Erich Klausener
Erich Klausener (January 25, 1885 – June 30, 1934) was a German Catholic politician who was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives as the Nazis purged their opponents.
Born in Düsseldorf to a strict Catholic family, Klausener followed his father's career in public service, serving for a time in the Prussian Ministry of Trade. Klausener served as an ordnance officer in Belgium, France, and the Eastern front in World War I; he was decorated with the Iron Cross Second Class in 1914 and with the Iron Cross First Class in 1917. Klausener's participation in boycotts during the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 and 1924 earned him a sentence of two months' imprisonment.
Beginning in 1924, Klausener served in the Prussian welfare ministry, and later led the police division of that state's interior ministry. Beginning in 1928, Klausener became head of the Katholische Aktion (Catholic Action) group. Prior to 1933, Klausener energetically supported the police battle against unlawful National Socialist activities. After Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists rose to power in 1933, Hermann Göring became minister-president of Prussia. Klausener was shunted aside to the transportation ministry to make way for Göring to Nazify the Prussian police.
A close associate of vice chancellor Franz von Papen, Klausener contributed to the Marburg speech delivered on June 17, 1934. The speech, though moderate in tone, criticized the violence and repression that had taken place since Hitler became chancellor. Klausener spoke at the Catholic Congress in Berlin's Hoppegarten on June 24; his impassioned and improvised criticism of the National Socialists' repression of their opponents was viewed by the Nazis as open defiance.
Six days later as the Röhm Purge went into action, a squad of Schutzstaffel (SS) men, apparently acting on the orders of Göring and Reinhard Heydrich, entered Klausener's office at the transportation ministry and shot him dead at his desk.
After the end of Nazi rule after World War II, a memorial to Klausener was erected in Berlin.
External links
- Brief biography of Erich Klausener – from the German Resistance Memorial Center
- More detailed biography of Erich Klausener (in German)