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Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933) was a German publisher and journalist. His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings also appeared under the pen names Thomas Frey, Fritz Thor, and Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim.
As a politician and organiser of the völkisch movement in the German Empire, Fritsch was a member of the German Social Party (1889–1893), founder of the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden (Germanic Order; both in 1912). He was also a promotor of the garden city movement. During the Weimar Republic he co-founded the antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation) and the far-right German Völkisch Freedom Party (1922). In May 1924 he was elected to the Reichstag, representing the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP). Fritsch is considered an intellectual forerunner of Nazism and was regarded by Nazi leaders as the "doyen of the movement".
He is not to be confused with his son, also named Theodor Fritsch (1895–1946) and also a bookseller, who was a member of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the Sturmabteilung.
Fritsch was born Emil Theodor Fritsche, the sixth of seven children to Johann Friedrich Fritsche, a farmer in the village of Wiesenena (present-day Wiedemar) in the Prussian province of Saxony, and his wife August Wilhelmine, née Ohme. Four of his siblings died in childhood. He attended vocational school (Realschule) in Delitzsch where he learned casting and machine building. He then undertook study at the Royal Trade Academy (Königliche Gewerbeakademie) in Berlin, graduating as a technician in 1875.
In the same year Fritsche found employment in a Berlin machine shop. He gained independence in 1879 through the founding of a technical bureau associated with a publishing firm. In 1880 he founded the Deutscher Müllerbund (Miller's League) which issued the publication Der Deutsche Müller (The German Miller). In 1905 he founded the "Saxon Small Business Association." He devoted himself to this organization and to the interests of crafts and small businesses (Mittelstand), as well as to the spread of antisemitic propaganda. When he changed his name to Fritsch is unclear.
Fritsch created an early discussion forum, "Antisemitic Correspondence" in 1885 for antisemites of various political persuasions. In 1887 he sent several editions to Friedrich Nietzsche but was brusquely dismissed. Nietzsche sent Fritsch a letter in which he thanked him to be permitted "to cast a glance at the muddle of principles that lie at the heart of this strange movement", but requested not to be sent again such writings, for he was afraid that he might lose his patience.[1] Fritsch offered editorship to right-wing politician Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg in 1894, whereafter it became an organ for Sonnenberg's German Social Party under the name "German Social Articles." Fritsch' 1896 book The City of the Future became a blueprint of the German garden city movement which was adopted by Völkisch circles.
In 1902 Fritsch founded a Leipzig publishing house, Hammer-Verlag, whose flagship publication was The Hammer: Pages for German Sense (1902–1940). The firm issued German translations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew (collected writings of Henry Ford from The Dearborn Independent) as well as many of Fritsch's own works. An inflammatory article published in 1910 earned him a charge of defamation of religious societies and disturbing the public peace. Fritsch was sentenced to one week in prison, and received another ten-day term in 1911.
In 1890, Fritsch became, along with Otto Böckel, a candidate of the German Reform Party, founded by Böckel and Oswald Zimmermann, to the German Reichstag. He was not elected. The party was renamed German Reform Party in 1893, achieving sixteen seats. The party failed, however, to achieve significant public recognition. One of Fritsch's major goals was to unite all antisemitic political parties under a single banner; he wished for antisemitism to permeate the agenda of every German social and political organization. This effort proved largely to be a failure, as by 1890 there were over 190 various antisemitic parties in Germany. He also had a powerful rival for the leadership of the antisemites in Otto Böckel, with whom he had a strong personal rivalry.
In 1912 Fritsch founded the Reichshammerbund (Reich's Hammer League) as an antisemitic collective movement. He also established the secret Germanenorden in that year. Influenced by racist Ariosophic theories, it was one of the first political groups to adopt the swastika symbol. Members of these groups formed the Thule Society in 1918, which eventually sponsored the creation of the Nazi Party.
