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

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].