Election shenanigans
“Each individual bears full responsibility." - Willi Graf, 1943.
We do not have any diary entries, any letters, anything that would express Willi Graf’s personal thoughts about the events of 1934 in Saarbrücken, in his hometown, in his home. We only know what happened, and the “knowing” leaves us with too many unanswered questions.
First, a little background for the events leading up to 1934 and the political turmoil that Willi Graf knew at home.
Gerhard Graf, patriarch of the Graf family, had an impeccable pedigree. He may have been a wine wholesaler, and before that the director of a dairy, but by 1933, Gerhard Graf managed the second largest banquet hall in Saarbrücken, the Johannishof. And Gerhard Graf’s buddies included the most prominent personages in Saarbrücken’s society.
Peter Schaub claimed to have known Gerhard Graf since 1921. One of the earliest members of the NSDAP, Peter Schaub testified that it meant a great deal to him that he was able to ascertain Party Member Gerhard Graf’s positive attitude towards the Führer’s movement early on. Schaub’s praise carried weight. He was retired County Commissioner and Mayor Emeritus from Quierschied (Saar). A leading National Socialist attorney named Hans Folz called Peter Schaub a “loyal disciple of the movement long before Hitler came to power.”
Schaub had been a member of the Greater German Reichstag and an “old fighter for the movement.” Folz maintained that, “among us Germans here in the Saar, during those bitterest of all years he was especially known for his fighting nature without fear and reproach.”
Gerhard Graf also counted Peter Kiefer among his close friends. In early 1933, Kiefer had joined the “German Front” in the Saarland, a supposedly multi-partisan organization established to promote the return of the Saarland to Germany. German Front consisted of persons who were members of the Socialist and (Catholic) Center parties, with only one National Socialist individual officially part of the Front. Kiefer claimed to be a member of the Center Party.
Yet the Saarland’s German Front reported directly to Josef Bürckel, Nazi Gauleiter of the Palatinate (Pfalz). In reality, the multi-partisan organization was nothing more than a “front” for National Socialists.
Kiefer was director of propaganda for the German Front in the Saarland. He saw his role as that of cutting the ground out from under opponents of returning the Saar to Germany. Kiefer especially cultivated the working class, where he enjoyed enormous popularity. Hans Folz reported that Kiefer had a talent for public speaking and was effective at inciting and inflaming his listeners. In 1933, that was considered a virtue.
Yet of all Gerhard Graf’s friends, none was so influential and high-ranking in Nazi circles as Dr. Hermann Röchling, an industrial magnate from old money. Röchling’s family had founded the iron works in nearby Völklingen in 1881, building it into one of the most successful iron and steel works in Germany. After World War I, French courts sentenced Hermann Röchling in absentia to ten years imprisonment for destroying French factories, and under the Treaty of Versailles, the company was reorganized, stripping him of most of his direct ownership of the family business.
That adversity served only to transform a wealthy (but apparently unassuming) businessman into a martyr. Röchling received numerous awards for his scientific and industrial achievements. Folz attributed the economic and mental well-being of the Saarland’s children to Dr. Röchling’s ‘heroism.’ He recounted how the French had used a “slick interpretation” of a “slick clause” to attempt to establish special schools by the French mine administration, and to force German children to attend those schools. Folz said that “respectable miners” (i.e., those with strong German-nationalist leanings) had to be resigned to setbacks, and sometimes even layoffs.
Dr. Röchling engaged workers who were laid off due to nationalistic sentiments. He hired some to work in his own steel mills and iron works, “without considering the so-called economics of so doing.” Others were in his personal employ, “so that at least they were able to survive the worst of it.” Folz said the persons rescued by Röchling’s intervention were in the hundreds, if not thousands.
It is therefore no surprise that when the German Front was formed, Hermann Röchling was its leader. Ironically, he played the role of the bourgeois-liberal Socialist, the window dressing that National Socialists used to disguise the true nature of the German Front.
In January 1934, Gerhard Graf’s close friend Peter Schaub began an all-out effort to destroy opponents of National Socialism in the Saarland. It was still under the mandate of the League of Nations. Elections regarding return to ‘the homeland’ were a year away. From Schaub’s viewpoint, “the opponents of the German cause” had mounted an especially “malicious and loathsome” campaign, which Schaub and his cohorts Röchling and Kiefer took personally. They decided to go on the offensive.
