Vossische Zeitung
- The Feme Murder Trial in Public
- The Agitation of the Irresponsible
- Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev Disciplined
The Vossische Zeitung of 25 October 1926 reported the opening of the first Feme murder trial before the jury court at Landsberg an der Warthe. A driver, a druggist and a merchant stood accused of trying to poison Richard Jahnke, and the merchant was said to have used threats to force the druggist into supplying the poison. A quoted press commentary called it ridiculous to declare the policy of Locarno, Geneva and Thoiry dead merely because the Conference of Ambassadors was again discussing military control and irresponsible journalists on both sides of the border were trading conditions. From Moscow, the paper reported that the joint plenum of the Soviet party's Central Committee and Central Control Commission had warned leading members of the opposition, barred Zinoviev from Comintern work, removed Trotsky from the Politburo and struck Kamenev from its list of candidates.
Translation
The Feme Murder Trial in Public
The first of the Feme murder trials that the jury court at the regional court in Landsberg an der Warthe has to hear in this session began today under the presidency of Regional Court Director D. Weßling, from 1910 to 1920 a district court judge in Berlin-Schöneberg. The accused are the motor-vehicle driver Reinhold Thom, the druggist Alfred Rathmann and the merchant Hans Buchholtz. Thom is charged with having attempted to kill the [?] a. R. Richard Jahnke by poison; Rathmann is alleged to have procured the poison, and Buchholtz is alleged to have forced the latter into it by threats. In the …
The Agitation of the Irresponsible
Because the Conference of Ambassadors, the paper argues, which is merely a body for establishing facts and has no powers whatsoever to make any decisions, is once again dealing with the question of military control in accordance with its competence, and because a few irresponsible French journalists believe themselves entitled to redefine the preconditions for resuming the German-French negotiations, preconditions that equally irresponsible journalists from across the border declare unacceptable, people already think they may conclude that the policy of Locarno, Geneva and Thoiry has finally fallen to pieces. That, it says, is simply ridiculous.
Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev Disciplined
Yesterday the joint plenum of the Central Control Commission and the Central Committee of the Communist Party passed judgment on the opposition. Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Pyatakov, Yevdokimov, Sokolnikov, Smilga and Mrs. Nikolayeva, all members of the Central Committee, received a "warning". Zinoviev's further work in the "Comintern" (Communist International) is declared inadmissible. Trotsky is expelled from the Political Bureau, in whose hands the leadership of the Communist Party lies, and Kamenev is struck from the list of candidates for the Political Bureau.
Context
The Black Reichswehr and the Küstrin labour detachments
The Vossische Zeitung's report from Landsberg gives only the defendants' occupations and the charge of attempted poisoning, but the word Fememord had a specific meaning in 1926. It referred to extrajudicial killings carried out mainly by far-right groups against people, often their own members, who were thought to have betrayed them. One organization in which such killings took place was the Black Reichswehr, a paramilitary body used to provide additional manpower reserves for the Reichswehr in violation of the Versailles Treaty. One of its leaders, Oberleutnant Paul Schulz, was reinstated by the Reichswehr Ministry under a private contract as part of the Black Reichswehr and was commissioned to set up a work detachment in Küstrin. Within the Black Reichswehr, Schulz commanded a special unit that killed men suspected of betraying the country by leaking military secrets. This line from a ministry contract to a killing squad made each Feme trial politically sensitive, because it raised the question of how far the regular army had backed the units in which the killings happened. The article itself does not say which organization the defendants or the intended victim, Richard Jahnke, belonged to.
Slow investigations, verdicts and the 1930 amnesty
The headline's stress on a public trial carried weight against the way Feme killings had usually been handled. Police and judicial investigations of the Feme crimes had been slow, and the killers, when they were identified, often received lighter sentences or were acquitted. In January 1926, at the request of the SPD, the Reichstag set up an investigative committee on these crimes, so the Landsberg trials opened while parliament was examining the same circles. Schulz's own case was decided a few months after this report: on 26 March 1927 Paul Schulz was sentenced to death for inciting the murder of Black Reichswehr Sergeant Walter Wilms. President Paul von Hindenburg commuted that sentence and the two related death sentences to life imprisonment in February 1928, and an amnesty for the Feme murders followed in 1930, covering officers such as Schulz who had been convicted and imprisoned.
