The Schwarz Story

Franziska R. Schwarz is a teacher and lives in Switzerland today. As part of a team of more than 20 educators, she advocates together with Katharine Siegling for the goals of “Never Give Up”, an organization for culture and human rights. She was born in Bayreuth, a place of dread and death. Franziska has witnessed a press campaign, starting in 1995, against Rhema Christian Center and its founders, Johannes and Katharine Siegling. What initially appeared to be nothing more than an inquisitorial character assassination campaign by the state churches using the press for its purposes, developed into a veritable political thriller. Present evidence reveals highly politically motivated forces and corrupt alliances of interest groups that have developed criminal energies at state level. Their traces lead directly into the middle of a cruel sleaze in different levels of various Bavarian state ministries.
As Franziska participated in a comprehensive, scientific-historical research project on the topic “Antisemitism and Bayreuth”, conducted in Switzerland, she discovered appalling background facts. Read on as she tells her story.

Childhood in the Nazi Quarter

I grew up in the former Nazi quarter of Bayreuth, called “Hans Schemm Gartenstadt”, close to the Bayreuth Festpielhaus. We’d merrily go sledding on the “Judenwiese” (i.e. Jew’s meadow) every winter, unaware that we were sledding over corpses. Up to this day, nobody wants to have known of the atrocities that were committed against Jews and dissidents here, on the edge of the Green Hill. Hundreds of patients were murdered in the close-by psychiatric hospital during the Nazi ‘euthanasia’ program in the Third Reich. The vicinity of Richard Wagner’s ‘temple of muses’ had to be cleansed from the “racially inferior” – according to a special decree issued by Adolf Hitler.
My parents, I. and H. Schwarz, were also part of the fanatic ‘Wagnerianism’. That conveyed to them the deceptive awareness of belonging to Bayreuth’s ‘elite class’. Part of that was, of course, that us children performed as background actors in the Festspielhaus. Dressed up as ugly dwarfs, we hauled the “Rheingold” from the pits to the dismal sounds of Wagner’s music. A horrific sight.

Every summer we had to evacuate our rooms and live crammed together in the attic, so that the ‘mansion’ in Rheingoldstrasse No. 6 could be rented out to guests of the Wagner festival. Wagner-prosperity in Bayreuth was thus secured.

‘Compurgation’

My father’s father, son of a Lutheran pastor (!), Dr. Berthold Schwarz, was a political state prosecutor at the cruel special court of Stuttgart. There were days when more than 20 death penalties were executed there. Mercilessly, the prisoners were killed with the guillotine.
The high treason-trial of 1942, which my grandfather led as the infamous state prosecutor against a resistance group, was only one of many in his career as Nazi jurist. It was his terrifying habit to start his speeches with these words: “The People’s Court has created a beautiful statement: whosoever is against the state, will be destroyed by the state.” Shortly after that, he pleaded for the death penalty for all of the twelve defendants. To my grandfather’s delight, five of them were executed in the courthouse atrium with the guillotine in the early morning hours of February 24, 1943. Their bodies were declared “anonymous criminals” and handed over to the Heidelberg Institute for Anatomy in order to erase all traces of the murdered. This last infamous deed against them was uncovered by coincidence, when a physician performing a dissection recognized with horror one of the executed men. He was one of his former schoolmates.

“High Treason”

An eyewitness report from a trial

Eleven men and one woman are sitting in the dock at the court building in Stuttgart. The large criminal division of the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court meets under the chairmanship of Senate President Cuhorst. The charge of high treason is presented by Presiding Public Prosecutor Dr. Schwarz. The doors of the courtroom are locked, the public is once again excluded…

Besides the two court guards, eight police officers are on duty to prevent the accused from trying to escape and to ensure the safety of the court. The hearing drags on slowly and monotonously for two days. One by one, the defendants step up to the small, round table and give their statements. Their faces reflect what they have gone through during the long months of pre-trial detention. Most of them give their statements in such a weak voice that the chairman repeatedly asks them to speak up.

The prosecution accuses the defendants of having read an illegal, communist publication and passed it on to acquaintances. Insofar as the majority of the accused do not admit any guilt, Cuhorst provides evidence against them in a very peculiar way. He reads out the statements of a person previously sentenced to death and already executed by the People’s Court in the same case, the statement incriminating the other participants. In the court’s opinion, the evidence is thus given. Late this evening, the representative of the prosecution gives his final speech. As a faithful servant of the Nazi justice system, he makes sure his task is easy on him. Of course, despite their denying guilt, all the accused are considered to be convicted and he pleads for the death penalty for all twelve defendants.

