* 6 December 1915 –
Rodenkirchen (Oldenburg, Lower Saxony)
† 10 September 1971 –
Hamburg
Franz Schmidt was a musician and conductor in the military band of the Waffen-SS. In the spring of 1944, he was transferred to the ‘Reichsführer-SS’ division and served under SSSturmbannführer Helmut Looß. In the operation on Monte Sole in September 1944, he led a battle group that perpetrated the Creda massacre.
After the war, Schmidt was classified as exonerated in the denazification proceedings. Until his death in 1971, he lived in Hamburg and was very successful as a producer of schlager music.
Franz Schmidt was born on 6 Dec. 1915 in Rodenkirchen, Lower Saxony. Musically gifted, in 1933 he volunteered for an appropriate career in the navy, conducting its band. In 1941, he moved to the Waffen-SS. Working with the military band of the SS Führungshauptamt (the SS Leadership Main Office), he developed an ambitious program of classical music, even directing the band in a performance of Anton Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony in the Berlin symphony hall. Herbert von Karajan evidently attended and extensively praised the performance. Schmidt was one of the promising young conductors in the Nazi musical world.
In Italy with the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Reichsführer-SS’
In the spring of 1944, with the aim of gaining experience as an SS Hauptsturmführer, Schmidt was transferred to the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Reichsführer-SS’. He was assigned to division headquarters, where after a short time he held various positions alongside his tasks as conductor of the division orchestra (with concerts in Hungary and Florence). He was initially ordinance officer for the division Kommandeur (O5), then a deputy to the adjutant, and finally ordinance officer (O3) in the Ic-section under then-SS SturmbannführerHelmut Looß.
Participation in massacres of civilians
In the course of the 29 Sept. 1944 operation on Monte Sole, Schmidt commanded an assault detachment, as he indicated in a letter to a high-ranking SS-leader in Berlin.
Creda near Monte Sole
In the course of the 29 Sept. 1944 operation on Monte Sole, Schmidt commanded an assault detachment, as he indicated in a letter to the Nazi cultural bureaucrat and SS-leader Hans Hinkel on 12 Oct. 1944.
In his 1947 trial, Max Simon testified that Schmidt’s assault detachment was composed of men from Divisions-Begleit-Kompanie 16, personnel from the supply sections of both Panzergrenadier regiments, and members of the Ic-section.
The detachment was deployed in the area of Creda, Vallego, and Prunara; its goal was the village of San Martino. For this action, in which, in his own words, ‘150 enemies’ were killed, Franz Schmidt received the Iron Cross 2nd class on 30 Sept. 1944.
In the fall of 1944, he returned to Germany to continue his conducting activities for the SS.
As O3 I now worked solely for the Security Officer (Ic) and earned the I[ron] C[ross] II in the course of this activity through successful guidance of an assault detachment into the main headquarters of a militarily well led and tightly organized Communist bandit-brigade (150 enemy deaths without any losses of our own).
In 1948, in the course of denazification proceedings, Franz Schmidt was placed in category V – the lowest category, exonerated.
Denazification and musical production
In 1948, in the course of denazification proceedings, Franz Schmidt was placed in category V – the lowest category, exonerated. After the war he lived under the name Franz Schmidt-Norden in Hamburg. As a music producer, he initially worked with Philips. In 1961, he switched to the Ariola record label and became its product director in Northern Germany.
Schmidt-Norden produced schlager, pop, and beat music, including records of Rex Gildo, Mary Roos, and The Rattles, one of the most well-known German beat groups of the early 1960s. He died on 10 Sept. 1971 in Hamburg.
Sources
Franz Schmidt’s SS-personnel files are kept in the German Federal Archives in Berlin (R 9361-III/170055 and R 9361-III/551794). Information on the crimes attributed to his battle group in the Monte Sole area is contained in the files of Walter Reder’s 1951 trial in Bologna and Max Simon’s 1947 trial in Padua. These files are kept in the Rome military court and in the National Archives in London.
Franz Schmidt’s cited letter of 12 Oct. 1944 comes from the Berlin Document Centre (present-day Bundesarchiv in Berlin (German Federal Archives in Berlin)). A copy of the original is kept in the Prieberg Archive at the University of Kiel’s Institute of Musicology. The files related to Schmidt’s denazification proceedings are kept in the Hamburg State Archive (221-11, F(P) 993).
Literature
Luca Baldissara, Paolo Pezzino, Il massacro. Guerra ai civili a Monte Sole, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009, pp. 94, 95, 111, 211.
Fred K. Prieberg, Handbuch Deutsche Musiker 1933-1945, Kiel, Prieberg, 2004.
Klaus Riehle, Herbert von Karajan. Neueste Forschungsergebnisse zu seiner NS-Vergangenheit und der Fall Ute Heuser, Vienna, ibera/European University Press, 2017, pp. 407-425.
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