https://taz.de/Merz-bejubelt-rechten-Grossvater/!806584/

https://archive.is/2wGs1

2004: Merz applauds right-wing grandfather

January 16, 2004

0:00 am

BY MARTIN TEIGELER

Friedrich Merz sang the praises of his ultra-right grandfather in front of his Sauerland party friends.Last week, the deputy chairman of the CDU parliamentary group called for the "red mayor" in his hometown of Brilon to be voted out. Merz said it filled him with "deep horror" that a Social Democrat was sitting in the town hall. "This must end" because his grandfather used to be the mayor of Brilon. That is why he would be there when "the red town hall" was stormed. Josef Paul Sauvigny, Merz's grandfather, was a right-wing extremist, remained mayor of Brilon after the Nazis seized power in 1933 and was a fan of Adolf Hitler.

Since the "Westfalenpost" reported on the political speech, a letter-to-the-editor battle has been raging in the small town in the Sauerland region. Many citizens were appalled by the CDU politician's brutal rhetoric. "Merz disavows the majority of Brilon voters with his words," wrote one reader. Merz is upset that a Social Democrat won the mayoral election in the last local election in 1999. The "red" incumbent Franz Schrewe reacted calmly to Merz's attacks. "This is election campaign noise," said the SPD mayor. The Christian Democrat's vocabulary contains terms that should be a thing of the past.

Merz's admiration for his grandfather is also a thing of the past. Josef Paul Sauvigny, initially a member of the right-wing Catholic Center Party, served as mayor of Brilon from 1917 to 1937. But when the National Socialists came to power in 1933 and the Center Party was banned a year later, Sauvigny was allowed to remain in office. Until he retired from the town hall due to his age, Merz's grandfather served the fascist reign of terror loyally and devotedly. The Brilon city administration does not want to answer whether Sauvigny was a member of the Nazi party between 1933 and 1937. "Nobody in this administration will tell you that," says first deputy mayor Reinhard Sommer. The high-ranking administrative official is also a leading member of the Brilon CDU.

Was Grandfather Sauvigny a Nazi henchman? And Friedrich Merz his ardent admirer? According to research by local historians in Brilon, the National Socialists were at least very happy with Sauvigny. In an article in the "Sauerländer Zeitung" on the end of Sauvigny's service on July 2, 1937, it says: "He always administered his office in the National Socialist spirit." In the same newspaper on May 3, 1933, Josef Paul Sauvigny's hymn to Adolf Hitler is quoted: "While up to now German power has been splitting and bleeding to death from the constant change of leaders, today there is a power that guides us, a leader who calls us. (…) The venerable Reich President and Chancellor Hitler, long live them, long live them, long live them."

>>22660044

MERZ DEEP DIVE

http://sbl-fraktion.de/?p=9846

https://archive.is/YrahV

"Friedrich Merz's Grandpa" (Part 2 of 2)

By admin at 10:55 am on Friday, January 15, 2021

About the mayor of Brilon, Josef Paul Sauvigny (1875-1967), the “unification of all German blood” in 1933 and a precursor chapter in the CDU party history (continued)

By Peter Bürger

(11.01.2021)

The so-called “Volksgemeinschaft” is forming

After the Hitler party took power, JP Sauvigny remained mayor of Brilon without further ado and led a mass meeting there on May 1, 1933, at which the so-called "people's community" of "people of German blood" was formed. The loyal - formerly black, soon tanned - "Sauerländer Zeitung" only quoted his speech verbatim as follows (a full text of the entire report is also available online):

"The newly formed Germany is celebrating its first national holiday today. […] young and vigorous like the hordes of its youthful supporters, the new Reich stands before us. The storms of the national revolution are still roaring over it, these spring storms that swept away all the rubbish, that chased away the clouds that until now wanted to rob us of the sun. This storm, which may be hard on some, will subside after it has cleared the air of all the poisonous fumes that had accumulated over years of misunderstood freedom and helpless self-mutilation.

Only then will the hardest time begin, the hard, most renunciatory work of the final resurgence. But while up to now German strength and German aspirations for reconstruction have been split apart and bled to death by party squabbling and the constant change of leaders [sic], today there is a will that unites us, a force that guides us, a leader who calls us. Forgetting yesterday's party hatred, the great gathering has begun, the unification of all Germans, of German blood, for a common action, the symbol of which is today's festival. […]

On behalf of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, I extend a warm

welcome to you all. I hope that, resting from all work, you will celebrate a class-reconciling, constructive festival in its honor. I call on you all to […] stand up for a great action, to join hands in the great work of liberation to which we are all called, so that the German will to work can once again find space, and German work performance can once again find a basis. I ask you to stand up and join me in the call: The working German people, their venerable Reich President, the embodiment of German loyalty, Chancellor Hitler, his will to build, put into action, long live them, long live them, long live them!" 14

This German "blood unification speech" against the Weimar Republic cannot really be justified or glossed over in any way. Similar early attempts by the grandson 15 in 2004 are extremely irritating, even if the taz at the time had not yet fully grasped some of the depths of the documented speech.

