Was Hitler elected chancellor here?
90 years ago, Hitler and the former Reich Chancellor von Papen had a difficult conversation in the villa in the city forest. The current owner is unknown.
A number of magnificent villas line the area around the Cologne city forest. The fact that one of them has a very special past cannot be seen from the facade. A look at the floor reveals more. A stone commemorative plaque indicates that the beginning of the darkest chapter in German history was significantly shaped here in the “Villa Schröder”: Adolf Hitler’s chancellorship.
The owner of the “Villa Schröder”, banker Kurt Freiherr von Schröder, brought together the leading NSDAP party chairman Adolf Hitler and the former Reich Chancellor Franz von Papen for a conspiratorial meeting in his villa in January 1933. “Actually, two losers met here. Adolf Hitler, who with his NSDAP suffered a significant loss of votes in the Reichstag elections in autumn 1932, and Franz von Papen, who had to resign from his office as Reich Chancellor in December of the same year,” Roland Schüler , Managing Director of the Peace Education Center in Cologne.
Fanatical demagogue meets noble officer
In January 1933, two people met in Cologne who could not have been more different in terms of their character traits and origins: Hitler as a fanatical demagogue from a modest background and von Papen as a noble officer with connections to high society. “Only one association, the two: the will to power,” says Schüler.
According to current knowledge, at the top-secret meeting 90 years ago, Hitler and von Papen laid the foundations for a state government between Nazis and national-conservative groups. Only a short time later Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg – and terrible years began for Germany.
Owner wrote off a plaque on the villa
In return for his support, Franz von Papen was offered the position of vice chancellor in the cabinet by Hitler, but quickly lost influence and became envoy and ambassador of the German Reich in Vienna and Ankara. Von Papen was acquitted as a defendant in the Nuremberg trials of the main war criminals.
Kurt Freiherr von Schröder, who gave the villa its name and hosted the meeting, became President of the Cologne IHK in April 1933 and worked in the “Freundeskreis Reichsfuhrer SS”, a group headed by Heinrich Himmler. After the end of the war he received only moderate fines.
The property is now privately owned and includes, among other medical practices and a tax office. The owner is unknown to Roland Schüler. “People keep a low profile. The NS Documentation Center also failed to put up a plaque. At the time, it was about a fall in the situation. Today we see how Reich citizens are working towards the so-called Day X and questioning democracy. You have to do that seriously,” said Schüler.