Scheringer, Richard

(1904-1986)

   soldier; attempted to convert the army's junior officer corps to a national revolution. Born to a military family in Aachen, he experienced the occupation of the Rhineland* while living in Koblenz. In the autumn of 1922 he was erroneously sentenced by an Allied court to two months' imprisonment for mistreating a Belgian woman. Although he was soon released, the episode transformed him into a militant nationalist. Agitating in 1923 against the Ruhr occupation,* he was tried in absentia by a French military court and sentenced to ten years' hard labor. Beyond the grasp of French authorities, he joined the Black Reichswehr.* In 1924 he enlisted in the army and was promoted to lieutenant in 1928.

   In 1929 Scheringer and two fellow lieutenants from the Ulm garrison tra-versed Germany in hopes of persuading other junior officers to join the NSDAP and oppose the "leftist" policies of the army command. They aimed to render the army impotent in the event of a "National Revolution." Their scheme was uncovered after they contacted the NSDAP's Munich headquarters. Arrested in March 1930 on a charge of high treason, Scheringer was at the center of the so-called Reichswehr-Prozess (Ulm Trial) of September-October 1930. The trial gained widespread attention—especially when Hitler* testified on behalf of the accused—and helped estrange the officer corps' younger members from their superiors. Found guilty of a "treasonable enterprise," Scheringer was sentenced to eighteen months' "honorable" imprisonment. Ironically, while serving his sentence, he was converted to the KPD by a fellow inmate; the Supreme Court thereupon extended his prison term. Released in September 1933, he moved to Ingolstadt and then served in World War II as an artillery officer. After the war he was active in communist cover organizations.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Carsten, Reichswehr and Pol-itics; Eyck, History ofthe Weimar Republic, vol. 2.