Karl Leopold von Möller
Oberst Graf Karl von Möller AOL O (October 11, 1876, Vienna - February 21, 1943, Jimbolia)[1] was an officer, journalist, author and politician from Banat. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler's National Socialism. In 1932 he published the antisemitic newspaper "Der Stürmer" in Timișoara, an imitation of the German Nazi publication. He was married to Margaret Jung, with whom he had two children.
Karl von Möller | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | Karl Leopold Edler von Möller-Harteneck October 11, 1876 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | February 21, 1943 Jimbolia, Romania |
| Resting place | Cimitir Nr. 1, Jimbolia, Romania |
| Children | 3 (Edith-?) with Baroness Agathe von Veroczy (m. 1917-div.1923) Karl-Heinz (1926-2014) and Erich (1932 - Living) with Margarete Jung (m.1927-d.1943) |
| Relatives | Graf, Karl August von Möller-Harteneck (Father b. 1836 - d. 1892), Countessa, Karoline von Möller-Harteneck (Mother - née Pickard b. 1847 - d. 1927) |
| Education | Theresian Military Academy, Kriegsschule (Austria) |
| Occupation | Writer, politician, journalist, officer, gauleiter |
| Awards | Order of Leopold |
| Military service | |
| Years of service | 1893-1927 |
| Rank | Oberst, Graf |
| Commands | 65th Infantry Regiment of Hungary, 34th Infantry Division, |
| Battles/wars | Serbian campaign of World War I, Battle of Galicia |
Life and early work
The von Möller family's origins point to the Lüneburg Heath. Karl von Möller's grandfather volunteered in the Wars of Liberation and was disarmed in Sibiu (Transylvania). von Möller's grandfather is also allegedly an early developer of the Camera but didn't submit the patent in time. His father came to Vienna from Sibiu. Karl von Möller was born in Vienna, where he attended the cadet school and the war school after high school. During the First World War, he moved as a major and chief of staff of the 34th Infantry Division, Banater Division, first to the Serbian and then to the Galician front. Von Möller led from 1916 as a lieutenant colonel and later as colonel Hungarian Infantry Regiment No. 65 on the Eastern Front. He was awarded the Order of Leopold.
Politician
After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, he left the army as a colonel and went to Timișoara, where he campaigned for political and cultural equality for Romanian Germans in the field of national politics. von Möller was May 9, 1919, co-founded the German-Swabian Cultural Association, whose chairman Johann Junker was. The executive chairman was Michael Kausch. In 1919 Möller was elected the second mayor of Timișoara. From 1919 to 1926 he was a senator in the Romanian upper house in Bucharest, representing Banat Swabia. Karl von Möller joined the "Volksgemeinschaft" together with Josef Gabriel in 1920.
From 1920 he made trips to Germany, gave lectures in Saxony, Westphalia, Baden, Württemberg, Thuringia, Berlin and Munich. In 1923 he had contacts with National Socialist circles; he is considered an early supporter of Adolf Hitler. After his return, he became chief editor of the "Banat German newspaper". He was one of the members of the "German People's Council".
von Möller is considered one of the pioneers of fascism in the Banat. In 1931 he founded the first Banat local group of the "National Socialist Self-Help Movement of the Germans in Romania" (NSDR) in Jimbolia (German: Hatzfeld), which was supported by the ideas of the innovators. Shortly afterwards, Möller became the first Gauleiter of the Banat in 1932 and founded the National Socialist newspaper “Der Stürmer” in Timișoara in the same year. In the spring of 1933, he was deposed again as Gauleiter. In the same year, he served as "cultural office manager" in Sibiu the "job for ideological education and cultural policy". After his application for admission to the Wehrmacht had been rejected because he had exceeded the entry age limit, he wrote to Karl Schworm on September 7, 1939: "What would I be happy if fate put me at the front, regardless of whether in west or east! I can't think of a better way to end my fighting life than to end up for the leader and the empire. ” In 1941 he was appointed the“ cultural council ”of the German ethnic group in Romania.
Author
According to his biography on the "Kulturportal West-Ost", in addition to his political "von Möller" developed a lively writing activity, which was based on the great novels of Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn (1852-1923) and the intellectual and political development of Southeastern Germany, but especially the Banat Swabia, from the settlement until their ethnic awakening at the turn of the 20th century. As editor-in-chief of the 'Banater Deutsche Zeitung', he served the 'Banater Schwäbische Volksgemeinschaft'.”
von Möller's novels try to give a concrete picture of the respective events from the perspective of their time. He is one of the most popular authors of historical novels of his time, but with a nationalist and anti-Semitic touch.
