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Honorary Citizenship Bestowed Upon Minister of State Fritz Sauckel
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Honorary Citizenship Bestowed Upon the Minister of State Fritz Sauckel (Ehrenurkunde) (Item NSD 21-8; PERS 5-22) |
DESCRIPTION: Also referred to as Ehrenburgerrecht--that entitles honorary citizenship. In 1933, Adolf Hitler received literally hundreds of these items making him an honorary citizen of almost every large city and right down to the smallest dorf or burg. As you know, Hitler was born in Austria, but he longed from youth to be a German. Make no mistake the “Ostmark” (Austria) is essentially German, but geographical borders set it apart until the Austrian Anschluss that transpired after Hitler announced it on March 12, 1938. Austria was then officially part of the entity known as (Gross Deutschland) Greater Germany. When Hitler was appointed by Marshal Hindenburg as Reich’s Chancellor in 1933, most of the leftist journalists and numerous reactionary parties issued forth attacks against him and continually uttered the ad nauseam verbiage that accused him of not even being German. They continually rendered the statement that Hitler was not even a German he was an Austrian! It was then that one German city awarded him their honorary citizenship and after this, more than 4,000 towns did the same. They are very rare today and it is a fact that Hitler stored most of the actual certificates at the Berghof and because of an order issued to the  by the Führer, himself, most of them were destroyed along with all his personal possessions left at his Obersalzberg mountain retreat in 1945. The only ones to survive were those that were never sent, but archived in the town halls on display in showcases in the Ehrenzimmers of such buildings. A letter was sent from the high mayor of the town with a picture of the document on display to the offices of the Führer asking if this was acceptable and usually it was. We show one of these that you can see at AH 20-12 and another at AH 21-4. So, it was an established tradition that these grateful municipalities would honor their great leader, thusly. Now! There were also some more of these honorary citizenships that were sometimes bestowed on other National Socialist leaders, but very few have been found, and if ever located they usually are associated with the towns in the districts that the N.S. recipient would be most connected to. We once had one to Herman Göring and it was from the town of Veldenstein, the village that his castle was situated in, and one from Rheydt in the Rhineland to Dr. Joseph Goebbels. This was the town he was born in. Ehrenburgers to N.S. leaders other than Hitler are much more rare, but don’t usually command the prices brought by ones to the Führer. However, another factor in the collector’s value of any of these documents is the amount of fine artwork presented in some of them are extremely elaborate and generally include fantastic calligraphy extraordinaire! No two are ever alike of course but some are artistic masterworks without a doubt! Now, we have fortunately procured a really rare and beautiful one that was dedicated and presented to then minister of the state of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel. Later, he became the Gauleiter of Thuringia. Ernst Friedrich Christoph “Fritz” Sauckel (27 October 1894-16 October 1946) was a German Nazi politician, Gauleiter and the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment from 1942 until the end of the Second World War. During WW II, he was Reich’s defense commissioner for the Kassel district (Reichsverteidigungskommissar). He was born in Hassfurt (Kingdom of Bavaria), the only child of a postman and a seamstress. Sauckel was educated at local schools and left early when his mother fell ill. He joined the merchant marine of Norway and Sweden when he was 15, first on a Norwegian three-masted schooner, and later on Swedish and German vessels. He went on to sail throughout the world, rising to the rank of Vollmatrose.(master seaman ). At the outbreak of WWI, he was on a German vessel en route Australia when the vessel was captured. He was subsequently interred in France from August 1914 until November 1919. He returned to Germany, found factory work in Schweinfurt, and studied engineering in Ilmenau from 1922 to 1923. He joined the National Socialist German Worker’s party (NSDAP) in 1923 (member number 1395). In 1924 he married Elisabeth Wetzel, with whom he had ten children. He remained a party member over its dissolution and publicly rejoined in 1925. Sauckel was appointed party Gauleiter of Thuringia in in 1927 and became a member of the regional government in 1929. Following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933, he was promoted to Reich Regent of Thuringia and Reichstag member. He was also given an honorary rank of Obergruppenführer in the SA and the in 1934. Saukel was arrested after the war and attempted to defend his actions. At the Nuremberg Trials he did not refer to any of the victims as slave laborers. Sauckel argued that the whole process of using laborers was simple economics and he