The statements of the court-appointed defenders are a more or less skilful attempt to convince the court that even a less severe punishment would suffice as atonement. The fear of being caught in the wheels of the Gestapo justice system through an open and frank advocacy for these people inhibits all defenders in their expression of opinion.

After the end of the final speeches, Cuhorst generously gives the defendants the floor for the last time. Still under the impression of the terrible criminal charges, most of them make one last attempt to convince the court of their innocence. They do not know that the verdict has already been pronounced.

On October 22, 1942, 11 o’clock in the morning, the verdict is announced. Again the accused are sitting in their seats, heavily guarded. The public is allowed in the courtroom this time, almost exclusively close relatives of the accused make up the audience. Minutes of breathless tension pass until the Senate enters the chamber. Smiling, President Cuhorst steps behind the judge’s bench. Suddenly his body jerks, he stands on tiptoe and gives a brisk German salute. The sobbing of the accused and their relatives make the tension unbearable. Cuhorst starts to announce the verdict after a few minutes. Five of the accused, including the woman in her sixties, whose son serves as a soldier in Africa, are sentenced to death. The other defendants get long prison sentences. When the name of the accused lady is mentioned, she breaks down with a loud outcry and needs to be lifted and supported by the other accused. Again and again Cuhorst has to interrupt his speech and admonish the accused and the listeners to calm down.

Heartbreaking scenes take place as the heavily guarded defendants are taken out of the courtroom. Women and mothers, laboriously restrained by the guards, try to squeeze the hand of their loved ones one last time. The court has withdrawn, the accused have been transferred to the remand prison and slowly, many barely able to walk, the audience leaves the court building.

It is 6 o’clock in the evening on February 23,1943, in the so-called announcement cell of the Stuttgart remand prison. The Senior Public Prosecutor, Presiding Public Prosecutor Dr. Schwarz, a number of other public prosecutors and, as usual, a number of invited guests from Nazi circles have lined up. The Senior Public Prosecutor gives the signal: It can begin. Next, one after the other, flanked to the left and right by two officers, the accused are presented, in order to hear the announcement that their clemency appeal has been rejected and the verdict will be executed on them early the following day by beheading. While the men stand calmly before their executioners, the old woman, whose loud wailing could already be heard on the way from her cell to the announcement cell, breaks down again and begs for mercy in a heartrending way. Brutally, the Senior Public Prosecutor orders her to be taken to the basement for her last hours. That screaming was the last thing he needed, he said.

February 24, 1943, 5 o’clock in the morning, in the atrium of the court building in Stuttgart. A cold, rainy day.

The courtyard is illuminated by a few spotlights, the guillotine has been prepared, the executioner and his three helpers have lined up in front of it, the Senior Public Prosecutor and his company have lined up a few meters opposite. The presentation of the convicts begins. The men are led before the Senior Public Prosecutor with their upper bodies uncovered, their hands tied behind their backs. He hands them over to the executioner, and in a few seconds the drama is completed. While two sergeants carry the body away, the hatchet is pulled back up, only to commence its gruesome work again after two minutes. The old woman is the last to be presented. Her moaning and screaming can be heard all the way from the remand prison. Unable to walk, the white-haired old woman – nothing but skin and bones due to her long imprisonment – is dragged before the Senior Public Prosecutor; before he begins to speak, in her last agony, she cries aloud begging for mercy and for one last reunion with her son who is in the field. Mercilessly she, too, is handed over to the executioner and in the middle of the word mercy the hatchet falls. Breathless silence fills the courtyard. The Senior Public Prosecutor and his staff stand there looking pale, as the previous evening they refuelled with a hearty drink at party comrade Arnold’s tavern in the main station. Now they are already about to have their “execution breakfast” there again. That same Presiding Public Prosecutor, Dr. Schwarz, who had made a statement to his colleagues the day before during the announcement of the coming execution, saying that he did not know whether the convicts were actually guilty of the charges brought against them, is standing next to them.

When a few hours later the court officials start their duty, only the freshly washed up courtyard shows that once again German people had to lose their lives on the scaffold so that the Nazi criminals could extend their reprieve.

