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Fritz Gerlich

Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich (15 February 1883 – 30 June 1934) was a German journalist, historian, and archivist who emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the Nazi movement in its rise to power, editing the anti-Nazi publication Der Gerade Weg and publishing exposés on Adolf Hitler's character and intentions that drew the regime's lethal retribution.^[1]^[2] Born in Stettin to a family of modest means, Gerlich pursued studies in history and worked as an archivist before entering journalism, initially aligning with conservative and anti-communist views as editor of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten from 1920 to 1928.^[3]^[1] A shift toward religious conservatism, marked by his conversion to Catholicism in 1931, propelled him to found and lead Der Gerade Weg, a Munich-based Catholic weekly where he relentlessly documented Nazi violence, corruption, and ideological inconsistencies, including warnings of Hitler's potential for dictatorship framed as "Hitlerbolshevism."^[2]^[3] His efforts, though influential among intellectual circles, failed to stem the Nazi ascent; following the Reichstag fire in February 1933, Gerlich was arrested, imprisoned in Dachau, and executed during the Night of the Long Knives purges on 30 June 1934 as reprisal for his prior journalistic assaults on the party leadership.^[1]^[2] Gerlich's martyrdom symbolizes early non-conformist resistance to totalitarianism, underscoring the regime's intolerance for independent scrutiny despite his earlier right-wing sympathies that had once critiqued revolutionary excesses linked to Jewish prominence.^[3]

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich was born on February 15, 1883, in Stettin (present-day Szczecin, Poland), then part of the Prussian province of Pomerania in the German Empire.^[3]^[4] He was the eldest of three surviving sons born to Paul Gerlich, a wholesale and retail fishmonger whose trade reflected the modest mercantile circumstances of the family, and Therese Gerlich (née Scholwin).^[3]^[5] The Gerlich household adhered to strict Calvinist Protestant principles, emphasizing discipline and moral rigor typical of Prussian bourgeois families in the late 19th century.^[4]^[6] This environment, situated near the Baltic Sea, exposed young Gerlich to the region's seafaring and commercial ethos, fostering values of hard work and self-reliance common among trading classes wary of emerging socialist movements. While no records indicate precocious radicalism, the pervasive Prussian administrative order and local nationalistic currents likely contributed to his formative worldview, unmarred by overt ideological fervor in these early years.^[7] Gerlich received his initial schooling in Stettin's local institutions, completing his secondary education with the Abitur examination in 1902, amid a family dynamic that prioritized practical diligence over intellectual eccentricity. The absence of documented childhood anecdotes suggests a conventional upbringing, shaped more by familial stability and regional Protestant traditions than by personal upheavals.^[4]

Academic Studies and Early Career

Gerlich commenced his university studies in 1902 at the University of Munich, initially pursuing natural sciences before shifting to history after three semesters.^[3]^[5] He completed a doctorate in 1907 under Professor Karl Theodor von Heigel, with a dissertation entitled The Testament of Henry VI, which examined medieval imperial documents through primary source analysis characteristic of rigorous historical scholarship.^[5] Upon obtaining his doctorate, Gerlich joined the Bavarian state archives in Munich as an archivist in 1907, where he conducted research on German historical records from approximately 1907 to 1914.^[3] His work in this capacity emphasized empirical methods, producing scholarly outputs on topics in German history grounded in archival evidence rather than ideological conjecture.^[8] By the years immediately preceding World War I, Gerlich had begun contributing articles to publications, marking an initial step toward journalistic endeavors while leveraging his historical expertise.^[3]

