The possibility of a new investigation by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic Union into the Nazi past of Max Frauendorfer developed today as the latest aspect of the growing controversy over the prospective seating of the former Heinrich Himmler aide in the Bundestag.
That possibility was suggested by Gerhard Wacher, Bavarian State Secretary, whose Bundestag seat became vacant when he was appointed to the Frankfurt post. Wacher, who had declared he would not give up his Bundestag seat because Frauendorfer was scheduled to succeed him, said on a Radio Frankfurt interview that any new charges against Frauendorfer would again be investigated by a three-man committee of the CDU. Wacher emphasized, however, that such a probe would not constitute “something like a new de-Nazification procedure.”
Frauendorfer, who was defeated twice in bids for election to the West German Parliament because of his Nazi past, was elected by the CDU on January 9 to fill Wacher’s vacated seat. He was chosen because he had the highest number of votes among the unsuccessful candidates for the post.
GERMAN PRESS ASSAILS HIS CANDIDACY FOR PARLIAMENT
Three leading West German newspapers assailed his candidacy. Die Zeit, the conservative Hamburg weekly, discussed the issue in an editorial headed, “A brown spot in the Christian Democratic Union,” and noted that Frauendorfer served under the notorious Hans Frank, Governor of Nazi-occupied Poland, in charge of manpower in Poland. The paper said that seating of the former Nazi would be “political bad taste.”
The Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung raised the question of what the younger generation of West Germany, aware of Gestapo Chief Himmler’s crimes, would feel if they watched from the Bundestag gallery Himmler’s personal aide “fighting for democracy.”
The Frankfurter Rundschau, in a featured article on “the peculiar career” of the former Nazi party official, expressed doubt about Frauendorfer’s claims that he wholeheartedly Joined in the anti-Hitler resistance forces. The newspaper also asked why Frauendorfer lured until 1959 under the alias of “Schreiter.”
In a related development, the German-Israel Student Group led a protest campaign against the prospective seating. A leaflet distributed by the group declared that “This is a shame–in a few weeks former SS Lieutenant Colonel Frauendorfer will fight for democracy in the Bundestag.” The students were joined in their protest by a students trade union group and the Social Democratic University Association.
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.
