Heinz Spanknöbel
Heinrich "Heinz" Spanknöbel (b. 27 Nevember 1893 in Homberg/Efze; d. 10 March 1947 in Special camp Mühlberg/Elbe) was a German National Socialist who came to America in 1929, the same year he had become a member of the NSDAP. He moved to Detroit and worked for the Ford Motor Company until 1930 to support his wife and children in Wurzburg. Spanknöbel was a former Seventh Day Adventist minister.
Life
Heinz Spanknöbel was a son of Conrad Spanknöbel (1866-1940) and his wife Christiane, née Becker (1869-1966). His siblings were Karl Adolf (1892–1983), Käthe (1897–1970), Anne (1898–1962), Wilhelm (1900–1980), August (1902–1969), Martha (1904–1966) and Frieda (b. 1907). The father Conrad Spanknöbel was an active Member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The Seventh-day Adventists had a mission school in Friedensau near Magdeburg, which was used from 1914 partly as a military hospital. In 1923, the brother Karl Adolf Spanknöbel became a missionary of the reform movement Seventh-day Adventist sent to the US, he settled in Detroit and named himself Charles A. Noble.
Spanknöbel was appointed leader of the Friends of New Germany by Robert Ley of the Foreign Propaganda Bureau in Hamburg.[1] The new organization replaced an earlier German-American group known as the Teutonia Association.[2] As leader of the new group he organized meetings all across America and started the German language paper Deutsche Zeitung. Units of the group were located in Detroit, New York, Cincinnati , Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.[3] In September 1933--just a few months after the group was formed--Spanknöbel was indicted for failing to register as a foreign agent. Shortly thereafter he was deported to Germany and later became director of the "Propaganda School for Germans Living Abroad" of the NSDAP/AO.[4]
He was head of department of the NSDAP Gauleitung in Würzburg and advisor to the SA district leadership of Hamburg. He also owned the "Vereinigte Leder- und Lederwarenfabriken Heinz Spanknöbel & Co." in Hohenbruck near Königgrätz (Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia).
Death
On 4 October 1945, Heinz Spanknöbel was arrested by Soviet authorities and brought from Dresden to the NKVD Special Camp No. 1 on 1 December 1945. His place of residence in the detention documents was specified as Magdeburg. His brother Karl and his nephew Johann (both now American citizens) were also in the NKVD special camp in Mühlberg. On 22 March 1946, Heinz Spanknöbel was transferred from the Mühlberg camp back to the Soviet Operative group Dresden, where he was interrogated and tortured, on 15 June 1946, he returned to the Mühlberg special camp. On 10 March 1947, he died there of dystrophy of the third degree (= he starved to death).[5]
Writings (excerpt)
- Das besondere Werk der Jugend des Adventvolkes, 1914
See also
Further reading
- Prof. Sander A. Diamond: The Nazi Movement in the United States. 1924–1941. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (NY) 1974
- Martin Kerr: The History of American National Socialism, 2017
References
- ↑ Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in American magazines, 1923-1939, By Michael Zalampas, page 43
- ↑ Foreign News: Fomenter Ousted
- ↑ Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right, By Jeffrey Kaplan, page 131
- ↑ UNITED STATES vs. BREGLER et al.
- ↑ Heinz Spanknöbel (Archive)