Journalistic Career in the Weimar Era

Editorship of Münchner Neueste Nachrichten

In July 1920, Fritz Gerlich was appointed editor-in-chief of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten (MNN), Munich's leading daily newspaper and one of the largest in southern Germany, with a mandate to steer its editorial direction amid the Weimar Republic's early instability. Under his leadership, the publication solidified its position as Bavaria's most influential conservative-leaning paper, emphasizing local regional concerns alongside critical reporting on national economic and political crises, which contributed to sustained high circulation.^[4]^[9] Gerlich directed coverage of the severe post-World War I economic disruptions, including the hyperinflation peak in 1923, when the German mark's value collapsed from 4.2 trillion per U.S. dollar by November, framing these events through a lens of conservative analysis on governmental mismanagement and social order.^[10] The newspaper also documented early National Socialist activities, such as Gerlich's on-site reporting from Adolf Hitler's public rallies, providing factual accounts that spurred public debate on radical movements in Bavaria.^[3] A pivotal example was its detailed reporting on the Beer Hall Putsch of 8–9 November 1923, where Gerlich characterized the Nazi-led coup attempt as "one of the greatest betrayals in German history," highlighting the verifiable failure of the putschists to seize key institutions and the subsequent trials that exposed internal divisions.^[3] Gerlich's tenure ended in 1928 amid escalating disputes over editorial autonomy after media magnate Alfred Hugenberg, a nationalist figure who later supported the Nazis financially, gained influence over the paper's ownership and sought to impose a more aligned ideological slant.^[3]^[4] This conflict underscored Gerlich's commitment to independent journalism, as he prioritized verifiable event-based critique over partisan conformity, fostering a platform that had elevated the MNN's readership while navigating Bavaria's volatile political landscape.^[4]

Initial Political Views and Anti-Marxism

In the aftermath of World War I and the Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1919, Fritz Gerlich emerged as a nationally conservative thinker who vehemently opposed Marxism and socialism, viewing them as threats to German societal stability. Drawing on historical precedents like the Bolshevik Revolution's chaos in Russia, he argued that Marxist class struggle fomented division and economic ruin, prioritizing empirical evidence of communism's destructive outcomes over theoretical promises of equality.^[3] His writings in right-wing publications emphasized national unity as a bulwark against such ideologies, critiquing Bolshevik influences infiltrating German labor movements as empirically corrosive to productive order and cultural cohesion.^[11]^[3] Gerlich's 1919 book Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom Tausendjährigen Reich (Communism as the Doctrine of the Thousand-Year Reich) encapsulated this stance, portraying Marxism not as a path to liberation but as a millenarian heresy akin to apocalyptic cults, unsupported by causal mechanisms for sustainable governance. He rejected socialist prescriptions for wealth redistribution, reasoning from first principles that they ignored human incentives and historical patterns of state overreach leading to famine and tyranny, as observed in post-revolutionary Russia.^[3] In articles for conservative outlets like those aligned with the German Fatherland Party, he advocated transcending class warfare through patriotic solidarity, warning that Marxist agitation exacerbated Weimar Germany's fragmentation without offering viable alternatives.^[12]^[3] While initially sympathetic to right-wing nationalists—attending early meetings of the nascent National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and supporting anti-socialist coalitions—Gerlich's conservatism tempered enthusiasm for radicals, as evidenced by his critiques of Weimar democracy's procedural flaws like proportional representation, which he saw as enabling extremist minorities without endorsing violent overthrows.^[6] He cautioned against totalitarian impulses on both flanks, analyzing Marxism's collectivist absolutism as a cautionary model for any ideology demanding total allegiance, though his early focus remained on left-wing threats amid ongoing communist organizing in Munich.^[13] This skepticism toward ideological extremes stemmed from a commitment to pragmatic nationalism grounded in verifiable historical causation rather than utopian visions.^[7]

