Democracy Destroyed The First 100 Days of Nazi Rule

Day 100, Tuesday 9 May 1933: Frick tells the states that schools must form "the political human being"

Day 100 of 100

Frick tells the states that schools must form “the political human being”

At a meeting of the states’ education ministers in the Reich Interior Ministry, Frick set out the principles of future school policy: schools were to teach race studies, warn against mixing German with “alien”, above all Jewish, blood, and prepare the young for military service. Rust handed sex education back to parents and stopped grants to Jewish trainee teachers. The Berlin guard troops mounted their first guard at the war memorial on Unter den Linden, two convicted murderers were executed at Plötzensee, Joseph Schmidt’s film “Ein Lied geht um die Welt” had its premiere, and from France Klaus Mann wrote to Gottfried Benn.

Officers and men in dark coats stand in a high stone hall beside a dark block bearing a wreath, the floor covered with wreaths and ribbons
Reich President von Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler at the memorial to the fallen in the Neue Wache on Unter den Linden on the day of national mourning, 12 March 1933. For context Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2008-0909-501 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Frick’s address, which was handed to the press in full, turned Nazi ideology into a school programme. Liberal, individualist education, he said, had spoiled the purpose of schooling at its root; the new school was to start from the idea of community and serve the people as a whole. History lessons were to centre on the World War, the “Versailles dictate” and the “breakthrough” of the Nazi idea, prehistory was to be given more weight, and German script was to take precedence over Latin script. He saw no need to repeal the constitution’s articles on schools formally: where they stood in the way of reform, the necessary steps would be taken case by case.

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

  1. Government Berlin, Reich Interior Ministry

    Frick’s conference of education ministers

    Under Frick’s chairmanship the education ministers of the German states met in the Reich Interior Ministry. According to the official communiqué, the discussion that followed his speech showed complete agreement; it dealt above all with applying the law against the overcrowding of schools and universities and with warding off influences “dangerous to the state” on schoolchildren. The Bavarian minister Schemm, as leader of the Nazi Teachers’ League, declared that only the league’s newspaper in Bayreuth spoke for it.1

  2. Persecution Berlin

    Race studies for the classroom

    Frick demanded that biology lessons include race studies. Pupils were to learn to observe racial differences, be shown the “harmful consequences” of racial deterioration and be taught that German blood must be kept from mixing with “alien”, above all Jewish, blood; teaching on “hereditary health” and family research was to follow. Physical training was to include education for military preparedness (Wehrhaftigkeit), and the number of school-leavers and students was to be kept in line with the professions’ needs.1

  3. Persecution Berlin

    Rust stops grants to Jewish trainee teachers

    In a circular the Prussian Minister of Culture, Rust, ordered that further-training grants to Jewish candidates for teaching posts be stopped at once. In a separate decree to the provincial governors as heads of school administration he ruled that sex education could not be given in front of a whole class and was in principle a matter for parents; only where the home failed was a suitable teacher to be called in, with the pupil’s pastor informed.2

  4. Military Berlin

    Blomberg on conscription and Geneva

    Before leaving for Königsberg, Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg told the foreign editor of the WTB news agency that Germany’s stance at the Geneva disarmament conference was widely misunderstood. Universal conscription had served Germany well, he said, both militarily and as a means of educating the people; the “Versailles dictate” had forced a long-service professional army on the British model on Germany, and now the conference wanted to impose a short-service militia based on French proposals.5

  5. Propaganda Berlin

    Twenty thousand books for the fire

    It was announced that the “un-German” books collected by the students, about 20,000 of them, would be burned on the Opernplatz the next day, and that Goebbels would speak.4

  6. Propaganda Berlin

    Tägliche Rundschau allowed to reappear

    The Secret State Police Office lifted its ban on the Berlin daily Tägliche Rundschau with immediate effect, on the strength of a declaration by its editors. Ferdinand Fried took over as editor-in-chief from F. W. von Oertzen.5

  7. Terror Warnemünde

    Norwegian correspondent arrested

    It was reported from Berlin that Olaf Larsen, a Social Democrat and correspondent for Norwegian newspapers in Germany, had been arrested in Warnemünde. According to the report he had published “atrocity stories” in the Norwegian press.4