denied that there was any systematic mistreatment of them. “If mistreatment did occur,” he said, “it was the result of rogue guards and local commands.” Writing the sheer scale of what he was trying to achieve this had to be expected and could not be countered. His defense team pointed out that Sauckel had sent out instructions to regional commanders of slave laborers that they should be treated with “adequate care.” Investigation in later years proved this to be for the most part true, but it must be noted that the Nuremberg Trials were nothing but a Star Chamber sham hearing calling itself a war-crimes tribunal. They were so fraudulent that they could not possibly have been held in America since the U.S. (so far) prohibits kangaroo-court tactics with such ex post facto charges and hearsay testimony. Dwight Eisenhower’s brother Edgar, a lawyer, called these Nuremberg “trials” a sham, saying that the trials cannot be justified by any line of reasoning. Supreme Court Chief Justice Harland Fisk Stone stated (while the trials were underway mind you) that the proceedings were a high-grade lynching party and a fraud. When we acknowledge this statement wouldn’t we come to the expectation that something was amiss? The fact is the Nuremberg process in itself was not a judicial process at all! Rather, it was a staged act of vengeance against the defeated, and it was particularly profaned by the fact the Russians with the blood of innocents still dripping from their hands were among the judges and were themselves of course guilty of multitudes of murderous scenarios far beyond the measure of crimes and atrocities that were now leveled at the Germans. Irish author Michel Walsh has written a brilliant synopsis of the trials. So was the indictment by this phony ‘court’ to be considered within law with fairness, and judicial decency? I’ll leave this to you to decide. Fritz Sauckel was probably innocent of all the ex post facto crimes dreamed up by the so-called Tribunal. I think he was a man who came to the fore when his country truly needed him. Enough said? I think so.The Ehrenbürger The document itself is inscribed in the finest calligraphy that you can ever envision but the case that it was presented in is quite strikingly beautiful, as well. As I have said, practically all these Ehrenbürgers are unique in their artistic presentation. Usually they imply somewhere within them evidence of the talent of the leading artists of the community or something reminiscent of the cultural traditions or main produce of the citizens of the area. This actual document says in bold lettering “Honorary -certificate to the first Governor for Thüringen.” The state minister Fritz Sauckel receives from the city of Vacha this honorary citizenship. These are the large words and down below this are the smaller words that translate to “in homage and grateful thanks for your great service and the honorable attitude for the land Thüringen in the National revolution on behalf of the people in their great need and in the time of danger you rescued them.” It is signed in hand by the mayor on behalf of the city board of councilors and then by the Stadtrat (city council) who all 10 sign by hand in Vacha on the May 8, 1933. The document measures 14 ½ x 10 inches and is printed in genuine medieval-style parchment and the supplier of this paper who may be the calligrapher as well is signed in tiny letters in the left-bottom corner. The name–Karl Sodemann. If indeed he was the person who did the calligraphy, he was a master of the art. The Case The cassette in which the document came cased is another masterpiece of artistic achievement, as well. This work is signed inside under the document’s left-bottom corner as “N. Gelle.” The cover of this case is decorated with a beautiful plaque that depicts Saint Boniface, patron saint of Thuringia, who stands above the words (“City of Vacha”) with a Latin grouping of words seen as Sigillum Civitr Vacchae 1637. (“Seal of the City of Vacha 1637”). The center plaque is surrounded by configurations of Teutonic design featuring dragons and other Nordic patterns and the outer edges have a continuum of leaf-like border. All of this to me looks hand carved from wood but it could be crafted from molds in Bakelite; we just can’t tell but either way the artistic value is both evident and gorgeous! The document is not fastened or glued inside the cassette and I am sure this was facilitated in the event that Sauckel would have wanted it to be framed and placed on the wall of his office in Weimar. This office was in the Gauforum north of the city center in the Adolf Hitler Platz. The city presenting this honorable title upon Fritz Sauckel was the town of Vacha and it is in the Wartburgkreis district in Thüringen, Germany. It is situated on the river Werra within the German empire. Vacha was part of the grand Duchy of Saxe Weimar Eisenach. The town was one of the most loyal to the N.S agenda and principles, thus, the document is indeed a very important article of Third Reich historical treasures. PRICE: $2,850.00 |
Please refer to item designator in parentheses in all correspondence.
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