Franz Xaver Schwarz
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Franz Xaver Schwarz (27 November 1875 - 2 December 1947) was a German politician who served as Reichsschatzmeister (National Treasurer) of the Nazi Party during most of the Party's existence.
He was born in Günzburg the seventh of eight children, where his father was a master baker. He was educated to a high school level at the Günzburger vocational training school. Schwarz married Berta Breher on August 26, 1899. He was involved in the military and city government of Munich between 1900-1925. He began service by volunteering at the Günzburger District Court, and then worked as a notary. Schwarz served in World War I as a second lieutenant in the infantry. Due to gastric troubles which afflicted him his entire life (he was considered 30 percent disabled in that war), he was spared field duty beginning in 1916.
Schwarz joined the Nazi party in 1922. He participated in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923. With the re-establishment of the Nazi party in Germany on February 27, 1925 Schwarz became party member six. On March 21, 1925 he became full-time treasurer of the Nazi party, rebuilding the financial and administrative functions. In April-May 1930 Schwarz negotiated the purchase of the party headquarters, the Brown House at 45 Brienner Straße in Munich.
He was elected to the Reichstag in 1933, representing the Franconia electoral district and continued thus to the end of the war. On March 23, 1934 Hitler gave Schwarz full authority for the financial affairs of the party. Hitler attended the 60th birthday of Schwarz on November 27, 1935. Hitler's will of May 2, 1938 (which left his entire fortune to the party) included the provision that it be opened in Schwarz's presence. Besides the party treasury (largely based on membership dues), he was also responsible for the central assignment of NSDAP unique membership numbers. When members died or stopped paying dues, the old numbers were not freed up for new members (and if old members picked up their dues later a new party number would be assigned). 10 million membership numbers had been assigned by 1945, with perhaps 2.4 million active members. Schwarz's able administration of party funds insured a cash balance of one billion marks at the end of the war.
In June 1933, Schwarz joined the SS and on July 1, 1933 he was appointed SS-Obergruppenführer. He was only one of four people to have held the rank of SS-Oberstgruppenführer and, of the four, the only one to hold the rank as an honorary title without equivalent Ordnungspolizei or Waffen-SS rank. That high rank was granted him on April 20, 1942 (Hitler's birthday). On June 5, 1944 he was also granted a high military award (the Kriegsverdienstkreuz 1. Klasse mit Schwertern) by Hitler for his work during the Munich air raids of April 24-25.
Schwarz was an administrator who kept out of party politics for the most part. Joseph Goebbels diaries mentioned Schwarz in 1926 and in 1944. After Goebbels met Schwarz for the first time on April 9, 1926 he wrote dismissingly of him. By November 1944 he regarded Schwarz very positively as one of the most reliable and respectable party men.
Schwarz briefly led a Volkssturmbataillons in Grünwald at the end of the war. With the war over, he was arrested by the American authorities. Schwarz died in an Allied internment camp near Regensburg without being properly interrogated (he was cross-examined regularly and brutally but not efficiently). His death was due to the recurring gastric troubles and the manner of his treatment at Regensburg. His diaries and other papers had already been burned in the Munich Brown House in April, 1945. Because of his death and this destruction, there would be major gaps in the historical record about who financed the Nazi party. In September 1948, Schwarz was posthumously classified by the Munich de-Nazification court as a “major offender”.
[edit] References
- Hallgarten, George W. F. " Adolf Hitler and German Heavy Industry, 1931-1933" The Journal of Economic History, 1952.
- Orlow, Dietrich. The History of the Nazi Party: 1933-1945. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.
- Weinberg, Gerhard L. "Hitler's Private Testament of May 2, 1938", The Journal of Modern History, 1955.