  8. Propaganda Berlin

    Rosa Luxemburg’s library “found”

    The Nazi factory-cell organisation’s commissioner for the ADGB company “Büropa GmbH” announced that sixteen crates holding Rosa Luxemburg’s books had been found in its cellar, among them her party membership book and books with personal dedications from Kautsky and others. The report used the find to disparage her in antisemitic terms.3

Everyday life

What else was happening in Germany

  1. Film Berlin, Ufa-Palast am Zoo

    Premiere of “Ein Lied geht um die Welt”

    Richard Oswald’s film “Ein Lied geht um die Welt” (A Song Goes Round the World), with music by Hans May, had its premiere at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo. It starred the tenor Joseph Schmidt, born in 1904, as an unknown singer who becomes famous through radio. The film was banned in 1937; Schmidt died on 16 November 1942 in the Girenbad internment camp in Switzerland.6,7

  2. Theatre evening, Berlin, Metropol-Theater

    Students disrupt an operetta

    During the evening performance of the operetta “Die Lindenwirtin” at the Metropol-Theater, students protested against its portrayal of student life: they heckled, threw stink bombs and scattered sneezing powder, and left the theatre after the second act. The rest of the performance went undisturbed; the police took the names of fourteen students.4

  3. Books

    Klaus Mann writes to Gottfried Benn

    From exile in France Klaus Mann wrote a personal letter to the poet Gottfried Benn, who had taken over the poetry section of the Prussian Academy of Arts after Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann’s uncle, was forced out in February, and who had stayed on in the coordinated academy. Benn replied publicly with an open letter in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on 25 May.8

  4. Crime early morning, Berlin, Plötzensee prison

    Two executions at Plötzensee

    Early in the morning two men sentenced to death for murder were executed in Plötzensee prison: the bricklayer Ernst Reins, who had killed the postman Gustav Schwan in Schöneberg in 1931, and Johannes Kabelitz, who in January 1931 had shot the driver Ponick from behind and robbed him. Reins’s execution was announced on advertising pillars. Göring, as Prussian Minister-President, commuted the death sentences passed on the farm labourer Lehmann and the harvest worker Anton Potocki to life imprisonment.1,2

  5. Society Berlin, Unter den Linden

    First guard at the war memorial

    The Berlin guard troops mounted guard for the first time at the memorial to the fallen (Ehrenmal) on Unter den Linden. Thousands waited at the Brandenburg Gate and along Unter den Linden for the troops to march up, greeting them bare-headed or with raised arms, and the soldiers marched past the memorial in parade step.3

  6. Society Berlin

    Women’s leagues submit to Hitler

    Ley’s negotiations with the leaders of the main women’s organisations were reported to have been concluded. Baroness von Hadeln, leader of the Queen Luise League (Bund Königin Luise), declared that she and her league placed themselves unconditionally under Hitler.5

  7. Sport Berlin, Tempelhof airport

    The Rome riders fly home

    Rittmeister von Salviati and First Lieutenants Brandt, von Nagel and Sahla landed at Tempelhof airport in a plane from Rome. They had just won the Coppa Mussolini at the Rome riding tournament for the third time, so keeping the trophy for Germany for good, and spoke of the warm welcome they had found in Italy.3

Voices

The German school has to form the political human being, who in all his thinking and acting is rooted in his people, serving and sacrificing, and is bound in his innermost being to the history and destiny of his state.

Wilhelm Frick, Reich Minister of the Interior Programmatic speech to the education ministers of the German states in the Reich Interior Ministry, 9 May 1933, as printed in the press Translated by this site.1

What could have brought you to place your name, which for us was the epitome of the highest standard and of an almost fanatical purity, at the disposal of those whose lack of standards is absolutely without precedent in European history and from whose moral uncleanliness the world turns away in disgust?

