Alfred Loritz

Alfred Loritz (born 24 April 1902 in Munich – died 14 April 1979 in Vienna) was a German lawyer and politician who briefly rose to prominence in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

Biography

A Munich lawyer, the Catholic Loritz was a right-wing opponent of the Nazi regime, and in early 1939 he made contact with a group of Bavarian monarchists in an ultimately abortive attempt to foment discontent.[1] Ultimately he would spend most of the war in exile in Switzerland.[2]

In 1945 he established his own political party, the Wirtschaftliche Aufbau-Vereinigung (WAV), and soon gained a reputation as a demagogic speaker.[3] A believer in a strong federal Germany, Loritz's fiery rhetoric attracted attention both in Germany itself and from the occupiers, with some even suggesting that he might prove to be "a new Hitler".[3] However whilst he belonged to the political right Loritz's populism lacked a strong ideological basis and he appealed mainly to internal refugees who saw him as a strong voice for their defence.[3] He was also a strong advocate of denazification and under the Bavarian government of Hans Ehard he was chosen to head up a special ministry for that purpose.[4]

Always an at best loose organisation, the WAV won twelve seats in the Bundestag in the 1949 election but by this point had already largely disintegrated as an organisation and saw their vote collapse in the state elections of 1950 and the municipal elections of 1952, by which point their vote share fell to 0.3%.[3] In the Bundestag the party quickly fell apart, with four deputies breaking away in October 1950 to link up with the Centre Party.[5] This was followed by six more in December 1951 leaving WAV to join the German Party along with a seventh who joined the Deutsche Rechtspartei.[5] Loritz was thus left as the sole member in the Bundestag and, although a handful of far right independents linked up with him in 1953, his influence was largely gone.[5]

Disappearance and death

In the late 1950s Loritz sought to relaunch his political career in Bremen, but before this could take off he was arrested on charges of incitement to perjury.[6] Loritz escaped to Austria where he was eventually granted political asylum.[6] He would live out his days there, dying in a Vienna hospital in 1979.[6]

See also

References
  1. James Donohoe, Hitler's Conservative Opponents in Bavaria, 1930–1945: A Study of Catholic, Monarchist, and Separatist Anti-Nazi Activities, Brill Archive, 1961, pp. 142–143
  2. Jose Raymund Canoy, The Discreet Charm of the Police State: The Landpolizei and the Transformation of Bavaria, 1945–1965, BRILL, 2007, p. 65
  3. Alfred Grosser, Germany in Our Time, Penguin Books, 1971, p. 252
  4. Gavriel David Rosenfeld, Munich and Memory: Architecture, Monuments, and the Legacy of the Third Reich, University of California Press, 2000, p. 356
  5. Grosser, Germany in Our Time, p. 253
  6. Obituary from Der Spiegel
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