Religious Conversion and Personal Influences

Conversion to Catholicism

Fritz Gerlich, raised in a Calvinist Protestant family, underwent a gradual religious transformation driven by intellectual engagement with Catholic doctrine and a quest for unyielding moral foundations amid the ideological upheavals of the Weimar Republic. Documented in his personal preparations, this shift reflected disillusionment with the relativist tendencies he perceived in contemporary Protestant liberalism, which he viewed as insufficiently anchored against materialist philosophies. By June 9, 1931, Gerlich formally left the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, marking the onset of his catechumenate in August 1931.^[14]^[13] The culmination occurred on September 29, 1931—the feast of St. Michael—when Gerlich was baptized into the Catholic Church in Eichstätt, receiving the sacramental name Michael during a private ceremony officiated with the assistance of Father Ingbert Naab. He was confirmed shortly thereafter on November 9, 1931, by Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber in the archbishop's private chapel in Munich. This rite of passage at age 48 solidified his adherence to Catholic teachings on natural law, which emphasized immutable ethical truths derived from divine order.^[14]^[6] Gerlich's conversion profoundly shaped his ethical outlook, integrating Catholic principles as a counterforce to both communist atheism, which denied transcendent morality, and pagan nationalisms that subordinated human dignity to state idolatry. He regarded the Church's social doctrine—articulated in encyclicals like Rerum Novarum (1891) and the contemporaneous Quadragesimo Anno (1931)—as providing rigorous tools for discerning authentic human flourishing against relativistic ideologies.^[13] In his subsequent writings, this personal evolution manifested through the incorporation of theological reasoning, where arguments drew explicitly on papal teachings to affirm absolute moral standards over pragmatic or ideological expedients. Such references elevated his critiques, framing ethical absolutism as indispensable for resisting doctrines that eroded individual conscience and natural rights.^[13]

Relationship with Therese Neumann

Fritz Gerlich encountered Therese Neumann, a Bavarian Catholic reported to bear the stigmata of Christ, in 1927 during his journalistic scrutiny of her claims, which had drawn widespread attention since her visions began in 1926. As editor of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, Gerlich approached the phenomenon with empirical skepticism, conducting personal observations of Neumann's ecstasies and bleeding wounds, alongside analysis of medical reports from physicians who examined her under controlled conditions. These investigations, spanning multiple visits to Konnersreuth, convinced him of the stigmata's genuineness, as detailed in his two-volume work Die stigmatisierte Therese Neumann von Konnersreuth (1929), where he argued against fraud theories by citing the absence of artificial causation in her physiological states.^[15]^[16] Their relationship evolved into a documented friendship marked by ongoing correspondence and consultations, with Gerlich seeking Neumann's spiritual counsel on practical matters, including commercial decisions for his publishing endeavors. This interaction reinforced Gerlich's advocacy for integrating verifiable miraculous elements into Christian thought, tempering his rationalist background with affirmation of supernatural realism, though he maintained critical distance by emphasizing observable evidence over dogmatic acceptance. Neumann's influence thus highlighted for Gerlich the compatibility of faith-based phenomena with rigorous inquiry, distinct from sensationalist dismissals.^[17] Through this association, Gerlich gained entrée into Bavarian Catholic networks centered around Konnersreuth, comprising clergy, laity, and intellectuals wary of both Marxist materialism and emerging totalitarian secularism, thereby enriching his exposure to traditionalist resistance rooted in piety rather than political ideology alone.

Anti-Nazi Journalism and Ideology

Founding of Der Gam Newspaper

In late 1931, Fritz Gerlich established the weekly newspaper Der Gerade Weg ("The Straight Path"), initially building on or renaming an existing publication to create an independent platform free from mainstream editorial constraints.^[3]^[4] Funded primarily by Prince Erich von Waldburg-Zeil, a conservative aristocrat, the venture allowed Gerlich to operate without reliance on subsidized or censored outlets, aiming for a circulation among discerning conservative readers opposed to both Bolshevik and National Socialist ideologies.^[3]^[4] The newspaper's editorial mission emphasized Christian natural law principles, positioning it as a bulwark against totalitarian tendencies on the radical left and right, in stark contrast to the growing complicity of much of the Weimar press toward National Socialism.^[13] Gerlich sought to revive political discourse grounded in monarchical traditions and objective truth, explicitly rejecting the ideological distortions he viewed as eroding German society.^[3] From its inception, Der Gerade Weg encountered operational hurdles, including financial strains despite its provocative tone attracting readers, as publishing costs outpaced revenues even with private backing.^[4] Pre-1933 Nazi harassment intensified, with stormtroopers disrupting distribution and offices amid rising electoral gains by the NSDAP, though the paper persisted in documenting such aggressions through its issues until suppression in early 1933.^[13]^[3]

