Walter Brand

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Walter Brand (23 November 1907 – 24 December 1980) was one of the leading Sudeten German politicians from the early 1930s.

Biography

Walter Brand was born at Żyrardów in the Russian Empire. While studying in Vienna, Brand joined the |NSDAP in 1931, was a close friend of Konrad Henlein, co-founder of the Sudeten German Home Front (from 1935: Sudeten German Party, SdP) in 1933 and editor-in-chief of its newspaper Die Zeit. In 1936, he became head of the SdP secretariat in Prague, and in 1938 he was an organizer of the Sudeten German Freikorps and Hauptsturmführer of the SA.

Within the SdP, Brand belonged to the so-called Kameradschaftsbund around the Spann student Walter Heinrich, i.e. to the current that until well into 1937 rejected an annexation of the Sudetenland to the National Socialist German Reich. As a result, this party wing was persecuted after the execution of the Munich Agreement. In the Dresden Trials, 300 members of the Kameradschaftsbund were politically cold-called, reprimanded or imprisoned, in many cases on charges of homosexual misconduct.

Walter Brand therefore spent the years 1939 to 1945 successively in the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen, Natzweiler and Heinkel-Oranienburg.

After the end of the war, he was active in Bavaria as a politician for expellees, author and publicist, including chairman of the Witikobund from 1950 to 1952 and deputy chairman of the Sudeten German Homeland Association. He was a member of the German Guild Society.[1]

Works

  • Auf verlorenem Posten. Ein sudetendeutscher Politiker zwischen Autonomie und Anschluß (1985).

Notes

References

  • Ludwig Weichselbaumer, Walter Brand (1907–1980). Ein sudetendeutscher Politiker im Spannungsfeld zwischen Autonomie und Anschluss. München (2008).
  • "Brand, Walter." In: Tobias Weger, „Volkstumskampf“ ohne Ende? Sudetendeutsche Organisationen, 1945–1955. Frankfurt am Main: Lang (2008), p. 587.

External links