Fritz Tobias
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Fritz Tobias (3 October 1912 – 1 January 2011) was a German writer, government official and member of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...
. He was ''Ministerialrat'' in the
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
Ministry of the Interior and was then in the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Lower Saxony. In the 1960s, he became known by his statements to the
Reichstag fire The Reichstag fire (german: Reichstagsbrand, ) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament in Berlin, on Monday 27 February 1933, precisely four weeks after Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of ...
. An "amateur historian", Tobias had taken the trouble to explore the history of the events in Berlin on 27 February 1933. According to his findings the Nazis were not guilty and the historically-significant arson would have been the action of
Marinus van der Lubbe Marinus van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and executed by the Nazis for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933. During his trial, the prosecution a ...
alone. Most historians agree that Tobias was correct.


Early life and career

Tobias grew up in
Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
as the son of a Social Democratic porcelain painter. In 1926, Tobias moved to
Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
. In April 1940, Tobias was drafted for military service. He took part in the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
until 1945, and he claimed to have suffered several injuries, most recently in April 1945 in northern
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
. After the war Tobias was being accused of having belonged to the ''
Geheime Feldpolizei The ''Geheime Feldpolizei'', short: ''GFP'' (), , was the secret military police of the German Wehrmacht until the end of the Second World War (1945). Its units carried out plain-clothed security work in the field - such as counter-espionage, ...
'' during the war, which he dismissed as "fictitious". In 1946, Tobias entered the civil service. In the early postwar years, he was involved in, among other things, the
denazification Denazification (german: link=yes, Entnazifizierung) was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by remov ...
of
Lower Saxony Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
. In 1951, Tobias was accepted as a slokesman for the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior. After working in various departments, he became in 1959 involved in the temporary constitutional protection of Lower Saxony. In the administrative service, he was eventually promoted to ministerial council. According to the journalist and former editor of Spiegel Peter-Ferdinand Koch, the British
Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
had already recommended Tobias to the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior at the end of 1945, as he had interrogated high-ranking SS officers on behalf of the British military police and war crimes investigators.


Reichstag Fire research

Tobias became publicly known as the author of the eleven-part series "Get up, van der Lubbe!" It appeared in ''
Der Spiegel ''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' in 1959 to 1960.„Stehen Sie auf, van der Lubbe!“ Der Reichstagsbrand 1933 – Geschichte einer Legende. In: Der Spiegel 43, 21 October 1959, page 45–60, followed in the issues 44 (1959), 45 (1959), 46 (1959), 47 (1959), 48 (1959), 49 (1959), 50 (1959), 51 (1959), 52 (1959) and 1 (1960)] In those articles and in his 1962 book on the Reichstag fire, Tobias advocated the controversial thesis that
Marinus van der Lubbe Marinus van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and executed by the Nazis for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933. During his trial, the prosecution a ...
was the sole perpetrator of the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, which led to the issuance of the
Reichstag Fire Decree The Reichstag Fire Decree (german: Reichstagsbrandverordnung) is the common name of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State (german: Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat) issued by Germ ...
. The series of articles published in ''Der Spiegel'' later turned into the book ''Der Reichstagsbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit'' (1962), which was translated into English as "The Reichstag Fire: Legend and Truth" (1964). After making an extensive study of ''
The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror ''The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror'' (German: ''Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror'') is a book published in Paris, France in August 1933 and written by an anti-fascist group including German communist Willi Mun ...
'', he argued that it was based on forged documents, like the Oberfohren Memorandum.
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
, who had been part of the team working on the book, admitted that it had been based on several forged documents.


Archive

After the death of Tobias, ''Polit-Kriminalfall Reichstags-Brand. Legende und Wirklichkeit'' was published in 2011, with co-author Fred Duswald. Tobias's private archive was first managed by his partner. After she died in 2013, Tobias's son agreed, as was publicised in July 2013, to submit the archive to the German authorities. From 2015 to autumn 2017, the Federal Archives ordered and systematized the estate of Tobias. After sorting out a chronological collection of 723 file units was formed from around 3,000 folders, which have been on the Federal Archives since 2018 as historical collection.


Bibliography

* Hett, Benjamin Carter. ''Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich's Enduring Mystery'' New York 2014. . * Hett, Benjamin Carter. "'This Story Is about Something Fundamental': Nazi Criminals, History, Memory, and the Reichstag Fire." ''Central European History'' (2015): 199-22
online
* Nathans, Eli. "The Reichstag Fire and the Politics of History." ''Histoire sociale/Social history'' 50.101 (2017): 171-17
online
* Alexander Bahar, Wilfried Kugel: „Wer ist Fritz Tobias?“ In: "Der Reichstagsbrand. Wie Geschichte gemacht wird". Berlin 2001, pages 778–785. * Klaus Wallbaum: "Der alte Mann und das große Feuer. Am Mittwoch wird Fritz Tobias 95 Jahre alt – einer, der die Historikerschaft in zwei Lager teilt". In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, 2 October 2007. * Heinrich Zankl: Politisches Feuer. Historikerstreit um Reichstagsbrand. In: "Kampfhähne der Wissenschaft. Kontroversen und Feindschaften", Weinheim 2012, , pages 257–265.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tobias, Fritz 1912 births 2011 deaths