Franz Xaver Schweyer (26.8.1868 Oberzell/Kaufbeuren – 10.11.1935 Munich)

After studying philosophy, economics and law at the University of Munich, Schweyer entered the Bavarian civil service in 1898 and started working in the Ministry of the Interior from 1911, where he was head of the military department from 1914. During the First World War, he was primarily concerned with the care of war victims and remained so even after the revolution of 1918/19, “which severely shook the world view of the monarchist career civil servant” (Schlemmer, p. 82). Schweyer joined the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) and became Ministry Head of Department in the Reich Labor Ministry in Berlin in 1919, Secretary of State in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior under State Premier Gustav von Kahr the year after, and then Minister of the Interior in September 1921. In 1922, he had investigations carried out to see whether Adolf Hitler could be deported to Austria. After serious clashes between security forces and armed National Socialists, Schweyer brought charges against Hitler on May 1, 1923 for breach of the peace, but State Premier Eugen von Knilling and the German national justice minister Franz Gürtner thwarted this.

On November 8, 1923, Schweyer took part in the “patriotic rally” at the Munich Bürgerbräukeller beer hall that was stormed by Hitler and his supporters. The National Socialists kidnapped him and threatened him with death. Physically unharmed, Schweyer nevertheless initially remained in office, although von Knilling had called on him to resign. However, at the beginning of July 1924, he was not appointed to the new cabinet of State Premier Heinrich Held. Schweyer then largely withdrew from the public. In 1925 he wrote a study about “political secret associations”, in which he also took a critical look at National Socialism, and was active in supervisory boards of Bavarian firms and power plants. In July 1933, he was imprisoned for more than two months for insulting the new National Socialist government. While in the Munich-Stadelheim prison, he suffered a stroke, from which he never recovered. The Bishopric of Augsburg included him as a “blood witness“ or martyr in the “German Martyrology of the 20th century”.