Early Years
Franz Schwede was born in the small town of Drawöhnen near Memel, East Prussia (now Dreverna near Klaipėda, Lithuania) in 1888, when it was part of the German Empire. He trained as a millwright and in 1907 joined the Imperial German Navy as a machinist. By the end of the First World War he had risen to the rank of technical deck officer. After the Scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919, Schwede wound up in British custody as a prisoner of war. Upon his release he joined the German Army in 1920, but was discharged after the 100,000-man limit imposed by the Versailles Treaty was reached in 1921. He then took a job as operations manager at a sawmill in Sankt Andreasberg, Lower Saxony before being hired as foreman at the Coburg Municipal Works in March 1922. During this period, Schwede became active in the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund, a "völkisch" anti-Semitic organization.
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