Key Criticisms of National Socialism

Gerlich's most notable debunking of Nazi racial pseudoscience appeared in a July 17, 1932, article titled "Does Hitler Have Mongolian Blood?" published in Der Gerade Weg, where he satirically questioned Adolf Hitler's claims to pure Aryan ancestry by citing historical analyses of cranial features, photographic evidence of Hitler's facial structure resembling Central Asian traits, and caricatures exaggerating supposed non-Germanic elements to highlight the arbitrary and bigoted nature of Nazi racial hierarchies.^[3]^[18]^[19] In exposés drawing from his firsthand observations as a Munich journalist during the 1920s, Gerlich criticized the Nazi party's reliance on street violence, documenting brawls, assaults on political opponents, and the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch as early indicators of a doctrine predisposed to systematic terror if empowered, arguing that such tactics revealed an inherent incompatibility with civilized governance rather than mere youthful exuberance.^[20]^[21] He emphasized these patterns through reports on the criminal records of SA leaders and eyewitness accounts of organized thuggery in Bavarian taverns and rallies, positioning Nazi aggression as a causal extension of ideological fanaticism rather than defensive nationalism.^[6] Gerlich rejected Nazi anti-Semitism as an irrational deviation from empirical historical nationalism, devoting a chapter in his writings to dismantling it as a heretical distortion that scapegoated Jews without causal basis in Germany's economic or social woes, instead fostering division that weakened genuine patriotic unity.^[17] He contended that historical precedents, such as productive Jewish contributions to German culture and science, contradicted claims of inherent racial enmity, framing anti-Semitism as a pseudoscientific ploy that subordinated reason to hatred and undermined the rational foundations of state-building.^[22]^[7]

Advocacy for Monarchy and Natural Law

Gerlich advocated restoring a constitutional monarchy in Bavaria under Crown Prince Rupprecht of the House of Wittelsbach, viewing it as a stabilizing alternative to the collectivist threats posed by both National Socialism and communism.^[3] He argued that the Wittelsbach monarchy, prior to the 1918 revolution, had historically fostered greater political and social order in Bavaria compared to the instability of the Weimar Republic, which he saw as exacerbated by republican fragmentation and ideological extremism. Central to Gerlich's constructive vision was the principle of natural law, which he described as an eternal framework of human rights predating and limiting state authority, serving as the bedrock for individual dignity and societal order. By the late 1920s and into 1930, his writings emphasized natural law's role in countering totalitarian encroachments, drawing from Catholic philosophical traditions that underscored immutable moral absolutes over state-imposed relativism. This perspective intensified after his 1931 conversion to Catholicism, positioning natural law as a pre-political bulwark against the ethical subjectivism he associated with Weimar cultural decay and the collectivist doctrines of both Nazis and Marxists, which subordinated persons to the collective will. In Der Gerade Weg, Gerlich warned that Nazi governance would precipitate moral collapse and empirical disasters, including systematic mass murder, by extrapolating from the SA's documented street violence and thuggish tactics observed in Munich since the early 1920s.^[3] For instance, a July 24, 1932, article questioned how rational observers could back the Nazis amid their "blood-drenched" path, framing such support as a betrayal of natural rights and predicting unchecked power would amplify the SA's brutality into state-sanctioned atrocities.^[3] He contrasted this with monarchy and natural law as guardians of individual liberties, offering a non-collectivist path rooted in historical precedent and transcendent principles.

Arrest, Imprisonment, and Execution

Seizure by the Nazis in 1933

Following the Nazi seizure of power on January 30, 1933, and the Reichstag Fire on February 27 which prompted the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending civil liberties, Fritz Gerlich was arrested on March 9 at the Munich offices of his newspaper Der Gerade Weg. SA stormtroopers, led by Max Amann and Emil Maurice, raided the premises, beat Gerlich during the apprehension, and destroyed printing presses and equipment.^[3]^[13] The regime invoked the decree to justify the action, accusing Gerlich's publications of endangering state security through their critiques of Hitler and National Socialism.^[13]^[23] Der Gerade Weg was officially banned four days later on March 13, with its remaining issues confiscated as part of the broader suppression of independent media.^[13] Gerlich was initially held in "protective custody" at Munich's Stadelheim Prison, an early site for political detainees before transfer to emerging camps, where he endured beatings and questioning centered on his exposés of Nazi leadership inconsistencies and violence.^[23]^[24] This operation highlighted the Nazis' systematic elimination of conservative dissenters who rejected totalitarian alignment, targeting figures like Gerlich—a former nationalist turned Catholic monarchist—rather than solely leftist opponents, thus fracturing any illusion of unified right-wing consolidation under Hitler.^[13] Such tactics extended to other non-Nazi rightists, including Bavarian Catholic publicists and independent journalists, through coordinated SA actions that bypassed judicial process.^[24]

