By Maik Ullmann and Alexander Kraus

"Swastika and Black-White-Red over Germany," ran the headline of the right-wing conservative Aller-Zeitung on March 6, 1933, following the NSDAP's victory in the Reichstag elections the previous day.-__-0000-__- The national jubilation found its counterpart, as can be seen from the local section of the issue, also locally in Fallersleben, Lower Saxony, where a rally took place the evening before. The event, initiated by the NSDAP, the Stahlhelm and the local Landwehrverein, met the taste of the journalist, who, referring to the electoral success of the National Socialists, stated that one had "not experienced such a day of national uprising since August 1, 1914."-__-0001-__- Out of somewhat more than 30 million of all votes cast, about 17 million voters had put their cross for the National Socialists.

As the finding of a photograph shows,-__-0000-__- also the neighboring Sülfeld was seized by this wave of the national euphoria: Eleven middle-aged men pose visibly in good spirits in front of an erratic boulder about 2.70 meters high. To celebrate the day, they are wearing their Sunday suits, each with a flower arrangement attached to its lapel. Their faces radiate confidence and contentment. Without exception, they look confidently and steadfastly into the camera. Although the picture appears to be staged, it shows clear deficiencies in craftsmanship. For example, the man at the right edge of the picture is cut off. On the stone visible behind the group, a swastika can be seen at the upper end, as well as the Sülfeld coat of arms. Below this, an inscription can be seen, the text of which can only be guessed at. Another photograph of the monument provides relief in this respect: "Sülfeld | Awakening | The | German | Nation | March 5, 1933".

The first picture was probably taken - the trees do not yet bear leaves - on a heroes' memorial day -__-0000-__- on the occasion of a tribute to Sülfeld citizens. It shows the dignitaries of the village, including for the most part local landowners and wealthy farmers, lined up in front of the monument. Eleven years later, however, some of the people depicted were to appear together again, but more on that later.
Not only on the day of the monument's unveiling on May 14, 1933, but also in "future times," the stone was to remind the people of Sülfeld "that it was Hitler to whom we owe the fact that we were able to experience the day of the uprising of the German people on March 5," Pastor Friedrich Ahlers proclaimed during the field service opening the ceremony before the eyes of numerous spectators, among them regional NSDAP party members -__-0001-__- as well as delegations from the SA and SS.__-0002-__-.__-0002-__- Also present were the Gauleiter of East Hanover, Otto Telschow, and Gifhorn District Administrator Eugen von Wagenhoff.

In keeping with the occasion, the entire village, which at that time had only slightly more than 500 inhabitants, was festively decorated for the monument unveiling. "No house without a flag black-white-red or swastika or both," commented the Aller-Zeitung in high spirits: "The houses and streets decorated with greenery, threads and honor gates in large quantities gave a solemn picture, as Sülfeld has never seen before."-__-0000-__-.

The photographs thus document, on the one hand, how quickly and unhindered National Socialism found its way "into private and local life worlds," -__-0000-__- also by usurping and appropriating central places with new festive cults. On the other hand, the recordings can also be interpreted to mean that the NSDAP's March 5 election success released emotions that did not arise overnight.

