Military career and Freikorps leadership Born in Gut Lindigt (now part of
Nossen) in the
Kingdom of Saxony, and raised an
Evangelical-Lutheran, Killinger was from an
aristocratic Swabian-
Frankish family originally from the "knightly territory" of
Kraichgau in
Baden-Württemberg. He completed his primary education in Nossen, and
gymnasium in
Meissen and
Freiberg, becoming a
cadet of the
Ritter-Akademie in
Dresden. After the conflict, Killinger became politically oriented towards the
far right. He soon became involved with the
paramilitary anti-communist organization known as the
Freikorps, which was the
conservative and
nationalist reply to the
German Revolution. He joined the
Marinebrigade Ehrhardt, a unit of the
Freikorps, and was commander of a
storm company within the brigade. Killinger was in
Munich during the bitter fighting between the
Freikorps and the
Communist Party-dominated Red Guards of the
Bavarian Soviet Republic. He later indicated that, during the conflict, he had disfigured captured Red Guards and had ordered a female Communist sympathizer to be
whipped "until no white spot was left on her backside". Subsequently, Killinger was also involved in the
Kapp Putsch against the
Weimar Republic, provoked by the authorities' decision to disarm the
Freikorps; following that, he organized another paramilitary group under the name
Union of Front-Line Veterans, and joined the Munich-based
antisemitic secret society known as the
Germanenorden, which proclaimed its allegiance to the
Aryan race and the
Germanic peoples.
Organisation Consul and Erzberger's killing Killinger belonged to the
antisemitic organization,
Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund. By 1920, he also became a leader in the
Organisation Consul. As such, he helped to plan the murder of
Matthias Erzberger, former
Minister of Finance, who had become a target as early as 1918, when he had signed his name to the
Armistice of Compiègne. He personally supervised the way in which
Heinrich Tillessen and
Heinrich Schulz, the people charged with assassinating Erzberger (both members of the
Germanenorden), carried out their task. He is also alleged to have masterminded the 1922 murder of
Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau. The murder provoked a series of street rallies called by the
Social Democrats and the
Independent Social Democrats, who were joined by the Communists. In parallel, the far right press equated Killinger's squad with
Wilhelm Tell and
Charlotte Corday. This caused an uproar in
Bavaria, which was then ruled by the
right-wing People's Party-led coalition of
Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who accused Wirth of favoring the
Left. (after the end of
World War II, Schulz and Tillessen were sentenced to prison terms). and the
Viking League. Around 1924, he was also involved in secret rearmament program, by setting up an enterprise in the
Spanish locality of
Etxebarria, and secretly experimenting with
submarines.
Nazi beginnings and leadership of Saxony In 1927, the Viking League was outlawed and, as a result, Killinger joined the
Nazi Party, which had been created by
Adolf Hitler. In 1928, he was elected to the
Landtag in
Saxony, and, in the
election of July 1932, to the
Reichstag from electoral constituency 28,
Dresden–Bautzen. He retained a seat in this body until the end of the Nazi regime, switching to constituency 14,
Weser-Ems, at the election of March 1936 and to constituency 23,
Düsseldorf West, at the election of April 1938. In parallel, Killinger was an SA-
Obergruppenführer of the
Sturmabteilung (head of the
SA Mitteldeutschland, and, after 1932, head of the
SA-Obergruppe V in
Saxony,
Thuringia, and
Saxony-Anhalt). On 10 March 1933, after Hitler established the
Nazi regime, Minister of the Interior
Wilhelm Frick authorized Killinger to take control of Saxony as
Reichskommissar, and to depose the
Minister-President Walther Schieck (a member of the
German People's Party). As this happened,
Sturmabteilung and
Schutzstaffel troopers clamped down on leftist organizations throughout the region, and raised the
swastika flag on official buildings. Three days later, Killinger banned all non-Nazi paramilitary groups active in Saxony, as thousands of people spontaneously affiliated with the Nazis. He also issued an order creating a special
counter-intelligence unit to report on "Bolshevik activities", and, on April 4, ordered a new
Landtag and local councils to be formed on the basis of results in the previous Reichstag elections. In May, Killinger took over the office of Minister-President; he also became the Saxon Minister of the Interior, which brought him control over