The Reichshammerbund was eventually folded into the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation), on whose advisory board Fritsch sat. He later became a member of the German Völkisch Freedom Party (DFVP). In the general election of May 1924, Fritsch was elected to serve as a member of the National Socialist Freedom Movement, a party formed in alliance with the DFVP by the Nazis as a legal means to election after the Nazi Party had been banned in the aftermath of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He only served until the next election in December, 1924.
In February 1927, Fritsch left the Völkisch Freedom Party in protest[why?]. He died shortly after the 1933 Nazi seizure of power at the age of 80 in Gautzsch (today part of Markkleeberg).
A memorial to Fritsch, described as "the first antisemitic memorial in Germany", was erected in Zehlendorf (Berlin) in 1935. The memorial was the idea of Zehlendorf's mayor, Walter Helfenstein (1890–1945), and the work of Arthur Wellmann (1885–1960). The memorial was melted down in 1943 to make armaments for the war.[2][3]
A believer in the absolute superiority of the Aryan race, Fritsch was upset by the changes brought on by rapid industrialization and urbanization, and called for a return to the traditional peasant values and customs of the distant past, which he believed exemplified the essence of the Volk.
In 1893, Fritsch published his most famous work, The Handbook of the Jewish Question, which leveled a number of conspiratorial charges at European Jews and called upon Germans to refrain from intermingling with them. Vastly popular, the book was read by millions and was in its 49th edition by 1944 (330,000 copies). Fritsch also founded an antisemitic journal – the Hammer – in 1902, and this became the basis of a movement, the Reichshammerbund, in 1912.
Fritsch was an opponent of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.[4] He published Einsteins Truglehre (Einstein's Fraudulent Teachings) in 1921, under the pseudonym F. Roderich-Stoltheim (an anagram of his full name).[5]
Another work, The Riddle of the Jew's Success, was published in English in 1927 under the pseudonym F. Roderich-Stoltheim.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933) was a German publisher and journalist. His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings also appeared under the pen names Thomas Frey, Fritz Thor, and Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim. As a politician and organiser of the völkisch movement in the German Empire, Fritsch was a member of the German Social Party (1889–1893), founder of the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden (Germanic Order; both in 1912). He was also a promotor of the garden city movement. During the Weimar Republic he co-founded the antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation) and the far-right German Völkisch Freedom Party (1922). In May 1924 he was elected to the Reichstag, representing the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP). Fritsch is considered an intellectual forerunner of Nazism and was regarded by Nazi leaders as the "doyen of the movement". He is not to be confused with his son, also named Theodor Fritsch (1895–1946) and also a bookseller, who was a member of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the Sturmabteilung.
Gustav Theodor Fritsch (5 March 1838 – 12 June 1927) was a German anatomist, anthropologist, traveller and physiologist from Cottbus. Fritsch studied natural science and medicine in Berlin, Breslau and Heidelberg. In 1874 he became an associate professor of physiology at the University of Berlin, where he was later appointed head of the histological department at the physiological institute. He is known for his work with neuropsychiatrist Eduard Hitzig (1839–1907) involving the localization of the motor areas of the brain. In 1870, the two scientists probed the cerebral cortex of a dog to discover that electrical stimulation of different areas of the cerebrum caused involuntary muscular contractions of specific parts of the dog's body. Along with his medical studies, Fritsch was also known for his ethnographical research in southern Africa (1863–66), during which time he traveled from Cape Town through the Orange Free State, Basutoland, Natal and Bechuanaland. In 1868 he took part in an expedition to Aden to observe a solar eclipse (18 August), afterwards traveling to Egypt, where he accompanied Johannes Dümichen (1833-1894) on an archaeological and photographic expedition. In 1874, he journeyed to Isfahan to observe the transit of Venus. He also performed zoological research in Anatolia, and in 1881/82 studied electric fish in regions of the eastern Mediterranean.
