Albert Leo Schlageter

Albert Leo Schlageter (Template:IPA; August 12, 1894 – May 26, 1923) was an Imperial German Army officer who served in World War I before joining several Freikorps groups and carrying out acts of sabotage against French occupational forces in the Ruhr. Schlageter was arrested by French forces for sabotaging railroad tracks and executed by firing squad in 1923. After his death, he was viewed by many German nationalists as a martyr, including the Nazi Party. In Nazi Germany, Schlageter was commemorated as a national hero, which in turn led Allied occupational authorities to target such commemoration after World War II as part of the denazification process.

Life

Schlageter was born in Schönau im Schwarzwald to Catholic parents.

After the outbreak of the First World War, Schlageter became a voluntary emergency worker for the military. During the war, he participated in several battles, notably Ypres (1915), the Somme (1916) and Verdun, earning the Iron Cross second class. Following his promotion to leutnant, he took part in the Third Battle of Ypres (1917) and earned the Iron Cross first class in 1918. After the war and his dismissal from the greatly reduced army, Schlageter described himself as a student of political sciences, but he studied the subject at Freiburg im Breisgau at the most for one year.

About this time, Schlageter became a member of a right-wing student group. Soon, in March 1919, he joined the Baden Freikorps and fought against the Bolsheviks as a part of Walter von Medem's Baltic Freikorps during the capture of Riga in May during the Latvian War of Independence. After the Landwehr was defeated in the Battle of Cēsis, he joined the German Legion of the West Russian Volunteer Army led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov. In December 1919, after Avalov's forces were defeated by the Latvian Army and after a short time in Lithuania, Schlageter returned to Germany.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1920, Schlageter took part in the Kapp Putsch and some of the battles between the military and communist factions that were convulsing Germany. His unit also took part in the Silesian Uprisings fighting on the German side. During the Third Silesian Uprising he commanded a company in the criminal assault battalion (Sturmbataillon) „Heinz" of Karl G.O. Hauenstein's volunteer corps.<ref name="EPS">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>

Already close to Nazis, around the time of the Battle of Annaberg of 1921 Schlageter's unit merged with the emerging Nazi Party.<ref name="Acta">Template:Cite journal</ref> During the Third Silesian Uprising of 1921, Schlageter became infamous for persecuting local people and for terrorist actions against both Poles and Germans whom he and his group perceived as opposing his cause.<ref name="EPS"></ref> On September 31, 1921 he participated in the murder of the parish priest Augustyn Strzybny in Modzurów.<ref name="Martyr">Template:Cite book</ref> He was a founding member of the Greater German Workers' Party, a front organization for the Nazi Party.<ref name="Kruppa">Bernd Kruppa: Rechtsradikalismus in Berlin 1918–1928. Overall, Berlin 1988, S. 198–204.</ref>

Following the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, Schlageter led a group of nationalists in sabotage operations against the occupying force. The group managed to derail a number of trains. On April 7, 1923, information on Schlageter and his activities was obtained by the French, and he was arrested the following day. Tried by court-martial on May 7, 1923, he was condemned to death. On the morning of May 26, Schlageter was executed by firing squad on the Golzheimer heath near Düsseldorf.

File:Albert Leo Schlageter facing firing squad.jpg

Schlageter facing the firing squad

On May 8, Schlageter had written to his parents: "from 1914 until today I have sacrificed my whole strength to work for my German homeland, from love and pure loyalty. Where it was suffering, it drew me, in order to help... I was no gang leader, but in quiet labour I sought to help my fatherland. I did not commit any common crime or murder."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Almost immediately after Schlageter's execution, Rudolf Höss murdered his alleged betrayer, Walther Kadow. He was assisted by Martin Bormann. Höss was sentenced to ten years in prison; Bormann received a one-year sentence. Höss was released from prison under a general amnesty in July 1928.<ref>Biography of Bormann Template:Webarchive; Biography of Höss Template:Webarchive</ref>

Heroic symbol to Nazism

File:Schlageter Denkmal in Billerbeck.jpg

Schlageter memorial in Billerbeck. The inscription was removed after the war.

After his execution he became a hero to some sections of the German population. Immediately after his death a Schlageter Memorial Society was formed, which agitated for the creation of a monument to honour him. The German Communist Party sought to debunk the emerging mythology of Schlageter by circulating a speech by Karl Radek portraying him as an honourable but misguided figure.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was the Nazi Party who most fully exploited the Schlageter story. Hitler refers to him in Template:Lang.<ref>Mein Kampf, Chp I</ref> Rituals were constructed to commemorate his death, and in 1931 the Memorial Society succeeded in getting a monument erected near the site of his execution. This was a giant cross placed amid sunken stone rings.<ref>Christian Fuhrmeister: Template:Lang, 3 (2004), N. 1.</ref> Other smaller memorials were also created.

After 1933 Schlageter became one of the principal heroes of the Nazi regime, along with Horst Wessel, a Nazi stormtrooper who had been killed in Berlin in 1930.<ref>George Lachmann Mosse, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich p 95 Template:ISBN</ref>

In June 1933, Nazis from the Passau region gathered at the Dreisessel Mountain in the Bavaria Forest to dedicate a Schlageter Memorial.<ref>Anna Rosmus: Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, pp. 80f</ref> In September 1933, the city of Passau dedicated its own memorial on Hammerberg, overlooking the Inn River.<ref>Anna Rosmus: Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, p. 81</ref> In the spring of 1938, Passau added a Schlageter street and a Schlageter Plaza.<ref>Anna Rosmus Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, p. 150</ref>

The Nazis renamed the Haus der Technik in Königsberg the Template:Lang. Hanns Johst, the Nazi playwright, wrote Template:Lang (1933), a biographical drama.<ref>George Lachmann Mosse, Nazi culture: intellectual, cultural and social life in the Third Reich p 96 Template:ISBN</ref> It was dedicated to Hitler, and was performed on his first anniversary in power as a theatrical manifesto of Nazism. The line "when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun", often misattributed to Nazi leaders, derives from this play. The original line is slightly different: "Template:Lang" "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). It is spoken by another character in conversation with the young Schlageter.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Several important military ventures were also named for him, including the Jagdgeschwader 26 Schlageter fighter-wing of the Luftwaffe, and the naval vessel Albert Leo Schlageter. His name was also given as a title to two SA groups, the Template:Lang at Düsseldorf and Template:Lang at Lörrach. An army barracks on the south side of Freiburg was also named after him; after World War II, the site of this barracks was occupied by the French army and renamed Quartier Vauban after the French military architect. When the French left in the 1990s, the area became the site of the eco-friendly suburb of Vauban.<ref>Tony Paterson, Auto-ban: German town goes car-free, The Independent, 26 June 2009</ref>

Schlageter also featured as a prominent character in British author Geoffrey Moss's 1933 novel I Face the Stars, about the rise of Nazism.

After the war, the main Schlageter memorial was destroyed by occupying Allied forces as part of the denazification process. The Schlageter memorial in Ringelai near Freyung, however, existed until 1977.<ref>Anna Rosmus: Hitlers Nibelungen, Samples Grafenau 2015, p. 81</ref>

The Template:Lang or "Schlageter Island" near Soltau continues to bear the name.

Further reading

• Roethler, Jeremy Stephen. “Albert Leo Schlageter: First Soldier of the Third Reich or Catholic War Hero?” The Catholic Historical Review 103, no. 4 (2017): 698–724. [1].

External links

• German biography of Schlageter
• German text of Schlageter Schauspiel
• Template:PM20