After the war he ‘secured himself’ a so-called Persilschein¹ from the Lutheran state church, like millions of others of its staunch members, for a faithful church-goer could ‘never’ have been a Nazi. Lutheranism equals Germanity! A few lines written by his pastor sufficed to erase his murders, to acquit him and declare him a “Mitläufer”². As the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, Berthold Schwarz was quickly promoted and reached the position of Landgerichtsdirektor (i.e. a presiding judge in a regional court). He built the entire basis of his swift career on the death of the ones he had delivered over to death.

In 1994, after the foundation of Rhema Christian Center in Bayreuth, his wife (my grandmother) attends one of Katharine Siegling’s meetings. There, she publicly rejects the faith in the Jew Jesus. Hell breaks loose again in our house in the Rheingoldstrasse. “But we are such a nice family, we like to celebrate Easter and Christmas together”, I thought. However, the hypocritical peace under the Christmas tree was so badly shaken that my grandmother eventually disinherited me.

The Nest of Serpents in the Ordenskirche

Walter Hetzel, my mother’s father, was a staunch Nazi, member of the NSDAP and SA and of course a renown parish council member in Bayreuth’s “Ordenskirche” (one of the city’s Lutheran churches). After the war, the family – faithful members of St. Georgen parish – were ‘whitewashed’ with the ‘Persilschein’ issued by their pastor.

Confirmation
Concerning Mr Walter Hetzel,
born on 1st September 1903 in Bayreuth, residing in Bayreuth, Rheingoldstrasse 6. This serves to confirm that he and his family have always been faithful to the Lutheran Church, attended its services, and that he brought his children to children’s services and Lutheran religious instruction.
He is also known to me as being conscientious and in his statements definitely credible.
[Signature]
Lutheran Pastor

What would Bayreuth be without its Ordenskirche? The church is considered to be one of the most significant church buildings of the margraviate, an “accomplished Lutheran sermon church”. But its significance was about to ‘increase’ greatly in the early 90s, in the course of the defamation campaign against Rhema Christian Center. Under the leadership of Lutheran pastor Rubens Horst and his wife Carin, it developed into a venomous, Brazilian-Lutheran snake island like the “Ilha da Queimada Granda“ – the “Island of Death”. The schemes against Rhema Christian Center were devised in its dark, stuffy-brown vaults. Ice-cold, ugly and grimly, two brown forces began to merge: the Brazilian and the Transilvanian Lutheranism, the pastor and the sacristans. Their common goal was to financially ruin people of different faith, to damage and to muzzle them.

My parents continued to be what they had always been: secret informers, willing dogsbodies of the state church, who hid ‘Persilscheine’ in their drawers – to the detriment of their own children. We became collateral damage.

That list was compiled by […]. It was to be distributed only to a few confidential people.
By “mistake”, it fell into the hands of everyone.
Around Aug. 28, 2008, Hans Schwarz passed this VIP list of people […] to Liselotte Runyai. He knew that it was supposed to be given to me. That’s why he blackened the names of […]. But Liselotte also had the unblackened list in her hands.
Mrs. Runyai as well as Hans and Ingrid Schwarz urgently ask that this list will by no means get into the hands of Kath. Siegling or her lawyer.
They all want to help, but ask for absolute protection. So do I!
Hedwig Holley

Hedwig Holley, a Holocaust denier from Transylvania, who was notorious in Romania for her racism, her hatred, and her contempt for Romanians and ‘gypsies’, coordinated behind the scenes. Everyone who did not fit into her German thinking was a ‘gypsy’. My parents regularly participated in the secret meetings that were organized by different clergy from Bayreuth and by the mentally unstable ‘cult commissioner’ Dr. Heidi Schönfeld.

I am deeply saddened and appalled, and I grieve in pain for all of those who were killed and damaged by my family. I left Germany many years ago, emigrated to Switzerland and today I live there happily with my family.

By courtesy of Franziska R. Schwarz (schwarzestory.com)

June, 2020

¹ Persilschein: a written statement issued to testify of someone’s ‘moral qualities’ and thus whitewash them from their Nazi crimes
² Mitläufer: this term was used in the ‘denazification trials’ to label someone a passive hanger-on as opposed to a perpetrator. Anyone declared “Mitläufer” faced no or minimal punishment and was permitted to resume their career

Childhood in the Nazi Quarter

‘Compurgation’

“High Treason”

The Nest of Serpents in the Ordenskirche

History

Message

Information