Round Up the Editors! The Persecution of Three Munich Journalists at the Early Camps of Ettstrasse and Stadelheim

On March 9, 1933, Bavaria's new Nazi government arrested editors and leading journalists affiliated with Munich's conservative, Catholic, and Social Democratic (SPD) newspapers. Among the targeted papers were the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten and the Süddeutsche Sonntagspost, both papers belonging to the conservative newspaper chain, Knorr and Hirth, and the editor of the Gerade Weg (The Straight Path). The editors included the Gerade Weg's Dr. Fritz Gerlich and the Sonntagspost's Walter Tschuppik, a Czechoslovakian Jew. A few days later, the police took into custody Stefan Lorant, the editor of the Nachrichten's sister paper, the Münchner Illustrierte Zeitung, and a Hungarian Jew. Lorant, Tschuppik, and Gerlich were confined in succession to the early Munich camps at Ettstrasse and Stadelheim.² The SS murdered Gerlich at Dachau in 1934. After reviewing the history of the early camps and introducing the detention sites at Ettstrasse and Stadelheim, this paper focuses upon the cases of Lorant, Tschuppik, and Gerlich, in order to illuminate the diverse fates of early camp prisoners and to provide insight into the role that "protective custody" (Schutzhaft) played in the Nazi "synchronization" (Gleichschaltung) of the German press.³

On February 28, 1933, less than one month after Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor, and one day following the Reichstag fire, the Reich Cabinet promulgated the "Reich Presidential Decree for the Protection of People and State" (popularly known as the Reichstag Fire Decree).⁴ This decree indefinitely suspended civil liberties under the Weimar Constitution, and set the stage for the mass arrest of the Nazis' political opponents, on the pretext of combating the alleged communist menace. Although it did not provide for the establishment of concentration camps, Germany's penitentiaries, prisons, and local jails soon filled with protective custody detainees. After the March 5 national election, which could hardly be considered free and fair given the German Communist Party (KPD) ban and voter intimidation, the pace of arrests accelerated. After 1945, the first head of the Prussian Secret State Police Office (Gestapa), Rudolf Diels, depicted these detention sites and the first concentration camps as "wild camps" (wilde Lager), as if the police had nothing to do with their formation.⁵

In fact, the establishment of early detention sites involved all levels of government, including local. Although the camps may have been guarded by the SS, Storm Troopers (SA), or even the nationalist combat veterans' organization, Stahlhelm, their administration involved the Reich and State (Land) interior ministries, the local police, and county or municipal authorities. In Prussia, prisons like Berlin-Plötzensee and Düsseldorf Ulmenstrasse, workhouses like Benninghausen and Moringen-Solling, a children's home at Alt Daber, and a mine pit at Bochum, called "Gibraltar," became protective custody and concentration camps. In "Red" Saxony, so called because of the high concentration of support for the working-class political parties, castles like Colditz and Hohnstein, abandoned factories like Sachsenburg, and a community center at Hainichen served as detention sites. Altogether, the Reich established around seventy early concentration camps (Konzentrationslager) and at least thirty protective custody camps (Schutzhaftlager).

Ironically, one state initially spared arrests was the home of Nazism, Bavaria. ⁶ Governed by the Bavarian People's Party (BVP), a political ally of the Catholic Center Party (Zentrum), the Free State of Bavaria vigorously defended its sovereignty under Germany's federal system. From Berlin's new government in early February, it secured what turned out to be a meaningless pledge against political interference. Following the national election, Nazi General Franz Ritter von Epp deposed Bavaria's elected leader, Dr. Heinrich Held on March 9. Within hours, the newly appointed chief of the Munich Police, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, ordered the seizure of regime opponents by the Bavarian State Police, and the SA and SS police auxiliaries (Hilfspolizei). Before the sun set on March 9, the Munich Police Prison at Ettstrasse and the penitentiary at Stadelheim became two of Bavaria's first Schutzhaftlager. Soon they functioned as transit points for the SS camp at Dachau, which opened...