While such designations were not uncommon throughout the country, the memorial itself appears retrospectively as a curiosity, because the local officials seem to have acted hastily: Not March 5, but January 30, 1933, was to become the official day in Nazi commemorative culture to commemorate Adolf Hitler and the Nazi takeover of power. This event held far more symbolic capital than the election victory of March of the same year. According to historian Sabine Behrenbeck, Hitler was stylized as a kind of savior shortly after the NSDAP took over the chancellorship on January 30.-__-0000-__- Her thesis is consistent with local press coverage of the following year: an abundance of newspaper reports addressed Hitler's seizure of power,-__-0001-__- whereas March 5 did not resonate.
How should this finding be interpreted? Were the people of Sülfeld merely overambitious when they erected a monument to a day that played no role in the official Nazi culture of remembrance? Another interpretation seems more plausible, for the community was not alone in its interpretation: as the article on the dedication of the Sülfeld memorial stone shows, Otto Telschow had already consecrated a stone in Bad Bodenteich in the Lüneburg Heath "which is also intended to be a reminder of Germany's uprising" and thus did not have January 30 in mind.-__-0002-__- The same thing happened in Ehra in eastern Lower Saxony, where March 5 was commemorated with another boulder.-__-0003-__-.
Apparently, in 1933, Sülfeld local group leader Heinrich Bähse still assumed that March 5 would establish itself as the most historically memorable day in National Socialist Germany. Accordingly, the memorialization refers to the great euphoria over the election victory and the great enthusiasm of the party members as well as the local population. It thus confirms the thesis of Werner Freitag, who showed with regard to the National Socialist festive practice in Westphalia that this could precisely not be interpreted as an "expression of NS-specific instrumentalization" but rather "a cultural form of expression of local societies -__-0004-__- to make sure of Hitler's rule and to affirm it".-__-0005-__- Andreas Wirsching has furthermore demonstrated how much January 30 was initially perceived merely as a simple change of government and not as a central turning point.-.__-0006-__-
However, regardless of the message soon to be mistaken in National Socialism, which no one on site was to be bothered by over the next few years, the monument in Sülfeld can be used to demonstrate yet another level of National Socialist remembrance culture. For the erratic boulder unearthed in the course of work on the nearby Mittelland Canal in the late 1920s and initially stored in the colloquial farm wood, which came into Sülfeld's possession as a gift from the Magdeburg Elbstrombauverwaltung, was once erected as a natural monument in 1931.

Even if nothing has been handed down about the original occasion,-__-0000-__- it can be located in the context of the slowly organizing nature conservation, which initially endeavored to preserve singular natural phenomena such as such erratic blocks. Whatever intention the Sülfelders followed in 1931, it seems to have been completely forgotten or become obsolete only two years later, when the erratic boulder was rededicated in May 1933: Provided with a metal swastika and a commemorative slogan, the NSDAP members present consecrated the boulder to their Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The swastika was probably dismantled by the British Army in the early summer of 1945, and the monument was later transformed into a memorial to the fallen. Already during the Second World War symbolic wooden crosses were erected for the fallen soldiers.

The photograph described at the beginning, however, has another level of memory. On June 20, 1944, when the German Wehrmacht had long since been in retreat on the eastern front and was also confronted with massive advances on the western front after the Allied landings in Normandy, the mayor's office in Sülfeld received a message from the military registration office in Gifhorn: By July 7 of the same year, all military service passports of those born in 1889 and younger were to be submitted to the office. "-__-0000-__-it this action -__-0001-__- around a purely military service monitoring matter", as the deputy head of the Wehrmeldeamtes in his letter finally assured, which was in no way connected with any imminent call-up.-.__-0002-__- Only two months later, however, by order of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, the order was issued to immediately re-enlist all male persons born between 1884 and 1905 who had been taken out of service.-__-0003-__- The National Socialist "people's war" had thus also reached Sülfeld. In order to defend the territory of the Reich on the "home front", the Volkssturm was formed at the behest of the party leadership.-__-0004-__- However, quite apart from the poor training, the motivation of those called up for the Volkssturm was often not the best.-__-0005-__- How the Sülfeld population positioned itself in the last months of the war is not known. However, at least five of the men found inclusion in the roll call of the Sülfelder Volkssturm,-__-0006-__- who proudly stood in front of their monument to the victory of National Socialism in the mid-1930s. The photograph of the monument, which since the winter of 1968 has been dedicated to the village's soldiers who died in the war,-__-0007-__- thus not only documents the early days of National Socialist commemorative politics in Sülfeld, but also provides biographical access to the further fate of the local actors of the time.

