Florian, Friedrich Karl.

Florian, Friedrich, born on 04-02-1894, in Essen, was the Gauleiter of Düsseldorf in Nazi Germany. The son of an upper course master out East Prussia moved in his youth to East Prussia. After graduating from the gymnasium in Stallupönen he became a mining official in Buer in the Prussian Province of Westphalia. He entered military service in August, 1914, as a Kriegsfreiwilliger war voluteer and was assigned to Grenadier-Regiment 1 (Garrison: Königsberg). He served in the unit until 1916, when he volunteered for the Fliegertruppe and was assigned after training to Jagdstaffel (Jasta) 51 in Jagdgeschwader Richthofen . Shot down and captured by British troops in May, 1918, he was released from captivity in November, 1919. Since 1920 Florian was member of the Volks Deutsch protection and Trutzbundes

and 1925 stepped into the NSDAP and later in the SA . The Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, the German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation, was the largest, most active, and most influential anti-Semitic federation in Germany after the First World War, and one of the largest and most important organizations of the German völkisch movementduring the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), whose democratic-parliamentary system it unilaterally rejected. Its publishing arm put out some of the books that greatly influenced the opinions of those who later organized the Nazi Party, such as Heinrich Himmler,  Reinhard Heydrich,  Julius Streicher    and after the Bund folded (c. 1924) many of its members eventually joined the Nazis. He joined the NSDAP on 18-8-1925, member number 16,699.   On 25-09-1933 he became an SA Gruppenführer, and on 30-01-1937 an SA Obergruppenführer. In 1941, he was one of the invited guests at the opening ceremony of the initiated by the NS chief ideologist Alfred Rosenberg’s  Institute for the study of the Jewish question. Florian worked as Gauleiter of the Düsseldorf Gau from 01-01-1930 to 08-05-1945, eight days after Adolf Hitler’s death.  During this time, he was also a member of the Reichstag. On 01-05-1936, he was appointed to the Reich leadership.

   On 25-09-1933 he became an SA Gruppenführer and on 30-01-1937 an SA Obergruppenführer. Popular Adolf Hitler (did you know) he survived the “Nights of the long Knives” as their SA leaders Ernst Julius Röhm,  Edmund Heines  and August Schneidhuber      and many more were killed. Florian ordered the Hitler Youth in his region, without descant weapons, to battle against the Allied tanks until the end and never found himself guilty for war crimes.

   From the Düsseldorf Hitler Youth only 2 survived. His son Arnim was killed in battle, age 21 in 1945. During his stay in Düsseldorf, the racialist, right-wing journalist Lothrop Stoddard described Florian thus: “He was a distinctly sinister-looking type; hard-faced, with a cruel eye and a still crueler mouth. A sadist, if I ever saw one. I can imagine how unpopular he must be among the good-natured, kindly Duesseldorfers. Florian was sentenced to six years in prison after the war because of his rank in the Nazi Party and released in 1951. He remained a convinced Nazi after the war and maintained contact to former associates from the Nazi era. He was charged with ordering the execution of five Düsseldorf citizens who had attempted to surrender the city to the US Army in April 1945 but was acquitted. On 01-05-1945, some Dusseldorf citizens, including deputy police chief Franz Jürgens,

tried to arrest the local National Socialist authorities in order to hand over Düsseldorf to the American troops without a fight. Five citizens were shot after judgment of a tribunal and on order of the Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian. The judgment of the tribunal was later confirmed by the Federal Court of Justice and repealed only in 1999 as a result of the law to repeal National Socialist injustices. With this act, Florian has incorporated into the list of end-phase criminals. He clearly was a real Nazi being a member of Hugo “Werner” Naumann   National Socialistic Circle. He till his death had close contacts with other former high NSDAP members, he didn’t regret anything he did in the war, was what he told to everyone who wanted to listen.

  Florian lived in Unterbach, Düsseldorf and died at the old age of 81, on 24-10-1975 and is buried with his wife Editha, who died age 70 in 1992 on the Unterbach local cemetery.