Ludwig Maximilian Erwin von Scheubner-Richter

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Ludwig Maximilian Erwin von Scheubner-Richter or Max Scheubner-Richter, born Ludwig Maximilian Erwin Richter (January 21, 1884 - November 9, 1923) was an early member of the Nazi party. It was Scheubner-Richter along with Alfred Rosenberg who devised the plan to drive the German government to revolution through the "Beer Hall Putsch."

Scheubner-Richter was a Baltic German born in Riga, Livonia and lived a large part of his life in Imperial Russia. During the Russian Revolution of 1905 he belonged to one of the private armies set up to fight against the revolutionaries. He married the daughter of a manufacturer whose factory he had guarded. The 'Scheubner' in his surname was prefixed to his own from his wife's family name: an old German form of having one's lineage ennobled. During the First World War, he served in Ottoman Turkey as the German vice consul of Erzerum. In addition to holding that post, Scheubner-Richter documented the Turkish massacres of Armenians as part of the Armenian Genocide.[1]

After the war he was involved in the Russian counter-revolution. Scheubner-Richter moved to Germany from Russia along with Alfred Rosenberg in 1918. Scheubner-Richter was a political schemer of the Russian school, considered craftier and more worldly than the younger Rosenberg. He was undoubtedly a pivotal influence in the concepts which were to form Rosenberg's ideas in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, as it was Richter who was reputed to be the more mystically and esoterically inclined of the two.

At the end of September 1923, Scheubner-Richter provided Hitler with a lengthy plan for revolution, writing: "The national revolution must not precede the seizure of political power; the seizure of the state's police power constitutes the promise for the national revolution" and "to lay hands on the state police power in a way that is at least outwardly legal."[2]

During the Beer Hall Putsch, walking arm-in-arm with Hitler, he was shot in the lungs and died instantly as Hitler and others marched toward armed guards on November 9, 1923.[3] He had brought Hitler down and dislocated Hitler's elbow when he fell. He was the only first-tier Nazi leader to die during the Putsch. Of all the early party members who died in the Putsch, Adolf Hitler had claimed Scheubner-Richter to be the only "irreplaceable loss."[4] The first part of Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" is dedicated to Scheubner-Richter.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Akcam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York: Metropolitan, 2006 pp. 121, 156, 158 ISBN 0-8050-8665-X
  2. ^ Heiden, Konrad. Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1944 p. 184
  3. ^ Toland, John. Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography. New York: Anchor Books, 1976 p. 170 ISBN 0-3854-2053-6
  4. ^ Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. New York, HarperCollins, 2003 p. 407 ISBN 0-0605-5870-9

[edit] External links

Report On Armenian Genocide by Eye Witness, Scheubner-Richter, German Consule/Administrator in Erzerum.

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