Sources:

-__-0000-__- "Swastika and Black-White-Red over Germany," in: Aller-Zeitung, March 6, 1933.
-__-0001-__- The journalist of the Aller-Zeitung unapologetically linked Hitler's election victory with the "August experience"; that apparent enthusiasm that would have united the Germans into a "people's community" across all class antagonisms at the outbreak of war in 1914. On the reception in National Socialism, see in detail Jeffrey Verhey, Der "Geist von 1914" und die Erfindung der Volksgemeinschaft. Hamburg 2000, especially pp. 346-355.
-We would like to thank Lieselotte Grothe and Hermann Sprenger for the photographic material. We thank Marcel Glaser for valuable comments and suggestions.
-__-0003-__- In 1934 the Volkstrauertag was held on February 25, from the next year the Heldengedenktag was celebrated on the fifth Sunday before Easter. See the "Law on Holidays of February 27, 1934," reprinted in: RGBL, Part I/1934, No. 22, p. 129.
-__-0004-__- Namely the NSDAP party comrades Friedrich-Wilhelm Lütt and Georg Stadtler from Harburg.
-__-0005-__- "Memorial stone dedication in Sülfeld," in: Aller-Zeitung of May 13, 1933.
-__-0006-__- "Memorial Stone Dedication in Sülfeld," in: Aller-Zeitung of May 16, 1933.
-__-0007-__- Linda Conze, "Die Ordnung des Festes/Die Ordnung des Bildes. Fotografische Blicke auf Festumzüge in Schwaben (1926-1934)," in Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, vol. 12 (2015), pp. 210-235, here p. 211.
-__-0008-__- Whether the square was also officially renamed "Adolf Hitlerplatz" could not be traced from the Sülfeld local council minutes. Possibly it is only a designation from the vernacular, which found expression on the postcard.
-__-0009-__- Sabine Behrenbeck, Der Kult um die toten Helden. National Socialist Myths, Rites, and Symbols 1923-1945. cologne 2011, p. 175.
-__-0010-__- "Rest and Peace. Gedanken zum 30. Januar," in: Aller-Zeitung, January 29, 1934; "Der Dank des Reichspräsidenten. A Letter from Hindenburg to the Führer," in: Aller-Zeitung, January 30, 1934; "Hitler's Confession," in: Aller-Zeitung, January 31, 1934.
-__-0011-__- "Memorial Stone Dedication in Sülfeld," in: Aller-Zeitung of May 16, 1933.
-__-0012-__- Private property of Dr. Meinhardt Leopold, Wolfsburg.
-__-0013-__- Werner Freitag, "Der Führermythos im Fest. Festive Fireworks, Nazi Liturgy, Dissent, and '100% KdF Mood,'" in Ders. (ed.), Das Dritte Reich im Fest. Führermythos, Feierlaune und Verweigerung in Westfalen 1933-1945. Bielefeld 1997, pp. 11-77, here p. 17.
-__-0014-__- Andreas Wirsching, "The German 'Majority Society' and the Establishment of the Nazi Regime in 1933," in Ders. (ed.), Das Jahr 1933. Die nationalsozialistische Machtteroberung und die deutsche Gesellschaft. Göttingen 2009, pp. 9-30.
-__-0015-__- Cf. TSV Sülfeld von 1913 e.V. (ed.), 1000 Jahre Sülfeld. The chronicle. Wolfsburg 2017, pp. 103-108. The reference to the natural monument goes back to the chronicle of Heinrich Müller from 1937, there on the back of sheet 14.
-__-0016-__- StadtA Wob, Sü 20, Wehrerfassung Volkssturm, Wehrmeldeamt Gifhorn to the mayor dated June 20, 1944.
-__-0017-__- StadtA Wob, Sü 20, Der Landrat des Kreises Gifhorn an die Herren Bürgermeister im Kreise vom 23. August 1944.
-__-0018-__- Sven Keller, Volksgemeinschaft am Ende. Society and Violence 1944/45. Munich 2013, pp. 131-144.
-__-0019-__- For this, David K. Yelton, Hitler's Volkssturm, The Nazi Militia and the Fall of Germany. 1944-1945, Lawrence 2002.
-__-0020-__- StadtA Wob, Sü 20, Volkssturm 1, Gemeinde Sülfeld dated November 15, 1944; Ibid, Volkssturm 2, Gemeinde Sülfeld dated November 15, 1944.
-__-0021-__- StadtA Wob, Sü 28, Erection of a war memorial 1968, stone and sculptor Werner Klotz to the municipality of Sülfeld dated 23 November 1968.

Published 7.11.2018