Leidsch Dagblad
- OSWALD WENCKEBACH.
- THE GENERAL SITUATION.
- GERMANY.
This Leidsch Dagblad page of 3 November 1926 set local culture beside foreign politics and justice. A review opened by describing an austere, book-lined room at the Leiden firm of Van Doesburgh, where the graphic work of the sculptor Oswald Wenckebach could be seen. In its survey of the general situation, the paper quoted a speaker who called an early evacuation of the occupied Rhineland a crime against the fatherland and accepted an agreement with Germany only if it left the country's security and the treaties intact. A short item from Germany reported that the prosecutor in the Landsberg Feme murder trial had demanded the death penalty for Lieutenant Schulz and Klapproth over the killing of Gröschke.
Translation
OSWALD WENCKEBACH.
In extremely austere surroundings, with rows of books along the walls, where any thought of an art exhibition in the usual form is out of place, we find at the firm of Van Doesburgh here the opportunity to view the graphic work of the sculptor Wenckebach
THE GENERAL SITUATION.
There is talk, and far too much talk is allowed, about an early evacuation of the Rhineland, he argued: this evacuation would be a crime against the fatherland. An agreement with Germany is desirable, but only on condition that it poses no danger to the security of the country and of the treaties.
GERMANY.
In the Feme murder trial at Landsberg, the public prosecutor has demanded the death penalty against the principal defendants, Lt. Schulz and Klapproth, for the murder, or at least incitement to the murder, of Gröschke.
Context
Why an early Rhineland evacuation was being debated in autumn 1926
The Allies had occupied the Rhineland since December 1918, and the occupation was meant to give France and Belgium security against a future German attack and to serve as a guarantee for Germany's reparations obligations. After the Locarno Treaties fixed Germany's western border, the northern zone around Cologne was evacuated in January 1926. On 17 September 1926 Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann met at Thoiry. Stresemann pledged material support to stabilise the franc, and Briand agreed to put an early end to the military control and occupation of the Rhineland. Objections from both the German and French governments soon reduced the scope of what had been agreed at Thoiry. The speech quoted in this article belongs to that backlash. The selected lines do not name the speaker, but he speaks from the French side. He calls early evacuation a crime against the fatherland and makes any agreement with Germany depend on the security of the country and of the treaties, which would include the Treaty of Versailles under which the occupation had been imposed. In the end, the occupation lasted until 30 June 1930, after the 1929 Young Plan settled reparations, which was still five years earlier than the Treaty of Versailles had set.
What the Feme murders and the Black Reichswehr were
The Feme murders were extrajudicial killings of the early Weimar years, carried out mainly by far-right groups against people, often their own members, who were thought to have betrayed them. They peaked in 1923, when hyperinflation, the occupation of the Ruhr and repeated putsch and separatist attempts shook Germany. Some of the killings were linked to the Black Reichswehr, a paramilitary organisation used to provide extra manpower reserves for the Reichswehr in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Inside it, First Lieutenant Paul Schulz commanded a special unit that killed men suspected of betraying the country by leaking military secrets. The Landsberg trial reported here therefore dealt with more than ordinary crime, since the killings were tied to an organisation that broke the Versailles limits. It also came at a time of political pressure: in January 1926, at the request of the Social Democrats, the Reichstag set up an investigative committee into Feme organisations and Feme murders. The Dutch word veemmoordproces in the item is simply a rendering of the German Fememordprozess.
How the cases against Schulz and Klapproth ended
The item reports only the prosecutor's demand in the Landsberg proceedings over the killing of Gröschke, and the verdict in that case is not recorded in the material cited here. The same two men did face a death sentence in a related case. Paul Schulz had been arrested in March 1925 for inciting several murders. On 26 March 1927 he was sentenced to death for inciting the murder of Black Reichswehr Sergeant Walter Wilms, and First Lieutenant Fritz Fuhrmann and Sergeant Erich Klapproth, who carried out that killing, were also sentenced to death. President Hindenburg commuted all three death sentences to life imprisonment in February 1928. Schulz was released under a political amnesty in October 1930 and joined the Nazi Party on 24 October that year. The prosecutor's demand reported in November 1926 was therefore an early stage of prosecutions that ended in commutation and amnesty, not in executions.
Who Oswald Wenckebach was when Leiden saw his prints
Ludwig Oswald Wenckebach (1895–1962) was a Dutch sculptor, painter and medallist, the son of the anatomist Karel Frederik Wenckebach and the nephew and pupil of the graphic designer and painter Willem Wenckebach. He began as a painter and turned to sculpture in 1920, so the review in this paper caught him at 31, about six years into his career as a sculptor. The review presents him as a sculptor showing graphic work, and his training under an uncle who was a graphic designer may help explain that side of his output, although the excerpt itself does not say so. Wenckebach later became best known for his many war monuments and for designing the coins issued in the Netherlands between 1948 and 1980. He died on 3 November 1962, thirty-six years to the day after this issue appeared.
Original
OSWALD WENCKEBACH.
In een uiterst sobere omgeving. aan de wanden rijen boeken, waar iedere gedachte aan een kunsttentoonstelling in den gebruikelijken vorm vreemd is, vinden we bij de firma van Doesburgh alhier, gelegenheid het graphische werk van den beeldhouwer Wenckebach te bezichtigen
DE ALGEMEENE TOESTAND.
. Men spreekt en men laat veel te veel spreken van een vervroegde ontruiming van het Rijnland, betoogde hij: Deze ont ruiming zou een misdaad zijn tegen het vaderland. Een overeenkomst met Duitschland is wenschelijk, doch slechts voor het geval, dat zij geen gevaar oplevert voor de veiligheid van het land en der verdragen.
DUITSCHLAND.
In het veemmoordproces te Landsberg heeft de officier van justitie tegen de hoofdbeklaagden luit. Schulz en Klapproth, wegens moord of althans aanstichting tot moord op Gröschke, de doodstraf geëischt.
Source: Source: Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken (leiden.courant.nu)