Dr. Friedrich Middelhauve, the first leader of a postwar German “legitimate” political pary to exploit anti-Semitism for political ends, was sworn in here as Deputy Minister President and Minister for Economics in North Shine Westphalia, the wealthiest and most populous of West Germany’s constituent states.
Dr, Middelhauve, a publisher and printing shop owner in the small town of Opladen, heads the Free Democratic Party in North Rhine Westphalia, where it now replaces the Social Democrats as coalition partner of the Christian Democratic Union in the State Government. During his tenure of office as state chairman, the FDP party organization became a haven for Nazi zealots and professional Nazi Party functionaries.
Dr. Middelhauve’s closest aide in party organizational work has been Dr. Wolfgang Diewerge, a vicious Jew-baiter who played a particularly infamous part as an anti-Semitic propagandist and pamphleteer in the test case against Nazi agitation brought by the Cairo Jewish Community in 1934. He also propagandized for the Nazis in two important prewar cases. One was the case of the trials that followed the shooting in Switzerland of the Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff by David Frankfurter. The other was the case of young Herad Grynspan who shot German Embassy Counsellor Ernst von Rath in Paris in 1938.
Diewerge, in recent years entrusted by Dr. Middelhauve with the political indoctrination of North Rhine Westphalia’s Free Democrats, formerly held the rank of SS Colonel. Before he was placed in charge of the radio department of Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry/ he served as regional Nazi Party propaganda chief for Danzig and West Prussia.
In early 1951, Dr. Middelhauve’s paper attacked Jewish-born Ludwig Rosenberg, of the German Trade Union Federation, as an “emigrant intent upon carrying out the Morgenthau Plan, who should go back where he came from. ” To comprehend the prejudicial seriousness of the statements, one must know that, in present-day German political jargon, such statements are generally meant to refer to Jews. In response to a sharply-worded trade union protest, Dr. Middelhauve not only refused to retract or apologize, but instead posed some caustic counter-questions replete with further anti-Semitic innuendo.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
