Frauenfeld obtained a position in the Nazi Party headquarters in
Munich in May 1934, working with the
Landesleitung (state leadership) of the now-underground Austrian Nazi Party He was closely involved with Habicht in planning the abortive
July Putsch of 1934. After the failure of the
putsch, Frauenfeld remained in Germany. He was something of a patron of the arts, and enjoyed a close relationship with the
conductor Clemens Krauss and had also been an actor. Therefore, in June 1935, he joined the Reich Theatre Chamber, a component of the
Reich Chamber of Culture. He was named to its
Präsidialrat (presidential council) and served as its
Geschäftsführer (Managing Director) until 1939. In November 1935, he was named to the Reich Cultural Senate and became a
Reichsredner (national speaker) for the Party, engaging in propaganda activities. On 29 March 1936, Frauenfeld was elected as a deputy to the
Reichstag from electoral constituency 13,
Schleswig-Holstein. At the election of 10 April 1938, he switched to constituency 22,
Düsseldorf East, a seat he retained until the fall of the Nazi regime. Following the March 1938
Anschluss, of which Frauenfeld had long been an advocate, the popular local was a leading choice for the role of
Gauleiter of Vienna. However, in what proved to be a fraught selection process Frauenfeld lost out to
Odilo Globocnik, an old rival from
Carinthia. He was instead given the title of Honorary
Gauleiter and was also awarded the
Golden Party Badge. He was not sidelined completely, however, and found a number of positions within the Nazi administration.
Wartime assignments In October 1939, after the onset of the
Second World War, Frauenfeld was named as a
Generalkonsul (counsel general) in the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs and became the ministry's representative to the
Army. In April 1940, he was called up for military service with the
Luftwaffe with the rank of
Leutnant of
reserves, eventually advancing to
Major. He was sent to
Oslo, where he was charged with establishing an information and propaganda department at the German embassy. In June, he moved to
Copenhagen where he performed the same task. He was subsequently assigned as the foreign ministry
liaison officer to army units in
France (July 1940), the
Balkans (April 1941) and the
Soviet Union (June 1941). On 1 September 1942, Frauenfeld was appointed as the
Generalkommissar for the
Generalbezirk Krym-Taurien with headquarters in
Melitopol where he served under
Reichskommissar Erich Koch, of the
Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In fact, Frauenfeld had jurisdiction over only an area north of the
Isthmus of Perekop, with the
Crimean peninsula remaining under military administration throughout the war. In this role, Professor Dietrich Orlow grouped him along with the
Generalkommissar for
Belarus,
Wilhelm Kube, as being a "rehab" - that is to say a Nazi who had fallen from grace but was able to make a comeback in the eastern administration. Frauenfeld did not share the ruthlessness of Koch, and the Austrian's unwillingness to follow a policy of brutality towards the local population led to a series of public spats between the two men. On 10 February 1944, he even wrote a lengthy memorandum that was highly critical of Koch and his policies, and disputed his accounts of the situation in Ukraine, thereby earning Koch's lasting enmity. While Frauenfeld's time in charge saw a surprisingly high level of co-operation between the occupation government and the local administration, it has been argued that this was more the work of
Erich von Manstein and that Frauenfeld instead spent most of his time in the Crimea trying to prove the
Gothic origins of local culture. He had also hoped to transfer the
South Tyrolean population to the region in order to unite them with their kin as a common Nazi belief suggested that the German inhabitants of
South Tyrol were descendants of Goths. Frauenfeld further wished to settle the
Volga Germans and the
Russian Germans of North America to the peninsula. Frauenfeld's role had originally been intended for his fellow Austrian
Josef Leopold, although his death left the position open. In August 1943, Frauenfeld petitioned
Heinrich Himmler unsuccessfully requesting admission to the
SS. When the
Red Army was closing in on Melitopol in September 1943, Frauenfeld moved his headquarters to
Simferopol. By the following May, all of the Crimea had been retaken by the Soviet forces. In the autumn of 1944, Frauenfeld was back in Vienna where he was employed as the leader of the city's
Wehrmacht propaganda department. At this time, he was considered as a possible replacement for
Baldur von Schirach as
Gauleiter of
Vienna but, again, this did not come to pass and Schirach remained in office. == Post-war activity ==