-X
    .
  6. ^ a b Jürgen Erdmann: Coburg, Bayern und das Reich 1918–1923. Druckhaus und Vesteverlag A. Rossteutscher, Coburg 1969
  7. ^ Coburger Zeitung, 8 December 1924 (in German) retrieved 29-April-2012
  8. ^
    ISBN 3-631-53751-4 (Online
    )
  9. ^ Coburger Zeitung, 24 Juni 1929 (in German) retrieved 29-April-2012
  10. ISBN 3-00-006732-9
    , p. 117.
  11. ISBN 3-9808006-3-6
  12. ^
    ISBN 3-88680-272-8
    , pp.500-512
  13. ^ Gauleiter Schwede zum Oberpräsidenten vom Pommern ernannt. Frankfurter Zeitung, 31 July 1934.
  14. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 233.
  15. ISBN 3-486-58086-8, S. 280
    .
  16. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 232–233.
  17. ISBN 3-87847-163-7
  18. ISBN 0-393-04994-9 p. 261 Google Books link
  19. ISBN 3-10-039303-1
    , p. 95–98.
  20. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 235.
  21. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 236.
  22. ^ Figures from: Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neiße, volume 1, edition from 1984, page 7 E, 158 E, 159 E
  23. ^ Stefan Nöth: Antisemitismus. In: Voraus zur Unzeit. Coburg und der Aufstieg des Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland, S. 82.

Sources

External links
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