Before they could effectively stir up the masses, they needed a banquet hall large enough to accommodate a mob. The Wartburg was the largest facility in Saarbrücken, with the Johannishof, managed by Gerhard Graf, next. The Johannishof became the primary meeting place for the “German Front,” largely due to Gerhard Graf’s enthusiasm for National Socialism.
In the summer of 1934, “the opponents of the German cause” tried to use Gerhard Graf’s piety as a wedge, coming between his religious and political beliefs. The owners of the Johannishof shared all of Gerhard Graf’s religious devotion and none of his right-wing politics. When “the opponents of the German cause” approached management to persuade them to make the Johannishof off limits to the Nazi German Front, Gerhard Graf interceded and won the day for the National Socialists.
The attorney Hans Folz described Willi Graf’s father as follows: “There was never a lack of intrigue since public and private and secret opponents of the return of the Saarland to Germany tried specifically to disengage the Johannishof from its commitment to the German Front. In the front lines of those who fought off these attacks most vehemently and praise God successfully, was none other than Party Member Gerhard Graf, who at that time stood at the forefront of the toughest battles.”
Merely standing up to his bosses was the most insignificant contribution Gerhard Graf made to the Nazi cause in the Saarland. As time approached for the vote regarding the political status of the Saarland, the battles grew ever nastier. The League of Nations sued Röchling and his colleagues for undisclosed causes. When Hermann Röchling’s back was against the wall, he knew he could count on Gerhard Graf.
Willi’s father secured the installation of a secret microphone in the Johannishof. On behalf of Röchling, Peter Schaub spied on a “highly-regarded opponent of the Saar’s return to the German Reich” who happened to be at the Johannishof. Schaub turned the incriminating evidence over to the League of Nations, which then dismissed the case against Röchling (in Schaub’s opinion, to spare themselves the embarrassment of a trial).
Peter Schaub offered the following in praise of Gerhard Graf: “I am very well aware of the distinguished service and beleaguered battles that Gerhard Graf fought. He spared neither time, nor energy, nor personal sacrifice in the defeat of the opponents of returning the Saarland to the German Reich.
None of this swastika’d activity seems to have affected Willi Graf, at least not in ways his father would have wished. While Gerhard Graf “greatly endangered the very existence of his family” by installing a secret microphone, Willi more and more sought out Renouveau Catholique friends who shared his faith.
One such friend who would have a lasting impact on Willi Graf’s life – the last of his friends to see him alive in October 1943 – was Günther Schmich. Five years older than Willi and a so-called “half-Jew,” Günther had become a Catholic priest. In 1934, Günther Schmich was in prison in Mannheim for crimes unknown. During his incarceration, he wrote an essay entitled “The Master of the Order” – an essay still read and revered in contemporary bündische circles in Germany some eighty years later.
Schmich’s essay was published with a simple gray cover. Hence the Gray Order, the name of the ill-defined “group” with which Willi Graf came to identify most strongly.
The rest of Saarbrücken could argue and fight over issues of sovereignty. But by January 1935, seventeen-year-old Willi Graf had already figured out what his real values were and had decided to live by them. Though so doing meant that he was increasingly alone, even in his own home.
In light of his father’s early embrace of National Socialism, and the friends his father associated with, Willi Graf’s stubborn insistence on not joining Hitler Youth, on not being part of the National Socialist scene, is all the more astounding.
© 2002-2003, 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact us for permission to quote. The majority of this post is excerpted from White Rose History, Volume I.
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Sources:
Holler, Eckard. “Die Ulmer ‘Trabanten’: Hans Scholl zwischen Hitlerjugend und dj.1.11.” Puls (22). Stuttgart: Verlag der Jugendbewegung, 1999.
Knoop-Graf, Anneliese. “Hochverräter? Willi Graf und die Ausweitung des Widerstands.” In Rudolf Lill (Ed.). Hochverrat? Die “Weiβe Rose” und ihr Umfeld (pp. 43-88). Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 1993.
Der Landtag des Saarlandes, “Der Kampf um die Saarabstimmung 1932 bis 1935.”
Saarstahl, “Stages in the Development of the Volklinger Iron and Steel Works From Its Beginnings.”