Joseph Roth (politician)

Roth was the first of seven children of church painter Wilhelm Roth (1870-1948) and his wife Margarethe Kruth (1866-1932). He grew up in the Belgian Quarter in Cologne in a strict Catholic environment and was greatly devoted to Our Lady of Fátima[1] (which is why he nicknamed his three children Maria). Three of his younger brothers, Willi (1898-1952), Ernst-Moritz (1902-1945) and Karl Gustav (1902-1987) were priests. Roth was supposed to take over his father's company, Roth & van der Kaaij, but his younger brother, Albert (1897-1914), decided to learn the craft of their father, and hence take his place.

After attending primary school, Roth trained as a primary school teacher in Euskirchen.[2]

From 1914 to 1917, he participated in the First World War as a volunteer in the 5th Westphalian Infantry Regiment No. 53 and was wounded at Neuve Chapelle. he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Wound Badge.[3] After being relieved from duty in 1917, he returned to his educational training and graduated in January of 1918.

As a trainee, he taught in various schools:

• 20 February 1918 - 15 June 1918 in Obergeilenkausen
• 17 June 1918 - 15 January 1919 in Honrath
• 18 January 1919 - 31 March 1921, the Burgschule Godesberg
• 1 April 1921 - 15 July 1921 at the catholic primary school in Rheinbach
• 16 July 1921 - 13 September 1921 at the school in Euskirchen
• 11 October 1921 - 1 May 1922 in Porz
• 2 May 1922 - 31 August 1924 Friesdorf
• 1 December 1925 - 31 March 1927 in Mehlem
• 1 April 1927 - 31 July 1927 at the primary school Burgschule in Godesberg.

Finally, he worked as an elementary school teacher starting on 9 August 1927 at the Burgschule.[4]

In 1924, he married Katharina Paffenholz (1900-1979).

His political career started in the Windthorstbund (Windthorst covenant) in Bad Godesberg.[5] He quickly joined the Centre Party, chaired by the former Bonn County Councilmember, Peter Hensen (1888-1958). After Hensen resigned from the chairmanship in 1931, Roth was choosen to succeed him[6]

In March 1933, he was elected to the Bonn County District Council for a full term[7]

From 1924 onwards, Roth had also worked as editor for the Godesberger Volkszeitung (Godesberg People's Daily), the party newspaper of the Godesberg Centre Party. He published many articles criticizing the Nazis.[8] After the Nazis had seized power in Germany, Roth and Godesburg Mayor Josef Zander (1878-1951) were put on forced leave and put in protective custody for one day on 13 March 1933, thanks to the efforts of Heinrich Alef(1897-1966). Recorded in the Burgschule history where he worked as a teacher, is this:

"On Monday, the 13th March, the national revolution was carried out at Godesberg. An SA team (Sturmabteilung) occupied the town hall and forced the mayor, both salaried councilors and three other officers to "leave of absence" to leave immediately. Also at the Burgschule seemed such a department of 20-30 men and caused that Roth was the teacher on leave immediately, because he had fought in his capacity as chairman of the Centre Party, the National Socialists Godesberger sharp."[9]

On 3 June 1933, again under massive pressure from Alef, now the National Socialist mayor of Bad Godesberg, he was forced from his position as deputy county council and his position as Chairman of the Centre Party lay in Bad Godesberg. A few weeks later, on 6 April, Alef wrote in his office as a state commissioner to attempt to offset Roth as a teacher:

"Teacher Roth was and is probably still the leader of the local party center. In this capacity he has made impossible by spreading untrue allegations, particularly over the NSDAP, in Bad Godesberg. He is, moreover, as the author of the organ in the local center (Godesberger Volkszeitung) called repeatedly published inflammatory articles that had the development of the national collection right here in the centre of Bad Godesberg particularly difficult and inhibited. Roth is also often known as a public speaker and has not shied away from this even insults and offensive expressions against his political opponents."[10]

Nevertheless, he was still working to 1935 as a teacher at the Bad Godesberg Burgschule. Only in 1935 was Alef successful, Roth was transferred to the elementary school of Friesdorf.[11] In the same year was also his brother, vicar Ernst Moritz Roth, in big trouble with the Nazis.[12] When the war broke out in 1939 Roth was initially drafted into the army, but from an acute shortage of teachers and age reasons in 1940 dismissed. After Roth was returning from the front,[13] he met secretly with his friend Hans Karl Rosenberg(1891-1942, martyr of the catholic church):

"Some time after his sudden disappearance, I think there were a few months, Mr. Roth was suddenly there again, but did not appear in the school. However, he came to our house to visit, and my father joined with him in his library. Hours later they parted and I saw him never again. "[14]

Rosenberg died on 17 April 1942 as a result of a medical "non-assistance" cause his father was a Jewish. From 1940 to 1944 Roth had been working as a teacher in Friesdorf. On 22 August 1944, after the attempt on Hitler's life, Operation Valkyrie, he was arrested during the Operation Gewitter (operation storm), confined a day later in the Cologne Gestapo prison EL-DE Haus, and from there with other former members of the Reichstag and politicians democratic parties (including with Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), Thomas Esser (1870-1948), Josef Baumhoff (1887-1962), Peter Schlack (1875-1957), Otto Gerig (1885-1944, martyr of the catholic church), Peter Paffenholz (1900-1959), Peter Knab (1885-1963) and Hubert Peffeköver) was transferred in the labor camp (Arbeitserziehungslager) in the former exhibition halls in Cologne-Deutz. During his internment in the halls, his son Wilhelm (1932-1995) was questioned by the Gestapo headquarters of Cologne.[15] On 16 September 1944 Roth, Gerig, Schlack, Baumhoff, Knab and Peffeköver with other former politicians and also with the priest Alexander Heinrich Alef (1885-1945) were deported to Buchenwald. Roth's camp number 81555 had previously been the late Resistance fighter Victor Delplanque's.[16] Together with Baumhoff, Gerig, Knap, Peffeköver and Schlack, he was placed in the cell block 45.[17] His younger brother Willi, to this time the Prior of the Dominican convent in Berlin, tried unsuccessfully through a well-known secretary in the Reich Chancellery to help his brother.[18]