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von Möller began in the early 1920s with the publication ultranationalist writings. As "advocate of folk anti-Semitism" he wrote in his Gazette "The Striker". In his two-volume work "How the Swabian communities came into being" (Timișoara 1923–24), Möller 1924 "openly expressed his chauvinistic ideas and ideas by incorporating the 'Germanic racial element' (Vol. 2, p. 22) of the German superman into The foreground of his historical statements moved.
In the novel “Die Werschetzer Tat” (1936) he glorified the defence of Werschetz on the westernmost slope of the Banat Mountains at the time of the last great invasion of the Banat in 1788 by the Turks. Based on historical events, the author illustrates the rural life of German settlers of the first generation in the midst of a colourful mix of people and people. He takes on Nazi ideologies back such. B. The glorification of struggle, peasantry and leader personality, the superiority of the " Aryan race", inferiority, moral and physical degradation of the "foreign people": The Germans "must be protected from the teeth of the strange army wolf, who runs up and down the Danube with hanging blood tongues."
In the novel "Borders Wander: A Banat Roman" (1937) von Möller describes his life and customs of the Banat Swabians from the turn of the century about the First World War and the resulting tripartite division of the Banat in 1920 using the example of the predominantly German-inhabited place Jimbolia. The place fell to Yugoslavia after 1918 and to Romania in 1924 in exchange for Jaša Tomić. As in "The Werschetzer act" must also in this novel the "Aryan" hero "against their racial opponent" claim.
In the novel "Die Salpeterer: A Freedom Struggle by German Peasants" (1938) Möller describes the struggle for freedom of the Hotzenwald Salpeterer in the Black Forest against the Prince-Bishop of St. Blasien and their eventual banishment to the Banat. He describes their homesickness and defiance against the injustice suffered from their point of view and only allows them to become "real Banat farmers" after generations.
von Möller was very active as a writer in his last years. Above all, he published in the Eher-Verlag of the NSDAP.
On October 11, 1941, the author's 65th birthday, Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels expressed his thanks to the nation.
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Military career
After graduating from cadet school and from the Military Academy in Vienna, he was appointed as a senior state officer, and served in several garrisons. In 1913 he was transferred to Timișoara where he served in the 34th Infantry Division during the 1914 campaigns in Serbia and Galicia. He was then transferred to the headquarters in Vienna. In 1916, he was promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Commander of the 65th Infantry Regiment of Hungary. Under his command, the 65th Infantry Regiment of Hungary fought on the eastern front, and Möller was subsequently promoted to Colonel. At the end of the war, the regiment suppressed the uprising of the Republicans in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) after which it was put in reserve by the Károlyi government.[2]
Political career in Romania
Post World War I, Möller decided to stay back in Timișoara, where he joined the German Popular Movement of Banat (Bewegung des Banater Deutschtums), bolstering its struggle for self-affirmation. He forayed into the cultural field as a journalist, and later became active in politics. He held the position of editor-in-chief at Schwäbische Volkspresse (established 1921; from 1925 the Banat Deutsche Zeitung) for several years, strengthening the voice of the Swabian-German community. In September 1923 Karl von Möller actively participated in a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the migration of the Swabians organized by the Banat German Movement.
In autumn 1919 he was briefly Deputy Mayor of Timișoara, after which he was elected four times to the Romanian Parliament, in which he served between 1919 and 1927 as a representative of the Swabians in Banat. In the parliamentary debate on the 1923 Constitution of Romania on March 12, 1923, he said he was speaking on behalf of the "Banat Swabian People", declaring the Germans' loyalty to their new homeland, but demanded that the new constitution should not jeopardize the existence of minorities from a national point of view; he said the new constitution did not include the promises made to the minorities by the Romanians in Alba Iulia.[3]
In May 1920 the "moderate" Swabians, led by Kaspar Muth formed the Swabian Party of Autonomy, joined by Karl von Möller, Dr. Joseph Gabriel and Peter Schiff of the National Swabian-German party.[4]
In 1927, Möller withdrew from public life and settled in Jimbolia, where he married Margaret Jung, the daughter of a wealthy farmer from the Banat. Together they had two children, Karlheinz and Erich. The family have largely remained private they are believed to have fled Romania between 1945 and 1947.
Involvement in Nazism
At the beginning of 1931, he returned to public life, becoming the chief editor of the German-language Jimbolia newspaper, "Hatzfelder Zeitung", and president of the local ethnic community. Möller, who adhered to Nazi ideology, tried to use these positions to popularise Nazism and prepare the Banat population for its adoption. This attempt was thwarted, and he lost both positions by the end of 1931.
