No Coalition with Hitler: Rumour Denied by Leader of Centre Party to Which Premier Bruening Belongs:

The rumours about the Bruening Government admitting the Hitlerists into a Coalition Government are utterly untrue, Prelate Kaas, the leader of the Centre (Catholic) Party, of which the Prime Minister, Dr. Bruening, is a member, declared to-day at a meeting of the Executive of the Centre Party. There is no foundation whatever, he said, in the reports that Chancellor Bruening or anyone representing him is conducting negotiations with Hitler or his representatives, with a view to forming a Coalition Government. The Centre Party fights against race-hatred, he said, and there is no likelihood of the Party ever changing its views on this matter.

There can no longer be any doubt that negotiations have taken place and are still proceeding between the Government and the National Socialist leaders, the “Daily Telegraph” reported from Berlin on Monday, adding that they were apparently carried would make it possible for the Hitlerites to join to Government.

The Centre Party has repeatedly condemned antisemitism, through its various leaders, the ex-Premier Dr. Marx, at the time he was Prime Minister of the Interior, Dr. Wirth, and its present Party leader, Prelate Kaas. Dr. Bruening is the head of the Government as the representative of the Centre Party in the Coalition. The opposition of the Catholic Party to Hitlerism is so uncompromising that all the Catholic Bishops and Archbishops in Germany have issued pastoral letters declaring that no Hitlerist can be a member of the Catholic Church, being in practice the excommunication of Hitlerists from the Church, and some Catholic Bishops have refused burial to members of the Hitlerist Party. The Hitlerists retaliate by coupling the Catholic Church with their anti-Jewish agitation, making their slogan Down with Rome and Judea!”.

At the last Reichstag elections Herr Georg Kareski, a former President of the Berlin Jewish Community, stood as a candidate of the Centre Party, explaining that it was mainly but not exclusively Catholic.