Source Description
In early 1957, Hamburg timber merchant
Friedrich Nieland
distributed a 39-page brochure titled “How Many World (Money) Wars Must the
Peoples of the World Lose? Open Letter to All Government
Ministers and Members of Parliament of the
Federal
Republic.” The brochure was published with a print run of 2,000
copies by nationalist publisher
Adolf Ernst Peter Heimberg (printer: W.-Heimberg) of Stade and subsequently
mailed to the addressees mentioned in the title. Nieland’s pamphlet includes
a compilation of letters Nieland had addressed to the Federal
Chancellor, the President of the German
Bundestag, and the Minister of the
Interior since the negotiations on compensation
had begun between Israel and the Federal Republic in
1952 as well as brief confirmations of receipt. His
“open letter” consists of a collage of quotes and illustrations taken from
publications by various authors, some of them obscure, some serious. Nieland joins these
together by passages of his own writing in which he declares the Holocaust the
work of Jews and characterizes “the international Jews” as some sort of secret
government steering world politics. According to him, they had instigated “World
(Money) Wars” with the ultimate aim of destroying Germany. Nieland criticizes
politicians’ silence on the matter (p. 5) and explains his motive for writing
this pamphlet was to expose the truth about the Holocaust. Both Nieland and Heimberg were charged with anti-constitutional acts
and libel, but a full trial was never held. In 1959,
the brochure was confiscated by the Federal Court of Justice
(BGH) due to its seditious content.
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Recommended Citation
Friedrich Nieland, How Many World (Money) Wars Must the Peoples of the World Lose? Open Letter to all Government Ministers and Members of Parliament of the Federal Republic, pp. 3–4, Hamburg 1957 (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History,
<https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-125.en.v1> [October 11, 2024].