Pabst, Waldemar

(1880-1969)

   Freikorps* leader; responsible for the murders of Rosa Luxemburg* and Karl Liebknecht.* Son of a Cologne museum director, Pabst opted for a military career. Commissioned in 1899, he was with the General Staff in 1918 when Erich Ludendorff* assigned him to the Gar-dekavallerie-Schutzendivision (Guard-Cavalry-Rifle Division). During the Ar-mistice* his unit was converted into a Freikorps division. With Captain Pabst as chief-of-staff, the Horse Guards" comprised the core of the government's forces in Berlin.* Headquartered at the Eden Hotel, Pabst took custody of Lux-emburg and Liebknecht when they were delivered to the Eden on 15 January 1919 in the wake of the failed Spartacist Uprising.* On orders from superiors— probably Pabst—members of the unit murdered both Communist leaders that evening.

   Pabst was soon Berlin's most persistent agitator for military dictatorship. In July 1919, after the signing of the Versailles Treaty,* he proposed overthrow of the government to Gustav Noske.* When Noske rejected the idea, Pabst persuaded his commanding officer, General Hermann von Hofmann, to order a march on Berlin with the pretext of defending the government against Com-munist insurgents. Georg Maercker,* a Freikorps leader loyal to the Republic, induced Hofmann to cancel the order. When Noske learned of the plot, he demobilized the Horse Guards and discharged Pabst. In October 1919, when Ludendorff and Wolfgang Kapp* constituted the Nationale Vereinigung (Na-tional Union), Pabst joined the group and took responsibility for provoking discontent in the military. His work was simplified in early 1920 when the Allies pressured Germany to execute the treaty's terms with a sweeping dismissal of officers and troops. The directive induced General Walther von Lüttwitz* to join the Nationale Vereinigung;Luttwitz, in turn, provoked the Kapp Putsch. When the coup ended on 17 March in fiasco, Pabst fled with several coconspirators to Munich. He soon made his way to Austria,* where he changed his surname to Peters and helped organize Austria's Heimwehr (national guard).

   Pabst was a monarchist with, as he claimed, no "Fuhrer-Wunsch" (leader wish). Although he returned to Germany in the early 1930s, he did not support the NSDAP; indeed, he disdained Hitler* as a socialist. Briefly arrested during the June 1934 Rohm* purge, he worked thereafter for the weapons division of Berlin's Rheinmetal-Borsig. In 1940 he founded a firm that fulfilled import orders with Switzerland. The connection was useful; fearing arrest by the Ge-stapo, he fled to Switzerland in 1943.

   REFERENCES:Diehl, Paramilitary Politics; Suddeutsche Zeitung; Waite, Vanguard of Nazism.