After 1930, and especially after 1933, the Nazi movement had achieved a strong position in Romania, capturing the leadership of the Germans in Romania. The initiator of the Nazi movement among the German minority was the reserve captain Fritz Fabritius. From 1931, Fabritius tried to expand the movement in Banat, finding audiences in some circles of dissatisfied and young Swabians who returned from studies in Germany. At the end of 1931, Karl von Möller constituted a movement group at Jimbolia and was proclaimed the "Gauleiter" for the Banat.[5]
After Karl von Möller became the first Gauleiter of the Banat, from July 1, 1932, he published the antisemitic newspaper "Der Stürmer" in Timișoara. It was an imitation of the publication Der Stürmer published in Germany by the German Nazi Julius Streicher who, after World War II, was sentenced to death in the first of the Nuremberg trials, found guilty of crimes against humanity and executed by hanging in 1946.[6][7]
Möller also led the Cultural Office of the Germans in Romania (Kulturamt der Deutschen in Rumänien),[8] established by Rudolf Brandsch to protect the cultural assets of the Germans in Romania.[9]
In 1934 he took the lead of the Provincial Cultural Office of the Renewal Movement (Landeskulturamt der Erneuerungsbewegung) in Sibiu, where he stayed for five years, and lived until his death on February 21, 1943.
Books
- Wie die schwäbischen Gemeinden entstanden sind, Timișoara, 1923
- Karl von Möller, Die Werschetzer Tat, Der Große Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1935.
- Die Werschertzer / Ein Roman von Bauern und Reitern, Verlag Franz Eher, Nachf. Berlin, 1938
- Reiter im Grenzland, Erzählung, 1939
- Der Aufklärer – Novelle, Wien/Leipzig, Wiener Verlag, 1939
- Grenzen wandern. Ein Banater Roman, Leipzig, Amalthea-Verlag, 1940.
- Im Schatten der Exzellenz, Novellen, 1940
- Deutsches Schicksal im Banat, 1940
- Das steinerne Schachbrett (Roman), Braunschweig, Berlin, Hamburg. Georg Westermann, 1941
- Frontbriefe deutscher Arbeitskameraden 1939 – 1940, Die Lothringerin NSDAP Verlag EA 1942
- Die Salpeterer, ein Freiheitskampf deutscher Bauern, 1942
- Der Savoyer (Ein Prinz Eugen Roman), München Verlag Franz Eber Nachf. Gmbh, 1943.
- Spätsommer; Eine Geschichte aus Wien, Franz Eber, 1943
- Das Korsett der Marquise, 1944
- Die Lothringerin, Roman eines Frauenlebens zwischen zwei Nationen und zwei Zeitaltern, 1944
Awards
- Kurt Faber Prize, 1938[10]
- Westmark Prize, 1938
- First Prize of the German Book Guild in Romania, 1935
- Austrian Imperial Order of Leopold, 1916
Legacy
Karl-Möller-Straße in Königsbach-Stein, Germany is named after him.
Note
- "Das steinerne Schachbrett. Roman. Möller, Karl von: 6480BB".
- = 9 & Itemid = 19 Hatzfelder Persönlichkeiten-Schrifsteller
- / evolution-German-from-banat-in-context-administrative-demographic-political-and-legislative-in-the-interwar period / Evolution of German education in Banat in administrative context, demographic, political and legislative in the interwar period
- "Muzeulbanatului.ro" (PDF).
- = Aspects
- William Totok: The Germans in Romania Between Nazism and Stalinism, Divers, 2003 Archived September 27, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- William Totok: The Germans in Romania Between Nazism and Stalinism, in: Cultural Observatory, Nr. 197 – December 2, 2003, and Errata. Correction on the German Rule in Romania between Nazism and Stalinism ... in: Cultural Observatory, Nr. 198, December 9, 2003,
- + von + M% C3% B6ller% 22 + 1886 & source = bl & OTS = OlCZ4PpjMe & sig = l_F33SVkPpcI8LYHwcxNasXRgp0 & hl = en & they = 1XRZTNa2HZ-TONqq-IUJ & SA = X & oi = book_result & ct = result & resnum = 3 & ved = 0CCQQ6AEwAg # v = onepage & q =% 22Karl% 20von% 20M% C3% B6ller% 22% 201886 & f = false Christian von Zimmermann: Biographische Anthropologie
- Bernhard Böttcher: Gefallen für Volk und Heimat
- Helga Strallhofer-Mitterbauer : NS-Literaturpreise für Österreichische Autoren
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