local police forces. In his first official acts, Killinger removed the
modernist Otto Dix from his positions as professor and rector of the Dresden Academy of Arts, and dismissed the
Democratic Party's Mayor of
Dresden,
Wilhelm Külz (altogether, nine out of twenty mayors in large Saxon cities resigned as a direct result of Nazi pressures). In September, Dix's artworks were mockingly showcased in large exhibit of "
degenerate art" held in Dresden. Almost a year later, in March 1935, This also constituted the final stage in a prolonged power struggle between the former
Reichskommissar and Mutschmann. According to
Time, Killinger, who had allegedly grown "unpopular" in the United States, was "recalled to the Reich to report on the bombing of a Nazi
freighter in
Oakland Estuary [in November 1938]". He was replaced by
Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler's personal aide, whose mission, according to
Time, was "to smooth ruffled U. S.-German relations and sell the Nazi regime to an unsympathetic U. S." Over the following period, Killinger was charged with increasing German control over Slovakia by organizing bodies of Nazi advisers—one of them was
Dieter Wisliceny, a collaborator of
Adolf Eichmann, who was charged with seeing an end to the "
Jewish Question". Starting in September, Wisliceny helped implement a series of
racial antisemitic measures, which contrasted with previous
religious discrimination policies and culminated in the
deportation and murder of a majority of Slovak Jews in 1942. Manfred von Killinger's office as Ambassador was eventually taken on by
Hanns Ludin. He was appointed as Germany's Ambassador to
Romania in December 1940, and took office in January, replacing
Wilhelm Fabricius and maintaining links with the fascist regime of
Conducător Ion Antonescu (
see Romania during World War II). This came as Hitler decided to endorse Antonescu in his conflict with the
Iron Guard, which had until then formed the
National Legionary Government. The importance of his new office was also evidence of
Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's conflict with Himmler, which had led him to seek support from former
Sturmabteilung leaders. His arrival in
Bucharest coincided with the
Legionary Rebellion, when the
Romanian Army defeated the Guard. By early February, as
Wehrmacht troops in Romania gave Antonescu their support, Killinger investigated cases where members of the
Gestapo,
Schutzstaffel, or
Sicherheitsdienst aided the latter, and reported these to his overseers. The latter denunciation centered on
Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing, the Gestapo chief in Bucharest, whom Killinger accused of having hidden 13 Iron Guardists in the Embassy building. In March, Antonescu declared Bolschwing a
persona non grata; and near the end of the war moved to
Austria, joining up with the
underground resistance and the
Allies. In May, Killinger voiced Germany's offer to turn over Iron Guard politicians who had taken refuge in Germany, including their leader
Horia Sima, who faced the death penalty;
Killinger and the Romanian Jews Beginning in spring 1941, Killinger played an important part in imposing new antisemitic measures in Romania. In April,
Gustav Richter was sent by the
RSHA as an "expert on Jewish problems", subordinated to the Ambassador; the following month, he reported to Killinger, giving a positive assessment of Antonescu's moves to curb the
Romanian Jewish community's political activities, and the creation of a Jewish Council "as the sole authorized Jewish organization". In this context, Richter also noted that Romanian authorities had decided to institute an obligation to report all Jewish property, and had provided for the "evacuation of the Jews from Romania". Manfred von Killinger maintained his diplomatic post after 22 June, as Romania took part in
Operation Barbarossa. As the Romanian Army marched into
Bessarabia and
Ukraine, Antonescu began planning Romania's own version of the Final Solution, which he intended to carry out locally—defining it as "the cleansing of the land" (
see Holocaust in Romania). Early on, military authorities ordered a group of approx. 25,000
Bessarabian Jews to be deported to
Mohyliv-Podilskyi, but the Wehrmacht killed some 12,000 of them and sent the survivors back into Romanian territory. This was one of several such episodes—German decisions to shoot or turn back the Jews expelled over the
