The last Nazi pillar in any of the German provincial governments fell today when M. Franzen, minister of education of Brunswick, resigned. Franzen was one of the two Hitlerites who had been ministers, the other being Dr. Wilhelm Frick, the notorious minister of interior and education in Thuringia who was recently ousted.
During the time that Franzen was minister Brunswick became a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Only a month ago the province enacted a stringent law forbidding the practice of schechita. By the passage of this law, which became effective July 1, Brunswick joined Bavaria as the only two German states in which schechita is illegal.
Last November the Brunswick government, at the behest of the Hitlerite leaders, raided the meat factory that supplied the department stores of the Jewish-owned firms of Tietz, Karstadt and Schocken and 20,000 tons of meat were confiscated. This was said to be part of the Nazi government’s program of benefitting the small traders at the expense of the larger concerns.
During the sensational ant-Jewish riots in Berlin last October simultaneously with the opening of the new Reichstag in which the Nazis have 107 seats, Franzen was the center of a perjury charge. Among the 108 Nazis who were arrested after the outbreak was one M. Guth. Franzen sought to have Guth released on the plea that he was a member of parliament and hence immune from arrest. The police, however, quickly established that Franzen’s explanation was untrue and he later admitted he had lied.
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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.
