Hans Schemm

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Hans Schemm
State Minister
for Education and Culture
In office
16 March 1933 – 5 March 1935
Appointed byFranz Ritter von Epp
Prime MinisterLudwig Siebert
Preceded byFranz Xaver Goldenberger
Succeeded byAdolf Wagner
Personal details
Born
Hans Heinrich Georg Schemm

6 October 1891
NSDAP
Other political
affiliations		National Socialist Freedom Movement
ProfessionTeacher
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
Branch/serviceImperial German Army
Years of service1914 – 1916
UnitMedical Corps
Battles/warsWorld War I

Hans Schemm (6 October 1891 – 5 March 1935) was an educator who became a prominent Nazi Party official. He served as Gauleiter of Gau Bayreuth and Bavarian State Minister for Education and Culture until his death in an airplane accident.

Early life

Schemm, whose parents ran a shoemaker's shop, was born in

First World War broke out, Schemm was drafted and served as a medical attendant at a military epidemic hospital in Bayreuth. There he became infected with tuberculosis and, consequently, was discharged from military service on 26 August 1916. He returned to his teaching job in Neufang. In 1919 he was a member of the Freikorps Bayreuth, which took part in the suppression of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich. On the basis of his background in bio-chemistry, Schemm became head of a bacteriological-chemical laboratory (Sanitorium Hubertusbad) in Thale. After it closed in 1921 for financial reasons, Schemm returned to the classroom as a volkschule teacher at the Altstadtschule ("Old Town School") in Bayreuth, which after his death was named the Hans-Schemm-Schule.[1]

Nazi Party career

Schemm had joined the

Völkischer Bund in 1924 and, when it disbanded, joined the National Socialist Freedom Movement. When the Nazi Party was re-established in 1925, Schemm immediately rejoined it on 27 February (membership number 29,313) and organized the Bayreuth Ortsgruppe (Local Group) becoming its Ortsgruppenleiter, a post he would retain until his death.In May 1927 he advanced to Bezirksleiter (District Leader) in Upper Franconia. A gifter speaker, he became an effective propagandist and served as a Reichsredner (national orator).[2] During that time, a very close personal rivalry developed with Friedrich Puchta [de
], an SPD member and Bayreuth's representative in the Reichstag.

On 20 May 1928, Schemm was elected a member of the Bavarian Landtag, serving until September 1930. On 1 October 1928 when Julius Streicher’s large Gau of Northern Bavaria (Nordbayern) was broken up, Schemm became the Gauleiter of the newly established Gau of Upper Franconia (Oberfranken). On 24 November 1928, Schemm co-founded the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) in Hof and was elected its leader ("Reichswalter") on 21 April 1929.[3]

Schemm also took on the role of Nazi Party publicist. Between 1928 and 1929 he was the editor of several Nazi newspapers (Der Streiter, Weckruf and Nationale Zeitung). In August 1929, Schemm founded his own newspaper, the Nationalsozialistische Lehrerzeitung ("National Socialist Teachers' Newspaper"), that became the journalistic organ of the NSLB. On 1 October 1930 came the first edition of the weekly newspaper Kampf für deutsche Freiheit und Kultur ("Struggle for German Freedom and Culture"), which was published by Schemm, and whose circulation rose from 3,000 in the beginning to 20,000 by 1932. In July 1931, Schemm founded the Bayreuth National Socialist Cultural Publishing House (Nationalsozialistischer Kulturverlag Bayreuth), which beginning on 1 October 1932 published the daily newspaper Das Fränkische Volk (circulation: 10,000).[4]

On 8 December 1929 Schemm became a member of the Bayreuth Stadrat (City Council) and chairman of its Nazi faction. In September 1930, he was elected a member of the German national parliament, the

Gau Bavarian Eastern March. Schemm became the Gauleiter of the enlarged Gau.[5]

On 10 March 1933, when the Nazis seized control of the Bavarian state government, Schemm was made the Staatskommissar (State Commissioner) in charge of education and culture, and also was appointed one of the state's representatives to the Reichsrat until its abolition on 14 February 1934.[6].

After Schemm's arch-enemy Friedrich Puchta was taken into "protective custody" on the night of 9/10 March 1933, like many other political opponents of the National Socialists throughout Germany, Schemm personally delivered him to Sankt Georgen prison on 10 March. When Puchta was transferred to Dachau concentration camp on 24 April, Schemm made sure that Puchta was placed in the dreaded Barrack VII, which was considered a penal camp.

On 16 March 1933, the

Minister-President Ludwig Siebert. At the same time, he officially left school service. In October 1933, Schemm became a member of the Academy for German Law. He was a holder of the Golden Party Badge and was also granted honorary citizenship of Bayreuth. On 17 November 1933, he became head of the Office for the NSLB within the leadership of the Nazi Party. On 1 April 1934, Schemm was named head (Hauptamtsleiter) of the Main Office for Education at the Brown House, the national headquarters of the NSDAP.[7]

Schemm has been described as "perhaps the most skilled and dynamic of Franconia's Nazi leaders."

Communist
, as can be seen in some of his quotations:

In April 1933, when Schemm arrived in Passau to attend the laying of the corner stone for the Hall of the Nibelungs, he addressed the masses.[11] Passau honored Schemm by dedicating a street and a school to him.[12]

Death

On 5 March 1935 Schemm was seriously injured in an aircraft crash. Although Hitler personally ordered noted surgeon Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch to fly to Bayreuth, Schemm succumbed to his injuries that same day before the professor's arrival. He was succeeded by his Deputy, Ludwig Ruckdeschel, as Acting Gauleiter until Fritz Wächtler was appointed the permanent replacement on 5 December.[13] He was given a lavish state funeral, attended by Hitler and most Party and State dignitaries. One observer noted:

[It] was the biggest Bayreuth had ever seen and far more ostentatious than

Twilight of the Gods.[14]

The Nazis posthumously honored Schemm as a publicist and educator by naming multiple schools, streets, and halls after him.

Works

  • Der rote Krieg. Mutter oder Genossin, 1931
  • Gott, Rasse und Kultur, 1933
  • Unsere Religion heisst Christus, unsere Politik heisst Deutschland!, 1933

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-781-55826-3
    .
  2. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, pp. 97, 99.
  3. ISBN 3-87847-163-7
    .
  4. ^ Miller & Schulz 2021, p. 101.
  5. ^ Höffkes 1986, pp. 293–294.
  6. ^ "Joachim Lilla: Ministers of State, senior administrative officials and (NS) officials in Bavaria from 1918 to 1945". Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  7. Bayerische Landesbibliothek
    . Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  8. ^ Zofka, Zdenek (1988). "Between Bauernbund and National Socialism. The Political Reorientation of the Peasants in the Final Phase of the Weimar Republic". In Childers, Thomas (ed.). The Formation of the Nazi Constituency 1919-1933. Croom Helm.
  9. ^ Mosse, George Lachmann (1966). Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich. University of Wisconsin Press. p. xxxi.
  10. ^ Allen, Arthur (2015). The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brace Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis. Norton.
  11. ^ Anna Rosmus Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, p. 99
  12. ^ Anna Rosmus Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, pp. 212ff
  13. Bayerische Landesbibliothek
    . Retrieved 20 April 2016.
  14. ISBN 978-0-15101-308-1
    , p. 237.

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hans_Schemm&oldid=1220703951"