Dniester became widespread after the Wehrmacht began reporting that they were dying of hunger and alleged that they spread disease. Consequently, Antonescu asked Killinger not to allow deportees to return, stressing that it contradicted his personal agreement with Hitler. Killinger continued to report on the way Romania had decided to carry out its own program of extermination, and, in August 1941, alarmed the authorities in Berlin with evidence that Antonescu had ordered 60,000 Jewish men from the
Old Kingdom to be deported in
Transnistria. During September, he engaged Transnistrian Governor
Gheorghe Alexianu in talks over the situation of
ethnic Germans (
Volksdeutsche) in the area, who were by then coming under the leadership of a
Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. Not answering to Romanian administration, the latter body was by then carrying out its own extermination policy, being responsible for the shootings of Jews in various areas between the Dniester and the
Southern Bug, before being joined in this by Romanian troops and their subordinate
Ukrainian militias. After further discussions with Antonescu in July 1942, Killinger was able to obtain a decision that all Romanian Jews living in
Nazi-occupied Europe were to be treated the same as
German Jews, and were thus exposed to Nazi extermination policies. In November of the same year, as the Germans put pressures on Romania to join in its application of the Final Solution, Killinger and Richter formally asked Ion Antonescu and his
Foreign Minister Mihai Antonescu why they had not implemented the deportation of Romanian Jews to the
General Government in occupied
Poland. They replied that Romania had considered applying such a measure for Jews living in southern
Transylvania, but had decided to postpone it.
Final years On 30 September 1943 the writer
Tudor Arghezi used the
Informaţia Zilei newspaper to publish a pamphlet strongly critical of Killinger and the Romanian-German alliance. Titled
Baroane ("Baron!" or "Thou Baron"), it accused Killinger of having supervised political and economic domination: A flower blossomed in my garden, one like a plumped-up red bird, with a golden kernel. You blemished it. You set your paws on it and now it has dried up. My corn has shot into ears as big as
Barbary doves and you tore them away. You took the fruits out of my orchard by the cartload and gone you were with them. You placed your nib with its tens of thousands of nostrils on the cliffs of my water sources and you quaffed them from their depths and you drained them. Morass and slobber is what you leave behind in the mountains and yellow
drought in the flatlands—and out of all the birds with singing tongues you leave me with bevies of
rooks. The authorities confiscated all issues, and Arghezi was imprisoned without trial at the
Târgu Jiu internment camp.
Baroane contrasted with the prevalent mood in Romanian media, which offered open support to Nazism,
Italian fascism, and other
far right ideologies of the time, while publishing praises of German envoys such as Killinger. According to the
Argentinian-born memoirist
Elsa Moravek Perou De Wagner, an incident involving Killinger and
Hermann Göring took place at a
Bucharest social event in 1944, when Göring's brother
Albert, a businessman and rescuer of Jews, refused to sit himself at the same table as the Ambassador, whom he held personally responsible for the murder of
Walther Rathenau. Albert Göring was arrested, and his brother's intervention was required to free him. Soon after,
Fritz Kolbe passed this information to the
United States, alongside details of the panic having gripped German troops on the
Moldavian front.
The New York Times reported in September 1944 that, shortly before his death, Killinger had "
run amok", shooting junior members of his staff while shouting the words "We must all die for the
Führer". However this event is not recorded anywhere else, and has to be viewed as a rumor. That said, in a 1953 testimony, who had been an attaché of the
German military mission in Romania and was in Bucharest at that time, recalled that before Killinger shot himself, he first killed his secretary with whom he was rumored to have been in an intimate relationship. In testimonies he gave after being captured by the
Western Allies,
Walter Schellenberg, the last chief of the
German Intelligence Organization (
Abwehr), indicated that Killinger and
Joachim von Ribbentrop's reports from early 1944 had played a part in assuring German leaders that Romania was under control. This came despite repeated warnings issued by
Eugen Cristescu, head of the
Romanian Special Intelligence Service. ==Notes==