Klaus Mann, writer, in exile in France Letter to Gottfried Benn dated 9 May 1933, after Benn had stayed on in the coordinated Prussian Academy of Arts; quoted by the Deutsches Exilarchiv’s “Künste im Exil” Translated by this site.8

Elsewhere in the world

  • Austria

    Student brawls at Vienna University

    Serious clashes broke out between Nazi and other students at Vienna University, starting in a lecture by Professor Tandler at the Anatomical Institute; a number of students were injured. Fighting followed in the university’s great hall and in the law faculty, and the hall and the Anatomical Institute were closed until further notice.5

In Berlin today

A small classical building with a Doric portico and a sculpted pediment under a clear blue sky
Schinkel’s Neue Wache on Unter den Linden, since 1993 the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, photographed in February 2015. Ansgar Koreng / CC BY 3.0 (DE). CC BY 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Neue Wache

Unter den Linden 4, 10117 Berlin-Mitte

Then
Schinkel’s royal guardhouse of 1816–18, converted by Heinrich Tessenow in 1930–31 into a memorial to the fallen of the World War. On 9 May 1933 the Berlin guard troops mounted guard here for the first time, watched by thousands.9,3
Today
Since the national day of mourning in 1993 the Neue Wache has been the Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany, with an enlarged replica of Käthe Kollwitz’s figure of a mourning mother in Tessenow’s restored interior.

Open in OpenStreetMap

A single-storey red-brick building with two arched wooden doors and arched windows, on a lawn
The former execution shed of Plötzensee prison, now at the centre of the Plötzensee Memorial, photographed in April 2015. A.Savin / CC BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Plötzensee Memorial

Hüttigpfad 16, 13627 Berlin-Charlottenburg-Nord

Then
On the morning of 9 May 1933 Ernst Reins and Johannes Kabelitz, both convicted of murder, were executed in Plötzensee prison. Until 1937 executions here were carried out in the yard by the executioner with a hand axe.10,1
Today
Since 1951–52 the former execution shed and its yard have been a memorial “to the victims of the Hitler dictatorship of the years 1933–1945”. Between 1933 and 1945, 2,891 people were put to death at Plötzensee, among them many members of the resistance.

Open in OpenStreetMap

More pictures

A glass-mounted metal plaque with a signature, a small portrait of a young man and an inscription
Memorial plaque at Nürnberger Straße 68 in Berlin-Schöneberg, recording that the tenor and cantor Joseph Schmidt lived there from 1930 to 1933; photographed in 2010. For context OTFW , Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A long wall of pale stone blocks bearing a three-line inscription in green bronze letters, with trees behind it
The memorial wall at the Plötzensee Memorial, dedicated to the victims of the Hitler dictatorship of 1933–1945, in 2021. For context Julius Tens. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

  1. Biberacher Zeitung, 10 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, official communiqué and Frick's speech (Berlin, 9 May); p. 12, "Der Briefträgermörder Reins wurde hingerichtet" and "Der Chauffeurmörder Kabelitz enthauptet"
  2. Sächsische Volkszeitung, 10 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2, "Verwandlung von Todesstrafen zu Zuchthausstrafe" and Rust's decree on sex education; p. 4, "Keine Fortbildungszuschüsse für jüdische Schulamtsbewerber" (Berlin, 9 May)
  3. Hamburgischer Correspondent, morning edition, 10 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2, "Der Büchernachlaß Rosa Luxemburgs aufgefunden" and "Die Wache vor dem Ehrenmal"; p. 5, "Rückkehr der siegreichen Reiteroffiziere" (Berlin, 9 May)
  4. Erzgebirgischer Volksfreund, 10 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 3, reports on the Metropol-Theater (Berlin, 10 May), the book burning and Olaf Larsen (Berlin, 9 May)
  5. Bottwartal-Bote, 10 May 1933 Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1, Blomberg interview (Berlin, 9 May); p. 2, "Die Frauenbewegungen unterstellen sich Adolf Hitler", "Studentenkundgebungen in Wien" and "Verbot der 'Täglichen Rundschau' aufgehoben"
  6. Ein Lied geht um die Welt (1933) filmportal.de (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum), credits, synopsis, censorship and premiere data
  7. Joseph Schmidt filmportal.de (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum), dates of birth and death
  8. Klaus Mann: Briefwechsel mit Gottfried Benn (1933) Künste im Exil, Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933–1945 der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
  9. Denkmaldatenbank: Neue Wache Landesdenkmalamt Berlin
  10. Denkmaldatenbank: Strafgefängnis und Gedenkstätte Plötzensee Landesdenkmalamt Berlin

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