Fritz Bockius 1882 - 1945

Born 11.5.1882 in Bubenheim
Died 5.3.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

A lawyer with a doctorate, in 1919 Fritz Bockius was elected to the Mainz district council and district committee as a member of the Deutsche Zentrumspartei (or Zentrum for short – the German Centre Party). The following year, he was elected regional chairman of his party in Hesse and, from 1924 onwards, was its representative in the Reichstag for constituency 33 Hessen-Darmstadt. In November 1931, as a native of Bubenheim in Hesse, he was tasked by Chancellor Heinrich Brüning with sounding out the National Socialists about the possibility of forming a coalition government in Hesse. However, this approach fell through when plans for an overthrow by the Hessian NSDAP were exposed. The author of the so-called Boxheim Documents was Werner Best, Bockius’ negotiating partner at the time, who had previously completed his legal clerkship in Bockius’ Mainz notary office. In light of this, during the 1932 election campaign, Bockius advised his party to attack National Socialism relentlessly, since it was ‘entirely a system of lies’. In addition, he publicly demanded that Hitler disband his ‘private army’, the SA. Furthermore, in a newspaper article he warned Franz von Papen’s government against the disbandment of parliament and raised the rallying cry: ‘Not a dictatorship, but constitution, constitution, constitution’. Whilst on 23 March 1933 he spoke out against the ‘Enabling Act’, during a secret vote together with Brüning and around a dozen other members of the parliamentary party, he did then toe the party line, resulting in a unanimous vote from the Zentrum party. The voluntary disbandment of his party on 5 July 1933 finally marked the end of Bockius’ active involvement in politics.

Since he was not willing to distance himself from his political and moral principles and become a member of the NSDAP, Fritz Bockius struggled in downright despair to survive financially during the ‘Third Reich’. Despite the ban on doing so, he later listened to the London broadcaster BBC and occasionally gave expression to his anti-Nazi sentiments, albeit only among a close circle of family and friends, which included the Bishop of Mainz, Albert Stohr, as well as some teachers from Rhine-Hesse. On various occasions during these years, those subject to political persecution also relied on his legal assistance in particularly delicate cases. After his house in Mainz at Betzelsgasse 14 was destroyed in an air raid in summer 1942, he moved his residence to Bensheim on the Bergstraße, where he took over a notary office. On 23 August 1944 he was finally arrested as part of the Reich-wide ‘Gewitter’ or ‘Gitter’ action against former functionaries and elected representatives of the Socialist, Communist and Zentrum parties. After first being held in Darmstadt prison, in December of the same year he was moved to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and, having passed through several transit camps, he subsequently arrived at Mauthausen concentration camp on 16 February 1945. Ill and completely exhausted, he died there on 5 March 1945.

Angelika Arenz-Morch

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

References:

Gottfried Braun: Reichstagsabgeordneter Dr. Fritz Bockius [Reichstag deputy Dr. Fritz Bockius], in: Landeskreis Mainz-Bingen (ed.): Heimat-Jahrbuch 1976 (Koblenz 1976), p. 111–114

Gottfried Braun: Dr. Friedrich August Bockius, in: Helmut Moll (ed., on behalf of the Deutsche Bischofskonferenz): Zeugen für Christus. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts [Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century], (Paderborn 2015), vol. I, p. 445–448.

Helmut Mathy: Namen in Mainzer Straßen. XIII. Fritz Bockius [Names in Mainz Streest. XIII Fritz Bockius] (1882–1945)

 

Geschichtswerkstatt Geschwister Scholl (ed.): Fritz Bockius. Zentrumsabgeordneter und NS-Opfer [Fritz Bockius. Zentrum Deputy and Nazi Victim]. (Bensheim 2010)

Location In room