Franz Schwede - Rise To Power in Coburg

Rise To Power in Coburg

In October 1922 Schwede co-founded a Nazi Party Branch Office (German: NSDAP Ortsgruppe) in Coburg, a historic city in northeastern Bavaria. One year later he became local Party chairman, by which time it had about 800 members. Under Schwede's guidance, anti-Semitic demonstrations and street battles instigated by the Sturmabteilung became commonplace in the city. Following the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch, the NSDAP was temporarily banned in 1924. The National Socialist Freedom Movement became its front organization and during the 1924 Coburg city council elections the Nazis managed to get 14.3% of the vote. This entitled them to 3 seats on the council and Schwede took one of them.

After the NSDAP ban lifted in 1926, Schwede founded Der Weckruf ("The Wake-Up Call"), the first National Socialist propaganda newspaper at the local level in Germany. Here he ran an extra-parliamentary opposition with lurid articles about alleged "scandals" designed to destabilize the political system of the Weimar Republic. In 1928, the paper began a slander and harassment campaign against Abraham Friedmann, the jewish General Director of the Coburg meat company Großmann AG. Friedmann was initially successful in fighting these attacks and managed to get the city council to fire Schwede from his job at the Municipal Works in 1929. The outraged Nazis demanded Schwede's immediate reinstatement and when the city refused a petition began circulating to dissolve the City Council. On 5 May 1929 the recall passed with 67% of the vote. In the ensuing re-election campaign, which included public speeches in Coburg by Adolf Hitler himself, the Nazi's won 43.1% of the popular vote and 13 of the 25 seats on the city council in June 1929. This was the first instance where the NSDAP held an absolute majority in a local government in Germany.

At the newly-elected Council's opening session, Schwede was promptly rehired to the Municipal Works. He then managed to get himself elected, after the fifth try, as third deputy mayor (Bürgermeister) on 28 August 1930, becoming the first Nazi to reach such a position. Early in 1931 he was elected second Bürgermeister and, on 16 November 1931, first Bürgermeister. Coburg became the first city in Germany to see the swastika flag raised on a public building, City Hall, which occurred on 18 January 1931 two years before Hitler came to power. Schwede also got the city to grant Hitler an honorary citizenship on 16 October 1932, also the first to do so. All this created a cult of personality around Schwede, a highlight of which was the 1933 dedication of Coburg City Hall's new bell, bearing the rhyming inscription Zu Adolf Hitler ruf ich dich, Franz Schwede-Glocke heiße ich (roughly translated "To Adolf Hitler I call, I am called the Franz Schwede Bell").

Following the Nazi Seizure of Power in January 1933, Schwede was directly appointed as Coburg's Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister). In March 1933, a terror campaign was launched against Jews and opponents of the Nazis under his leadership. By the end of April, 152 people had been arrested and harshly mistreated while in "protective custody", many in Schwede's presence. In 1939 Coburg was officially granted the title "First National Socialist City in Germany" (German: Erste nationalsozialistische Stadt Deutschlands). Schwede was also made an honorary citizen of Coburg, as Hitler had been, and was awarded use of the suffix "Coburg" in his name.