How the Soviet party leadership disciplined the United Opposition in 1926
The Moscow report records one stage in a longer struggle. Trotsky's Left Opposition and the group around Zinoviev and Kamenev first appeared openly as the United Opposition at the joint plenum of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission in July 1926. In October 1926 Stalin's supporters voted Trotsky out of the Politburo; by the same month Kamenev and Zinoviev had also been removed from it, and Zinoviev lost his position as head of the Comintern. The paper's list of those warned, the ban on Zinoviev's Comintern work and the removal of Trotsky and Kamenev from the Politburo closely match these changes. The pressure continued afterwards. The Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927 declared the opposition's views incompatible with party membership and expelled its members, and Zinoviev and Kamenev were sentenced to death and executed at the end of a show trial in 1936.
Thoiry, military control and the Conference of Ambassadors
The commentary quoted under this heading answered a fear that the Franco-German rapprochement of autumn 1926 was already over. Germany had been admitted to the League of Nations on 10 September 1926, the step evoked by the article's 'Geneva'. At Thoiry, Briand agreed to return the Saar Basin to Germany early and to bring an early end to military control and the occupation of the Rhineland, but the scope of the Thoiry resolutions was soon reduced by objections from the German and French governments. Military control, which the article names, was one of the disputed points: Stresemann demanded the withdrawal of the Military Control Commission, while the French worried about the growth of paramilitary organizations in Germany. Stresemann wrote in his diaries that the Conference of Ambassadors must not register a decision that would mean the end of the Locarno policy in Germany. According to Gerhard Rempel, Stresemann eventually won on this issue, and the final evacuation of the Rhineland came in 1930, five years before the deadline.
Original
Der Fememord-Prozeß öffentlich
Der erste der Fememord-Prozesse, den das Schwurgericht beim Landgericht in Landsberg a. d. Warthe in dieser Session zu verhandeln hat, hat heute unter Vorsitz des Landgerichtsdirektors D. Weßling - von 1910 bis 1920 Amtsgerichtsrat in BerlinSchöneberg - begonnen. Angeklagt sind der Kraftwagenführer Reinhold Thom, der Drogist Alfred Rathmann und der Kaufmann Hans Buchholtz. Thom wird angeschuldigt, den [?] a. R. Richard Jahnke durch Gift zu töten versucht zu haben, Rathmann soll das Gift beschafft haben und Buchholtz soll diesen durch Bedrohung dazu genötigt haben. Im
Die Hetze der Unverantwortlichen
Weil die Botschafterkonferenz, führt das Blatt aus, die lediglich ein Organ zur Feststellung von Tatsachen ist, aber keinerlei Befugnisse zu irgendwelchen Entscheidungen hat, sich ihrer Kompetenz gemäß erneut mit der Frage der Militärkontrolle beschäftigt und weil einige unverantwortliche französische Journalisten berechtigt zu sein glauben, die Vorbedingungen für die Wiederaufnahme der deutsch-französischen Verhandlungen zu umschreiben, die von ebenso unverantwortlichen Journalisten von jenseits der Grenze für unannehmbar erklärt werden, glaubt man bereits ableiten zu dürfen, daß die Politik von Locarno, Genf und Thoiry endgültig in die Brüche gegangen sei. Das sei einfach lächerlich.
Trotzki, Sinowjew, Kamenew gemaßregelt
Gestern hat das vereinigte Plenum der Zentralkontrollkommission und des Zentralkomitees der Kommunistischen Partei das Urteil über die Opposition gefällt. Trotzki, Sinowjew, Kamenew, Pjatakow, Jewdokimow, Sokolnikow, Smilga und Frau Nikolajewa, alle Mitglieder des Zentralkomitees, erhielten eine " Verwarnung ". Die weitere Arbeit Sinowjews in der " Komintern " (kommunistischen Internationale) wird für unzulässig erklärt. Trotzki, wird aus dem Politischen Büro, in dessen Händen die Führung der Kommunistischen Partei liegt, ausgeschlossen, Kamenew von der Liste der Kandidaten für das Politische Büro gestrichen.