Conditions at Dachau Concentration Camp

Fritz Gerlich spent most of his 16 months in Nazi "protective custody" in Munich's Ettstrasse police prison and Stadelheim penitentiary, facilities repurposed as early detention sites with conditions mirroring the improvised brutality of nascent concentration camps like Dachau.^[24] These included arbitrary beatings by guards, enforced isolation to break intellectual resistance, and inadequate provisions leading to physical weakening, as reported in contemporary accounts of Nazi custody practices.^[13] Gerlich himself was assaulted during his arrest on March 9, 1933, initiating a regimen of psychological torment designed to demoralize political opponents.^[13] Among fellow inmates, including other journalists and conservative figures, Gerlich fostered resilience by discussing principles of natural law and Catholic conviction, uplifting prisoners amid shared ordeals of forced idleness and guard intimidation. He occasionally smuggled writings outward, exhorting external Catholics to resist Nazism through moral steadfastness rather than violence, thereby sustaining morale without direct confrontation. By mid-1934, Gerlich's health had visibly declined from sustained malnutrition and episodic violence, consistent with survivor descriptions of early Nazi detention where rations were meager—often bread, thin soup, and ersatz coffee—and medical care withheld from "undesirables."^[25] Transferred to Dachau on June 30, 1934, he entered a camp operational since March 22, 1933, where early records and post-war testimonies detail intensified forced labor on construction and gravel pits, prolonged roll calls under armed guard, and targeted degradation of intellectuals through public humiliation and solitary confinement.^[25] These practices, enforced by SS overseers, aimed at eradicating oppositional thought, with mortality from exhaustion and abuse exceeding 10% in the first year per camp statistics.^[24]

Death During the Night of the Long Knives

Fritz Gerlich was summarily executed by shooting on June 30, 1934, at Dachau concentration camp amid the Night of the Long Knives, Adolf Hitler's purge that targeted not only alleged SA plotters under Ernst Röhm but also extraneous opponents to consolidate regime power.^[21]^[7] Gerlich, imprisoned since March 1933 for his anti-Nazi journalism, received no trial; his death eliminated a prominent conservative voice who had long critiqued National Socialism's propensity for lies, hatred, and internal violence, thereby confirming the perils he had publicly foreseen.^[3] The Nazis disposed of Gerlich's body secretly, forbidding immediate press coverage of the execution and delaying official confirmation until July 26, 1934. His widow received indirect notification through personal effects returned by the Gestapo, while broader details surfaced only post-World War II via camp records and admissions during denazification proceedings, revealing the purge's scope beyond SA rivals to include ideological nonconformists like Gerlich.^[7] This opacity exemplified the regime's strategy to erase traces of extrajudicial killings, ensuring no immediate public reckoning for the liquidation of independent critics.^[21]