Fritsch is a German surname. Like Fritsche, Fritzsch and Fritzsche, it is a patronymic derived from Friedrich. As an author citation in botany, it refers to Karl Fritsch (1864–1934). Notable people with the surname include: Ahasverus Fritsch (1629–1701), German jurist, poet and hymn writer Antonin Fritsch (1832–1913), Czech palaeontologist Bayley Fritsch (born 1996), professional Australian rules footballer Bernard Joseph Fritsch (1881–1951), Australian rules footballer Brad Fritsch (born 1977), Canadian professional golfer Eberhard Ludwig Cäsar Fritsch (died 1974), editor and publisher of the pro-Nazi monthly magazine in Argentina Der Weg Edward F. Fritsch (born 1950), scientist Elizabeth Fritsch (born 1940), British potter Eloy Fernando Fritsch (born 1968), Brazilian electronic musician Felix Eugen Fritsch, English phycologist Ferdinand Fritsch (1898-1966/7), Austrian football manager Florian Fritsch (born 1985), German professional golfer Frederick William Fritsch (born 1954), American former bobsleigh athlete Gerhard Fritsch (1924–1969), Austrian novelist and poet Gunther von Fritsch (1906–1988), film director Gustav Fritsch (1837–1927), German physiologist Hans Fritsch (1911–1987), German discus thrower Heinrich Fritsch (1844–1915), German gynecologist and obstetrician Horst Fritsch (1931–2010), German Green Party politician Jamie Fritsch (born 1985), American former professional ice hockey defenseman Johannes Fritsch (1941–2010), German composer Karl Fritsch (1864–1934), Austrian botanist Karl von Fritsch (1838–1906), German geologist Karl Fritsch (jeweller) (born 1963), German-born contemporary jeweller Katharina Fritsch (born 1956), German sculptor Lisa Fritsch (born 1975), American author and community activist Ludwig Fritsch, pseudonym of Marie Luise Droop (1890–1959), German writer, director and producer Margaret Goodin Fritsch (1899–1993), American architect Michael Fritsch, academic and researcher in the field of economics Nicolas Fritsch (born 1978), French cyclist Paul Fritsch (chemist) (1859–1913), German co-inventor of the Fritsch–Buttenberg–Wiechell rearrangement Paul Fritsch (1901–1970), French boxer Rüdiger von Fritsch (born 1953), German diplomat and author Stephan Fritsch (1962–2014), German artist Theodore Edward Fritsch Jr. (born 1950), former American football center Theodor Fritsch (1852–1933), German publisher and antisemitic pundit Thomas Fritsch (1944–2021), German television and dubbing actor Toni Fritsch (1945–2005), Austrian player of football (soccer) and American football Waldemar Fritsch (1909–1978), German porcelain sculptor and ceramist Walter Fritsch (1911-date of death unknown), Chilean hurdler Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939), German Wehrmacht officer Willy Fritsch (1901–1973), German theater and film actor Wolfgang Fritsch (born 1949), German lightweight rower
The German Völkisch Freedom Party (German: Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei, or DVFP) was an early far-right political party of Weimar Germany that took its name from the Völkisch movement, a right-wing populist and antisemitic movement focused on folklore and the German Volk. Anti-communist, its criticism of capitalism reflected economic antisemitism rather than socialism. The DVFP was founded on 16 December 1922, when Wilhelm Henning, Reinhold Wulle, and Albrecht von Graefe broke from the German National People's Party (DNVP). Leading right-wing figures, such as Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, Artur Dinter, and Theodor Fritsch, joined the party on its foundation. Many members of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund joined the DVFP after the former was banned. After the Nazi Party was banned in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch, the DVFP entered into an electoral alliance with many Nazis to form the National Socialist Freedom Movement in early 1924, a move endorsed by Erich Ludendorff and encouraged by Graefe, who hoped to gain control of the far right as a whole. This alliance was not a success, plans for a full merger fell through in August 1924, and Graefe and Wulle re-formed the DVFP, now named the German Völkisch Freedom Movement, as a rival to the Nazi Party in February 1925. The revived party was banned along with other non-Nazi parties in 1933.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
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