The Beast of Franconia
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Julius Streicher was born on 12 February 1885 in the Upper Bavarian village of Fleinhausen. An elementary school teacher by profession, Streicher served in a Bavarian unit during the Great War and despite a warning for bad behaviour was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, and he rose from enlisted man to lieutenant.
In 1919 he co-founded the anti-Semitic Deutsch-Soziale Partei and two years later joined the NSDAP, taking his own Party membership with him. Streicher was an intimate friend of Adolf Hitler and one of the earliest supporters of Nazism in northern Bavaria.
In 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of the NSDAP for Franconia and his headquarters in Nuremberg became a leading centre for violent anti-Semitism in Germany. Streicher’s unbecoming conduct and diatribes against the Weimar Government led to his dismissal from his teaching post in 1928.
A year later he was elected as a Nazi member of the Bavarian legislature. Streicher was a tireless speaker and plebeian rabble-rouser, whose political influence derived largely from the impact of Der Stürmer, which he founded in 1923 and continued to edit until 1945.
This weekly newspaper became the world’s best known anti-Semitic publication with its crude cartoons, repellent photographs of Jews, its stories of ritual murder, pornography and its coarse prose style.
Streicher reached millions of Germans, through his newspaper columns, and his endless speaking tours imbuing them, with his own poisonous brew of hatred, sadism and perversity. The impact of Der Stürmer as greatly enhanced by a nationwide system of display cases (Stürmerkasten) put up in parks, public squares, factory canteens, at street corners and bus stops, to attract passers- by.
Their visual impact, their racists slogans and scandal- mongering style drew crowds, Der Stürmer consistently carried large- print slogans such as “Avoid Jewish Doctors and Lawyers” and gave listings of Jewish dentists, shopkeepers, and professional people whom “Aryans” were urged to avoid.
Those who ignored this advice were in danger of having their own names and addresses listed. Letters to the editor denouncing Jews – and Germans who patronised them – became a regular feature of Der Stürmer, which claimed in 1935 that it was receiving 11,000 letters a week.
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The “Pillory” column created a climate of fear and intimidation not only in Nuremberg – where Streicher dominated all spheres of life – but throughout the Reich. Through Der Stürmer , Streicher provided a focus for the anti-Jewish measures of Nazi Germany, pressing already in 1933, for the banning of Jews from public baths, places of entertainment, State schools etc.
After Streicher spoke in Magdeburg in 1935, Jews were barred from using public transport, the general campaign which led to the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935 was initiated by his newspaper.
One of Streicher’s most enthusiastic readers was Adolf Hitler, who declared that Der Stürmer was the only paper which he read avidly from first to last page. Undoubtedly the Fuhrer protected Streicher raising him to high office and praising him as the “friend and comrade in arms” who never wavered and would unflinchingly stand behind him in every situation.”
Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/streicher.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
Copyright Chris Webb & Carmelo Lisciotto H.E.A.R.T 2008
