Theodor Fritsch

Theodor Fritsch (born Emil Theodor Fritsche; 28 October 1852 – 8 September 1933) was a German publisher and journalist. His antisemitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His writings also appeared under the pen names Thomas Frey, Fritz Thor, and Ferdinand Roderich-Stoltheim. As a politician and organiser of the völkisch movement in the German Empire, Fritsch was a member of the German Social Party (1889–1893), founder of the Reichshammerbund and the Germanenorden (Germanic Order; both in 1912). He was also a promotor of the garden city movement. During the Weimar Republic he co-founded the antisemitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund (German Nationalist Protection and Defiance Federation) and the far-right German Völkisch Freedom Party (1922). In May 1924 he was elected to the Reichstag, representing the National Socialist Freedom Party (NSFP). Fritsch is considered an intellectual forerunner of Nazism and was regarded by Nazi leaders as the "doyen of the movement". He is not to be confused with his son, also named Theodor Fritsch (1895–1946) and also a bookseller, who was a member of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the Sturmabteilung.