Heinz Rutha
Encyclopedia
Heinz Rutha was a Sudeten German architect of furniture
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

 for the Sudeten German Party. He committed suicide in prison, in 1937, after having been charged with homosexual activity
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 and "corruption of the youth."

Active in the Wandervogel, an early German-nationalist youth movement, Rutha came to envision his own ideas of a "Männerbund," influenced in part by the rise of national self-awareness of the Sudeten Germans, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

. In 1921, he created his own section within the Wandervogel, the Jungenschaft, based upon the "male bonding" work of the German poet Stefan George
Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...

. In 1926, Rutha and his group left the Wandervogel and joined the Sudeten Turnverbund, where Konrad Henlein
Konrad Henlein
Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein was a leading pro-Nazi ethnic German politician in Czechoslovakia and leader of Sudeten German separatists...

 was one of his disciples. Rutha was also active in the elitist and covert Kameradschaftsbund
Kameradschaftsbund (Czechoslovakia)
The Kameradschaftsbund was a Völkisch organization, founded in 1920s Czechoslovakia. It was a meeting ground of Sudeten German intellectuals, preparing them for taking up leadership roles in a possible future independent Sudetenland....

organization. Later he joined the Sudeten German Party (SdP), as did many others of the Kameradschaftsbund.

In 1937, stories in the Czechoslovak media were published charging Rutha with homosexual behaviour, based on police testimony of youths working in Rutha's furniture manufacturing plant. Rutha would never face his trial though, he would hang himself in a Česká Lípa
Ceská Lípa
Česká Lípa a district seat and the largest city of the district bearing the same name. Česká Lípa can be reached easily from the north via Dresden, Bautzen, and the border crossing at Seifhennersdorf / Varnsdorf. Together with Liberec, being a higher administrative region, it is a part of Nisa...

 prison, on November 4, 1937. Nonetheless, many other investigations into the Youth Movement were started (most notably in the activities of Walter Brand), and the direct political aftermath was that Konrad Henlein as leader of the SdP had to start making political sacrifices to the National Socialist wing of the party, who in the next years saw in the Rutha affair a handy tool to implicate and expunge many Sudeten separatists out of the SdP, in favor of those who sought Anschluss with Germany.
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