Eugen Anton Bolz ( Rottenburg am Neckar , December 15, 1881 - Berlin , January 23, 1945) was a German politician , a member of the Zentrum party and an opponent of National Socialism . He was aware of the State of Württemberg between 1928 and 1933 during the Weimar Republic .
Biography
Eugen Bolz was the second son of a Catholic merchant in Rottenburg. While studying Law in Tubingen he was a member of the student association “AV Guestfalia Tübingen”, which belonged to the Association of German Catholic Students ( Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen ). After completing his studies in Bonn and Berlin , he entered the Zentrum party and was delegated to the German Empire between 1912 and 1933. He was also Minister of Justice and Minister of Interior of the State of Württemberg .
He married Maria Hoene in 1920, from whose union a daughter was born.
Bolz was elected president of Württemberg in 1933, a state at that time largely Protestant, while the Nazi party took national power. Supporter of the Social Doctrine of the Church , Bolz opposes the new regime, so he was arrested and sent for a time to a Concentration Camp . Upon leaving, he finds refuge in the abbey of Beuron , led by an abbot opposed to Nazi doctrines, Benedictine monk Raphael Walzer . There Bolz studies the pontifical encyclicals, questions related to Catholic Action and economic doctrines. He also works as a tax advisor, knowing that the Gestapo was watching him. At the end of 1941 he came into contact with resistance circles of Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , with whom he devised a new government after the eventual fall of Hitler .
However, the attack of Baron Claus von Stauffenberg against Hitler in East Prussia , on July 20, 1944, provoked the arrest of Bolz on August 12, 1944 . Judged by treason, he is condemned to death on December 21 of that year, being decapitated in the prison of Plötzensee the 23 of January of 1945 .
A commemorative plaque on the façade of his native house in Rottenburg am Neckar recalls a biblical quote (Proverbs 1: 7) which reads “Timor domini initiu, sapentiae” (“The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom”). Several school institutes, places and squares of today’s Germany bear the name of this man who resisted and was a victim of Nazi power.