Legacy and Posthumous Recognition

Recognition as a Conservative Resistor

Following the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, Fritz Gerlich received recognition within West German narratives of anti-totalitarian resistance, particularly among conservative and Catholic circles that emphasized principled opposition rooted in natural law and Christian ethics rather than ideological alignment with leftist or military factions.^[13] His inclusion in institutions like the German Resistance Memorial Center underscores his role as a journalistic critic who transformed Der gerade Weg into a platform advocating renewal through Catholic social doctrine, distinguishing his conservatism from the more prominent socialist or confessional resistors often amplified in postwar accounts.^[13] Catholic tributes have highlighted Gerlich's 1931 conversion to Catholicism as pivotal to his intensified denunciations of National Socialism as incompatible with moral order, positioning him as a martyr-like figure in Church histories of Nazi-era opposition.^[22] In 2017, the Archdiocese of Munich initiated a beatification process for Gerlich alongside theologian Romano Guardini, citing his vocal critiques of Hitler as a defender of faith against totalitarian ideology.^[26] This ecclesiastical acknowledgment contrasts with broader academic tendencies to prioritize left-leaning or ecumenical resistors, reflecting Gerlich's underrepresentation due to his right-wing origins and explicit rejection of Marxist influences.^[27] Modern analyses, including those from the 2010s onward, portray Gerlich as a prophetic conservative who discerned the inherent violence and paganism in Nazi ideology years before its full ascendancy, issuing warnings grounded in empirical observations of SA brutality and Hitler's doctrinal inconsistencies.^[27] Publications describe him as a "publicist and prophet" who anticipated the regime's murderous trajectory, with his critiques serving as an empirical rebuke to apologetics that normalized totalitarian movements by downplaying their causal roots in anti-Christian nihilism.^[27] The annual Fritz Gerlich Prize, established by the Munich Film Festival and endowed with €10,000 by the TELLUX holding company, honors documentary and fiction films advancing truth-seeking journalism in his vein, perpetuating his legacy as a right-wing resistor against propaganda.^[28] Gerlich's empirical legacy endures through the archival preservation and publication of his correspondence and documents from 1930 to 1934, compiled in scholarly editions that reveal his strategic efforts to expose Nazi criminality via leaked files and firsthand reporting.^[29] These materials, drawn from his archival career in Bavarian state repositories, provide primary evidence countering postwar narratives that marginalized conservative voices in favor of collective or progressive framings of resistance.^[8]

Cultural Depictions and Modern Interpretations

In the 2003 television miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil, Fritz Gerlich is portrayed by Matthew Modine as a Munich-based journalist who interviews Adolf Hitler and publishes exposés warning of the Nazi threat, declaring that Hitler "studies people in order to appear human, but all he has discovered is our fear and our hatred."^[30] This depiction casts Gerlich as a rational voice of caution amid rising extremism, interviewing Hitler in 1931 and urging public resistance to the National Socialist movement. Such fictional treatments emphasize his role in exposing Hitler's character but have drawn scholarly critique for streamlining his motivations, often sidelining his advocacy for monarchical restoration, rooted opposition to Bolshevism, and appeals to Christian natural law as bulwarks against totalitarianism. Literature on German resistance similarly references Gerlich sparingly, typically as an early journalistic adversary rather than a figure whose critiques targeted the ideological vacuums of the Weimar era, including cultural permissiveness and failure to counter communist agitation alongside Nazi agitation. Analyses of Third Reich opposition highlight how his Der gerade Weg combined anti-Nazi satire—such as a 1932 piece mockingly "proving" Hitler's Mongolian origins to undercut racial theories—with broader condemnations of atheistic materialism in both fascist and Marxist forms, yet popular narratives frequently reduce this to generic anti-Hitlerism.^[31] This selective focus risks distorting causal factors in his resistance, such as his 1931 religious conversion, which framed his work as a moral imperative against secular authoritarian drifts. Modern interpretations increasingly position Gerlich as a archetype for journalistic integrity amid authoritarian resurgence, with 2025 commentary lauding his willingness to sacrifice for truth-telling against Hitler as a counterpoint to compliant media.^[32] Conservative-leaning discussions invoke him to critique unstable republics' tolerance of ideological extremes, attributing Weimar's downfall to institutional reluctance to enforce traditional ethical boundaries against both Nazi and communist threats.^[33] The annual Fritz Gerlich Prize, endowed by Munich's TELLUX holding and awarded at the Filmfest München, recognizes contemporary films advancing factual inquiry into oppression, reflecting interpretations of Gerlich as a defender of uncompromised reporting over narrative conformity.^[28] These uses underscore his relevance to debates on press resilience, though they prompt calls for fuller acknowledgment of his conservative framework to avoid anachronistic projections of liberal heroism.

