Beckhardt, Fritz

Merchant, fighter pilot

born: 27.03.1889 in Wallertheim (Rheinhessen)

died: 13.01.1962 in Wiesbaden

Beckhardt enlisted as a war volunteer on August 3, 1914 and was awarded the Iron Cross II and I Class and the Hessian Medal of Valor, among other awards. After an injury, he trained as a fighter pilot and eventually flew in the same squadron as Herrmann Göring, among others. He was considered a daredevil pilot and, alongside Manfred von Richthofen, was one of the elite German fighter pilots.

He applied an old sun symbol - a white swastika - to the fuselage of his plane as a symbol of good luck. Beckhardt was the Jew with the highest military honors in the First World War, he was the "Jew with the swastika".

In 1926, he married Rosa Emma Neumann from Wiesbaden-Sonnenberg. He joined the Neumanns' business, modernized it and ran it very successfully until the 1930s. In 1919, Beckhardt was one of the founders of the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten (RJF). Politically, he supported the DDP.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists and the increasing anti-Semitic agitation in Sonnenberg, the Beckhardts leased their business in 1934 and moved to Wiesbaden city center. A love affair with the family's non-Jewish housekeeper, which eventually resulted in a child, was Beckhardt's undoing after the Nuremberg Race Laws of September 1935. He was sentenced to 1½ years in prison for "racial defilement". In July 1939, Beckhardt was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. After his release, he and his wife were able to escape into exile in Great Britain in December 1940.

Beckhardt returned to Germany after 1945. The restart in Sonnenberg became an almost indescribable obstacle course against the German bureaucracy. The Beckhardts had to fight hard for the return of their home, business and assets. The business never again reached the heyday of the 1920s.

Beckhardt died in 1962 at the age of 72 - deeply affected by the years of humiliation and the fight for recognition and compensation. He is buried together with Rosa Emma in the Jewish cemetery.