Kurt Mertig
Kurt Mertig (September 5, 1886 - September 1964)[1] was a German-American executive with the Hamburg-American Line and involved in the import-export trade. He was the head of the Citizens Protective League, the German-American Republican League and founder of the National Renaissance Party.
German-American activist
Kurt Mertig was born in in Leipsig, Germany and arrived in the US on December 5, 1916. He acquired US citizenship January 30, 1931.[2] In 1935 he formed the Committee of 300 which supported a new trial for Bruno Hauptmann, convicted murderer of Charles Lindbergh’s baby.[3] The following year he organized the Citizens Protective League. Mertig took an independent stance in his relationship with the German American Bund and did not want to be influenced or absorbed by the dominate German-American organization of the time.[4]
In the early 1940s in Yorkville, New York Mertig gave speeches in support of Hitler’s Germany. In 1942 Kurt Mertig was the key individual in coordinating the repatriation of German nationals back to National Socialist Germany. Many of these Germans were interned at Ellis Island. The Swiss Consulate in New York acted as diplomatic liaison in returning these Germans.[5]
Mertig took this responsibility from William Georg Gerhard Mitchell a secretary to German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn. Mitchell was designated by the NSDAP to act on behalf of the German government in repatriating German nationals. On June 4, 1943 Mitchell along with his fiancée was himself repatriated to Germany via Lisbon, Portugal leaving Mertig to continue the project.[6]
In 1943 Mertig was ordered to relocate inland 300 miles by the Army Exclusion Board. He fought this order in court successfully. In 1945 at the end of the war the order was withdrawn.[7]
After the war he formed the National Renaissance Party in Yorkville, New York in 1949. The name was chosen from a quote in Hitler’s Political Testament, that after Hitler’s death “the seed of radiant renaissance of the National Socialist Movement.” would spring up.
In October 1945 Mertig was arrested in New York City with Ernest F. Elmhurst (a defendant in the Great Sedition Trial) and Homer Maertz (a publisher of articles on Jewish ritual murder) on charges of unlawful assembly and selling "Jewish ritual murder" pamphlets.[8] Mertig and Elmhurst were convicted and received a six month sentence in a work house. Maerz had an additional charge of disorderly conduct and was sentenced to one year in the city prison.
By the end of the war in May 1945 Mertig began publishing letters in The Broom.[9]
Family
His wife Ida was born in Naples, Italy June 7, 1898. They were married May 19, 1917 in New York City. They had two daughters Beatrice born 1919 and Patricia born 1921. Apparently his wife and children returned and were living in Italy when he applied for US citizenship.[10]
Notes
- ↑ Social Security Index
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
- ↑ Wunderlich's Salute: The Interrelationship of the German-American Bund, Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, Long Island, and the Young Siegfrieds and their relationship with American and Nazi institutions, by Marvin D. Miller, page 163
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
- ↑ FBI file on Kurt Mertig
- ↑ American Jewish Yearbook 1946-1947
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
- ↑ Kurt Mertig FBI file
See also
External links
- Partial chronology of Kurt Mertig’s activities (FBI report)
- Kurt Mertig FBI file HQ 1
- Kurt Mertig FBI file HQ 2
- Kurt Mertig FBI file HQ EBF133
References
- Black Sun by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, page 74.