When he was released on 28 October 1944, Roth was given a so-called fuel injection (injection of phenol) by the concentration camp doctor. Shortly before the end of the year, Roth was ordered by the Gestapo to leave the Rhineland and go to Leipzig, but his brother Ernst hid him with a friend's family in Dattenfeld.[12] At Christmas, weakened by the effect of the lethal injection, he was allowed to return to home.

On 22 January 1945, he died at home from the effects of the poison. The family was not allowed by the authorities to carry out a regular funeral, and even the local priest had many concerns. Closest friends and school children went on two slides the coffin to the cemetery. After Polish prisoners had dug the grave, Roth was from his wife, his children and his siblings Ernst (in the capacity as a priest), Karl and Elisabeth(1899-1968) buried in the immediate family. The Gestapo demanded but still an additional text on the death list:

"His death occurred suddenly in the past because of its air raids heavily shaken health."[19]

Katharina Roth had to fight to be seen as politically persecuted victims got, finally the recognition politically persecuted No. 123[20] 1950 Peter Hensen suggested to the City Council, but for his fellow party member and Nazi victims pre-ceremony. Then in the same year was renamed by the Mayor of Bad Godesberg, Heinrich Hopmann, Friesdorfer the village square in Joseph-Roth-Place. After violent public protests, the name of the place was, however, in 1956 abolished and renamed a street off the house of Roth into Joseph-Roth-Street.[21][22] And again the residents protested against the name until the mid-1960s and threatened to boycott the election. But this time the protest was unsuccessful, and the street name remained.[23] Bernd Wittschier wrote in his paper Theology, a supplement of the newspaper quotes for the Catholic priesthood in 1989Offerten Zeitung für die katholische Geistlichkeit,[24] for the first time about the "martyrs Roth". In 1996, the call came to witness for Roth Monsignor Helmut Moll of the Journal of the Press Office of the Archdiocese of Cologne (No. 800). Finally, Roth was taken in 1999, edited by minor Zeugen für Christus and declared a year later by Pope John Paul II to one of their martyrs. In the traveling exhibition "martyrs of the Archdiocese of Cologne from the era of National Socialism," which shows the education work of the Archdiocese of Cologne in various places since 2000, is a replica of his concentration camp number and the red triangle for political prisoners focus, also is a brief outline of a life to see. This exhibition was shown as 2003 in his hometown Friesdorf, The local newspaper General-Anzeiger wrote in its issue of 1/2 May 2003: "A follower is Nazi victims." It took the author of this with a photo that Roth was with local Nazis to show the mid-1930s. After rebuttal of Dr. Walle and granddaughter Jutta Roth(1960) with counter sources and in possession of the original photo, which could prove that the picture was taken in 1928 at a bowling tour, had to make the General-Anzeiger a counter and then reported objectively on 14 May 2003 on the exhibition and the two friends and martyrs Roth and Rosenberg. Nevertheless, there were still several months to anonymous written attacks against the family.[25] In 2003 was created in the Basilica of St. Ursula, a memorial to the martyrs of the present in Cologne, where Roth has also found there in the newly created memorial chapel within the Church a place. End of 2005, paid tribute to the city of Bonn Roth by made his grave to a grave of honor (German: Ehrengrab).[26] In May 2006, the artist Gunter Demnig laid before the former living and dying house in Friesdorf a Stolperstein for Roth.[27][28]

• 2050, 25 July: Joseph-Roth-Course (until 1956, after public protests) in Friesdorf
• 1956, 23 February: Joseph-Roth-Street in Friesdorf
• 2000, 7 May: Catholic martyr of the 20th Century
• 2005, 30 November: honorary grave in the city of Bonn
• 2006, 26 May: Stolperstein for Roth on his homeadress

• Godesberger Heimatblätter. Rheinische Verlagsanstalt, Bonn, ISSN 0436-1024, Nr. 22 (1984) S. 101–105, Nr. 44 (2005) S. 156–157, Nr. 49 (2011) S. 157.
• Stadt Euskirchen, 700 Jahre Stadt Euskirchen, 1302–2002, Buchmanufaktur Handpresse Weilerswist, 2002, ISBN 3-935221-17-7, P. 252–256
• Helmut Moll, Martyrium und Wahrheit. Zeugen Christi im 20. Jahrhundert, Verlag Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie, Weilheim-Bierbronnen, 2005, ISBN 3-928273-74-4, P. 118–121
• Helmut Moll, Zeugen für Christus. Teil 1, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn/ München/ Wien/ Zürich, 2006, ISBN 3-506-75778-4, P. 318–321
• Josef Roth, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Verlag Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen, 2012, ISBN 978-3-88309-690-2, P. 1140–1144

• "Kurzbiographie von Joseph Roth". Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek. Köln. Archived from the original on 13 July 2015.
• "Bonnerinnen und Bonner im Gegensatz zum Nationalsozialismus". www.bonn.de: mit einer Kurzbiografie. Hier geschrieben: Josef Roth.
• "Vom NS-Regime verfolgte Personen" (PDF). www.euskirchen.de: mit einer Kurzbiografie von Joseph Roth. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2019.
• "Joseph Roth". Biografisch-Bibliografisches Kirchenlexikon (online).