>>22660062

All too soon, what Mayor Sauvigny promised, according to the Sauerländer Zeitung, will come to pass: the Brilon district will be freed from what the National Socialists understand as “filth” and “poisonous fumes”. It is about people: first of all, the communists and other leftists – who are hardly doctrinally oriented locally and are even Catholic in some cases – are to be eliminated. 16

On November 1, 1933, screams from prisoners in the district were heard from the Brilon town hall. (Supposedly from outside) SA men and local Nazis were involved in the abuse. In the Catholic milieu, the torture of Marxists and their imprisonment in concentration camps in 1933 was rarely followed by solidarity. (The Siegen priest Wilhelm Ochse17, who in the same year stopped a communist to photographically document the signs of his torture, was one of the real exceptions.)

The real Brilon role models

During the years of the Weimar Republic, Brilon was a stronghold of the Peace League of German Catholics (FdK) of national importance, as Sigrid Blömeke explains best in her study “Only cowards give way” 18. The determined Catholic pacifists recognized the ethnic, particularly anti-Semitic, danger early on, but some of them also left the denominational unity party after its shift to the right (along with its rearmament policy).

As early as 1931/32, Nazis from the Sauerland region terrorized the leading figure Josef Rüther 19 with death threats, incendiary devices and rifle ammunition. When Friedrich Merz's grandfather gave his "German blood unification speech" for the new "national community" in Brilon in 1933, Rüther's persecution had already become a matter of state. The previously civil servant high school teacher was banned from his profession at the beginning of 1933 after being spied on by students and lived in constant fear during the Nazi era (most recently hidden in a forest hut). His brother Theodor, a priest and former chairman of the Brilon Center Party, was forced into retirement as a teacher.

Other Peace League Catholics were also subjected to reprisals. Centre Party member and master tailor Wilhelm Schieferecke, who shared his workshop with a Jewish craftsman colleague, was excluded from the city council in early 1933. (This was a different fate than that of the mayor.)

His brother Anton Schieferecke (1882-1962), who during the Weimar Republic after leaving the Centre Party was also the Brilon local chairman of the democratic Reichsbanner, sabotaged the May Day celebrations led by Sauvigny in 1933 and lost his seat on the savings bank board. Nine men from the SA, who would soon count Mayor Sauvigny among their own (see below), dragged him out of the council room of the town hall.

The master carpenter was branded as a “Jewish banner leader” and his business was boycotted, which led to a difficult struggle for the family’s existence: “During the Nazi era, he did not participate in any elections, did not greet with the German salute, did not fly a flag, or if he did, then only black, red and gold […] or white and yellow (the flag of the Pope).” Due to his anti-fascist behavior, “Anton Schieferecke, like his brother Wilhelm and Josef Rüther, was briefly imprisoned after the failed coup attempt on July 20, 1944.” 20

The examples are by no means exhaustive. In the wider Brilon district, for example, the FdK man Franz Butterwege (1881-1956), a declared "friend of the Jews", had to endure attacks together with his wife during the pogroms of 1938 and was subsequently imprisoned for three months for publicly arguing with Nazis.

Only by comparing it with these and other persecuted Catholics in the area and knowing that there were early victims of torture among members of the German Center Party can one properly evaluate the example of the mayor of Brilon (ex-Center) who was involved in the construction of the Nazi state and had the same baptismal certificate. The fate of persecution is inseparably linked to his path to maintaining local political power.

>>22660065

farewell to power in 1937

There is no historical research on Josef Paul Sauvigny yet. As far as I know, no exonerating or praiseworthy deeds from the Nazi era (1933-1945) in the sense of "resistance" documented by sources have been presented. All we know is that, according to family tradition, the Nazis "puked on" him (which almost all Sauerlanders claimed after 1945).

The mayor of Brilon was certainly not forcibly ousted from office or cheated out of his civil service pension. In the space of 100 years, he was only the second mayor to serve more than one term. In the newspaper report on his retirement on July 2, 1937, the greeting from the district administrator Peter Schramm 21 (NSDAP from 1932, SS from 1933), appointed by the National Socialists, is reproduced as follows:

Mayor JP Sauvigny was "able to experience the rise after the difficult times. After the seizure of power, despite his advanced age, he immediately got involved in line with his national sentiments and always administered his office in the National Socialist spirit. This was certainly recognized by both the supervisory authority and the political leadership. He expressed the thanks of these authorities and wished him a long retirement in Brilon, as whose fellow citizen he would continue to be active in public life." 22

According to press reports that have been available online for 17 years (i.e. not sued away), his civil service pension was only threatened in the course of the two "denazification proceedings" after the defeat of German fascism. The taz had their files (Main State Archives Düsseldorf) photographed in 2004 23: In 1946, JP Sauvigny stated in the military government's questionnaire that he had joined the SA on July 1, 1933 (!), and on December 10, 1947, he himself noted his position as "Oberscharführer of the SA Re[erve]". Other memberships: National Socialist People's Welfare, NS-Reichskriegerbund and NS-Rechtswahrerbund (an injustice-preserving association).

