Franz Xaver Schönhuber was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 journalist and author. He gained fame as a founder and eventual chairman of the German Party The Republicans.

Career

Schönhuber went to Gymnasium in Munich and gained his Abitur

Abitur

Abitur is a designation used in Germany, Finland and Estonia for final exams that pupils take at the end of their secondary education, usually after 12 or 13 years of schooling, see also for Germany Abitur after twelve years.The Zeugnis der Allgemeinen Hochschulreife, often referred to as...

 in 1942. As a nineteen-year-old he was a member of the Hitler Youth

Hitler Youth

The Hitler Youth was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party. It existed from 1922 to 1945. The HJ was the second oldest paramilitary Nazi group, founded one year after its adult counterpart, the Sturmabteilung...

 and a member of the Nazi Party. He voluntarily joined the Waffen-SS

Waffen-SS

The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...

 and was deployed at the front. He has claimed to have been an instructor and translator for the French Charlemagne brigade

33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)

The 33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Charlemagne and Charlemagne Regiment are collective names used for units of French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS during World War II...

. As a SS-Unterscharführer

Ranks and insignia of the Schutzstaffel

The uniforms and insignia of the Schutzstaffel were paramilitary ranks and uniforms used by the SS between 1925 and 1945 to differentiate that organization from the regular German armed forces, the German state, and the Nazi Party....

, he gained a second class Iron Cross

Iron Cross

The Iron Cross is a cross symbol typically in black with a white or silver outline that originated after 1219 when the Kingdom of Jerusalem granted the Teutonic Order the right to combine the Teutonic Black Cross placed above a silver Cross of Jerusalem....

.

After the end of the war during the denazification

Denazification

Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...

 process, the Allies classified him as a key participant. He then began a career as a journalist and wrote for several established newspapers including the Münchner Abendzeitung and the Deutsche Woche. He was also chief editor for tz

TZ

TZ or tz may refer to:* The Twilight Zone* Tappan Zee Bridge* Tappan Zee High School, a public high school in Orangeburg, New York, United States* time zone* Sony Vaio TZ* tz database* the IATA code for ATA Airlines...

. At the same time, he moderated television programs for the Bayerischer Rundfunk

Bayerischer Rundfunk

Bayerischer Rundfunk [Bavarian Broadcasting] is the public broadcasting authority for the German Freistaat of Bavaria, with its main offices located in Munich. BR is a member of ARD.- Legal foundation :...

, first Gute Fahrt and later Jetzt red' i. In 1975 he was the division leader for the Bayerischer Rundfunk in the area of "Bavaria Information".

From 1975 to 1981 he was chairman of the Bayerischer Journalisten-Verband (Bavarian Journalist Union) and member of the Deutscher Presserat. His career was hit when in 1981 he published his autobiography Ich war dabei (I was there). He was accused of minimizing the grave crimes of National Socialism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, although within a lawsuit he also won a determination that the book did not represent an identification with the Nazi regime. He was forced off of his program and from the chairmanship of the Bayerischen Journalisten-Verband.

Political career

Together with former CSU deputies Franz Handlos

Franz Handlos

Franz Handlos is a German right-wing politician.Handlos first came to prominence as member of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria , serving the party in both the Bundestag and the Landtag of Bavaria...

 and Ekkehard Voigt in 1983, Schönhuber founded the right-wing populist party "Die Republikaner" (The Republicans) and became its acting chairman. In the eighties, the party had substantial successes in the state and European elections. From 1989 to 1994, he was a deputy in the European Parliament. However, deteriorating results led to internal conflicts and Schönhuber criticized several members of the party, including Harald Neubauer

Harald Neubauer

Harald Neubauer is a German politician and journalist from the far right scene. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1994....

, for having had associations with the National Democratic Party (NPD), which was deemed to be at the same time too "Nazi-like" and too "leftist", in that it proposed major socialist popular reform plans not shared by Schönhuber's more bourgeois-nationalist and more conservative Republicans. Later on Schönhuber would take back his harsh criticism of the NPD and its primary politicians. Schönhuber was forced to give up his post as party chairman on 25 May 1990.

With the help of his many supporters, he was made Bundesvorsitzender in 1990, but was again unseated four years later because of contacts with DVU-chairman Gerhard Frey

Gerhard Frey (politician)

Gerhard Frey is a German publisher, businessman and politician. He was the chairman and main financial backer of the far-right party Deutsche Volksunion, which he founded in 1971. He resigned as chairman in January 2009....

.

In 1998, he was a candidate for the German Bundestag with the Deutsche Volksunion. In 2001, together with Horst Mahler

Horst Mahler

Horst Mahler is a former German lawyer and advocate of radical ideologies. He once was an extreme-left militant, a founding member of the Red Army Faction. Subsequently he became a Maoist and later shifted to the extreme-right. He was for a time a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany...

, he published the book Schluss mit dem deutschen Selbsthass (End with German Self-Hatred). He also wrote for the Deutsche Nationalzeitung and the magazine Nation und Europa.

After the death of Kerstin Lorenz in September 2005, the NPD made Schönhuber the direct candidate in the election district of Dresden I for the German federal election in 2005

German federal election, 2005

German federal elections took place on 18 September 2005 to elect the members of the 16th German Bundestag, the federal parliament of Germany. They became necessary after a motion of confidence in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed on 1 July...

. As a direct candidate, he received 2.42% of the votes.

Publications

• Ich war dabei
• Freunde in der Not
• Macht
• Trotz allem Deutschland
• Die Türken
• In Acht und Bann
• Die verbogene Gesellschaft
• Le Pen - Der Rebell
• Woher? Wohin? Europas Patrioten
• Schluß mit deutschem Selbsthaß (together with Horst Mahler
  Horst Mahler
  Horst Mahler is a former German lawyer and advocate of radical ideologies. He once was an extreme-left militant, a founding member of the Red Army Faction. Subsequently he became a Maoist and later shifted to the extreme-right. He was for a time a member of the National Democratic Party of Germany...
  
  )
• Welche Chancen hat die Rechte?
• Der missbrauchte Patriotismus
• Die Volksverdummer - Persönliche Erfahrungen mit deutschen Medienleuten

External links

• His new Internet site.