References

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Gerlich, Fritz - Deutsche Biographie
Gerlich, Albert Fritz. Journalist, * 15.2.1883 Stettin, † 30.6.1934 Dachau bei München. (evangelisch, seit 1931 katholisch) ...
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In the book he denounced anti-Semitism, which he believed had grown worse because of the leading role that Jews had taken in the revolution. Fritz Gerlich and ...
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Fritz Gerlich was born on the 15th of February, 1883 in Stettin, Germany and died on the 30th of June, 1934 in the Dachau concentration camp just north of ...Missing: family | Show results with:family
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1883 - 1913
Karl Albert Fritz Gerlich is born in Stettin (now Szczecin), the eldest of four sons of the fish wholesaler Paul Gerlich and his wife Therese (born Scholwin).Missing: parents | Show results with:parents
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Fritz Michael Gerlich - a journalist against Hitler - Gariwo Foundation
The journalist Fritz Michael Gerlich was born on the 15th of February 1883 in Stettin, Germany. He was a committed Catholic, a moderate conservative and a ...
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[PDF] Archivists killed for political reasons - Network of Concerned Historians
Historian and archivist Fritz Gerlich worked at the Bavarian National Archives. Over the years, he changed his conservative political views into liberal ...<|separator|>
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Feb 26, 2017 · Under his leadership, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten became the most important newspaper in Bavaria . Being himself a convinced opponent of ...
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October 1920. Gerlich becomes editor in chief of the „Münchner Neueste Nachrichten“ (Munich's Newest News). The largest daily in Southern Germany had just ...
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Soviet RepublicHis exposed position in the confrontation with Bolshevism forced Gerlich to flee upon the establishment of the South-Bavarian Soviet Republic.Missing: influence | Show results with:influence
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Born in Stettin in 1883, Fritz Gerlich was a historian, archivist, and journalist and edited the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten newspaper from 1920 to 1928.Missing: Bayerische Kurier
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Fritz Gerlich, a non-Catholic editor, with a degree of Ph.D. in history, lays down in two volumes, together of 730 pages, what he has to say after his ...
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He condemned their false doctrines, often personally attacking Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) ("Does Hitler have Mongolian blood?" was one of his headlines July 17, ...
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Jul 19, 1998 · ''Does Hitler have Mongolian blood?'' the anti-Hitler satirist Fritz Gerlich gleefully asked in a leading Munich newspaper in 1932, posing ...
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fritz gerlich AND THE MUNICH PRESS - the view from diamond towers
Jan 27, 2023 · Fritz Gerlich, founding editor of The Straight Path, for example, was arrested while preparing to run an expose on Hitler weeks after Hitler had ...Missing: studies Freiburg Berlin 1909
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Fritz Gerlich - GDW-Berlin: Biographie-Detail
Born in Stettin in 1883, Fritz Gerlich was a historian, archivist, and journalist and edited the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten newspaper from 1920 to 1928.Missing: studies Freiburg Munich 1909
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Courageous Catholic convert who denounced Nazi barbarism ...
May 13, 2008 · Fritz Michael Gerlich, a German convert to Catholicism, systematically denounced the Nazi barbarism and Hitler for over 13 years.Missing: education upbringing<|control11|><|separator|>
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Fritz Gerlich sparked an exchange between the Austrian and German press. Lorant was more fortunate. He credited not being tortured to a professional ...Missing: opposition | Show results with:opposition
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Jun 27, 2019 · Concentration Camps, 1933–39. During the first six years of the Nazi regime, thousands of Germans were detained or confined extra-legally. The ...
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Beatification process begins for Romano Guardini, Fritz Gerlich
Dec 20, 2017 · Gerlich, a journalist and historian who was one of Hitler's most vocal critics, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in 1931 and was ...
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Fritz Gerlich against Hitler
### Summary of Fritz Gerlich's Legacy and Modern Recognition
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Fritz Gerlich: [about Hitler] He's not human. He studies people in order to appear human, but all he has discovered is our fear and our hatred.
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Carl Albert Fritz Michael Gerlich was a German journalist and historian ... article titled "Does Hitler Have Mongolian Blood?" in an attempt to prove ...
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Apr 2, 2025 · On the opposite spectrum, you have someone like Fritz Gerlich, the journalist who risked -- and eventually sacrificed -- his life for writing ...
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Aug 30, 2019 · For about 10 years, the newspaper had done more than any other paper in Germany to expose Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party for the criminals that ...Missing: funding | Show results with:funding