Sauvigny also states that he was only registered as a member of the NSDAP in 1938 – and no longer as mayor. Regardless of the entry procedure, this does not exactly support the idea that he somehow resigned from his position as mayor of Brilon in July 1937 in a dispute with the NSDAP.

The following Wikipedia entries 24 on the results of the denazification process summarize the information from the newspaper research (taz et al.) cited in this article as follows:

In 1947, he was "classified into category 3. Because of this classification, he only received 60% of his pension and was forbidden from holding public office. He himself called this a 'crying injustice'; he said: 'Personal guilt is out of the question for me.' He claimed that the Nazis had forced him into retirement. He was therefore a victim of the Nazis."

It is the norm that Nazi collaborators of all levels imagine themselves as victims after the war. Pascal Beucker also says of the mayor of Brilon in particular: "Sauvigny was successful with his justification poetry. In 1948, he was downgraded to category four as a 'fellow traveller' and was given his full pension again." 25

As historical comparison material, reference should be made to fantastic examples of the “improved denazification” of an anti-Semitic music policeman 26 and a Nazi writer 27 from the Sauerland who was also anti-Jewish. The second whitewashing of denazification on one’s own initiative almost always produced astonishing results.

Friedrich Merz cannot speak for his grandfather or even be held responsible. But he can state unequivocally that his public work was not a role model, but rather a repulsive example of collaboration with the misanthropic, mass-murdering right wing - a man in whose political footsteps no Briloner should ever follow again.

>>22660071

Sauce

14 The folk festival of national work in Brilon. In: Sauerländer Zeitung (Our Sauerland homeland), Brilon, May 3, 1933. [Full text documentation recorded by Peter Bürger; based on a scan of the newspaper page from the Brilon city archives.

https://www.schiebener.net/wordpress/hitler-sein-tatgewordener-aufbauwille-sie-leben-hoch-hoch-hoch/ ]

15 Patrik Schwarz: Merz' grandfather was a member of the SA and NSDAP. In: taz, January 22, 2004. https://taz.de/!803355/

16 Ottilie Knepper-Babilon / Hanneli Kaiser-Löffler: Resistance against the National Socialists in the Sauerland. (= Hochsauerland Series Volume IV). Brilon: Podszun 2003. (Chapter on the old district of Brilon.)

17 See Ulrich Wagner: Testimony of Faith and Resistance. Pastor Wilhelm Ochse (1878-1969). Siegen: Vorländer 1990. – Also online: https://www.vielfalt-mediathek.de/data/hellwig_raimund__siegen_unter_dem_hakenkreuz.pdf

18 Sigrid Blömeke: Only cowards give way. Josef Rüther (1881-1972). A biographical study on the history of left-wing Catholicism. Brilon 1992.

19 See also the special volume “daunlots” No. 61 (with an illustration of a drastic threatening letter):

http://www.sauerlandmundart.de/pdfs/daunlots%2061.pdf

20 See Ottilie Knepper-Babilon / Hanneli Kaiser-Löffler: Resistance against the National Socialists in the Sauerland. Brilon 2003, pp. 118-119, 135-137.

21 Brief overview of him: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schramm_(Verwaltungsjurist)

22 "Brilon, July 2, 1937. Mayor Sauvigny said goodbye." In: Sauerländer Zeitung (Brilon), July 2, 1937. [Full text documentation recorded by Peter Bürger; based on a scan of the newspaper page from the Brilon city archives.

https://www.schiebener.net/wordpress/hitler-sein-tatgewordener-aufbauwille-sie-leben-hoch-hoch-hoch/ ]

23 Patrik Schwarz: Merz' grandfather was a member of the SA and NSDAP. In: taz, January 22, 2004. https://taz.de/!803355/

24 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Paul_Sauvigny (last accessed January 11, 2021).

25 Pascal Beucker: Der Vormerz. In: Jungle World, 28.01.2004. https://jungle.world/artikel/2004/05/der-vormerz

26 Georg Nellius (1891-1952). Nationalistic and National Socialist cultural creation, anti-Semitic music policy, denazification. – Presentation and documentation in the context of the current street name debate. Presented by Peter Bürger and Werner Neuhaus in collaboration with Michael Gosmann / Arnsberg City Archives. (= daunlots. internet contributions from the Christine Koch dialect archive at the Eslohe Museum. No. 69). Eslohe 2014. – Also on the Internet: https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Juden-und-Thomas-Mann-Todfeind-3502577.html

27 Josefa Berens-Totenohl (1891-1969), successful National Socialist author from the Sauerland. – Research contributions by Peter Bürger, Reinhard Kiefer, Monika Löcken, Ortrun Niethammer, Ulrich Friedrich Opfermann and Friedrich Schroeder. Published by the Christine Koch dialect archive in collaboration with the Olpe district home association. (= daunlots. Internet contributions from the Christine Koch dialect archive at the Eslohe Museum. No. 70). Eslohe 2014. http://www.sauerlandmundart.de/pdfs/daunlots%2070.pdf

>>22660131

>>22660150

>video

>>22660146

>https://x.com/RT_com/status/1894822868908732883

>>22660171

>how to escapes

>>22660191

>video

>>22660186

>https://x.com/RT_com/status/1894821536848093505

…fight toEND…