Hans Otto Roth (29 April 1890 – 1 April 1953) was a Transylvanian Saxon politician and lawyer. Roth was best known for his unsuccessful attempts to counter the rise of the radical Nazism favored within the German Party and within the German ethnic group in Transylvania.
Born in Sighișoara, Roth studied law at various universities around Europe before graduating with a doctorate from the ELTE Faculty of Law in 1913. In 1918, Roth joined the Saxon Central Committee to support the unification of Transylvania with Romania. In 1919, he won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies representing the German Party, and by 1922, he replaced as Parliamentary Chairman of the party. His time in parliament saw him focus on the issues of denominational schools and cooperation between the Germans and Hungarians before he retired in 1938. During his time in parliament, he was also briefly Chairman of the Association of German Minorities from 1931 to 1934, where he at first advocated for pan-Germanism. He met Adolf Hitler in June 1933, which altered some of Roth's views, although many Jews in Transylvania still felt betrayed by Roth.
In the following years, Roth became increasingly anti-Nazi with the advent of the "renewal movement". Roth's views were generally considered Christian liberal, which put him in opposition to many of the Nazi Party's views. He was approached many times to be a minister in various Romanian cabinets, but declined because the Iron Guard all had places in these cabinets. In 1943, this led to a climax between Andreas Schmidt and Roth, and Roth was expelled from the party. He kept working at the time as regional church curator of the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Romania, a position he had held since 1932. His various attempts to stop the self-Nazification of the church led to failures. After the 1944 Romanian coup d'état, Roth asked Saxons to remain loyal to the Romanian state and wrote numerous memorandums to the Romanian government asking them not to judge his people too harshly. Roth was first arrested in August 1948, which triggered a wave of alarm, although he was eventually released. He was re-arrested in 1952 and held in the Ghencea concentration camp, where he died.
Early life and education Hans Otto Roth was born on 29 April 1890 in Sighișoara on the street Kleingasse 1 (now Strada Tache Ionescu), which was then part of Austria-Hungary. He was the sixth and youngest child of lawyer and city judge of Sighișoara Karl Roth (1846–1901) and Louise Roth (née Hausenblaß, 1855–1915) and was the grandson through his maternal side of a factory owner. He attended elementary school in Sighișoara where he graduated in 1900, and then attended the local Protestant high school in Sighișoara until 1908 where he was a part of the student self-government called Coetus Chlamydatorum. From 1908 to 1912, he studied law at the universities of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, and Zurich. In April 1913, he received his doctorate in law from the ELTE Faculty of Law of the University of Budapest, where he was also the president of the League of Transylvanian Saxon Students. Afterwards, from 1913 to 1915, he worked in the Budapest law firms of A. Teteleni and Karl Schmidt.
At the start of World War One, Roth was initially deemed unfit for service, so he became deputy editor of the Transylvanian Saxon daily newspaper Siebenbürgisch-Deutsches Tageblatt, replacing Hermann Plattner, who had been drafted. He worked under the leadership of Emil Neugeboren. In January 1916, he was conscripted for military service in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and he served as an auxiliary for Infantry Regiment No. 31 in Brno, performing exclusively clerical duties. He was briefly sent to Semmering during his time in the military to recover from apical catarrh of the lungs. In February 1917, he was released from military service due to illness. Afterwards, from February 1917 to 1918, he was an editor for Siebenbürgisch-Deutsches Tageblatt. In 1918, the union of Transylvania with Romania occurred, which inspired Roth to become secretary of the Saxon Central Committee, where he supported the union and the accession of Saxons to Romania. He was specifically chosen as secretary for aligning with the "Little Saxon" tradition, which advocated for legalism and integration into Romania, which had started to be prominent around 1900. The tradition acknowledged the cultural value of pan-Germanism but advocated keeping it separate from state politics, opposing efforts to implement it through political means such as territorial annexation, due to concerns about its legality. He was elected over more politically experienced politicians like , who advocated for a more radical pan-Germanic ideology, which the Little Saxons disagreed with as they thought merging into a greater German identity would dissolve the Saxon identity and erode their cultural heritage.
In 1919, Roth was part of the Saxon delegation that handed the decision of the Saxon representatives to the government in Mediaş, and afterward, the Saxon Central Committee announced the Transylvanian Saxons' decision to join the Kingdom of Romania. Roth also wrote the Saxon People's Program during this time, which was adopted on 6 November 1919, and he was thus considered a key player in the integration of Saxons into Romania. He wrote the program after many Saxons complained about the reforms following the accession, and he also led a delegation of Saxon peasants to Cluj to present their complaints to the Directory Council.
Political career Parliamentary work
In the 1919 Romanian general election, Roth won a seat in the Chamber of Deputies representing the German Party. In a speech in October, the month before the elections, he stated his campaign consisted of renewing confidence in the national vitality of Saxons, recognizing that the rejection of Hungary was not a betrayal and was justified citing the "abandonment" of the minority, and affirming that the pledges of King Ferdinand I to follow the results of the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia were honest.
In 1922, Roth replaced Rudolf Brandsch as leader of the Parliamentary Group of the German Party. Roth was generally believed to have been chosen to replace Brandsch because Brandsch favored the strengthening of German self-consciousness and did not want to seek compromises with the ruling Romanian National Party, while Roth saw the possibility of the German-Romanians rights being enforced by a compromise. At the time in 1922, Roth admitted that he did not see ripe cooperation at the moment, but thought it only "conceivable", as he acknowledged Iuliu Maniu's position and said that the Romanian government was favorable to Saxons. He also stated that the Germans had a desire to contribute to Romania's development through what he called "constructive work" rather than political confontration. Roth's advocacy was ultimately successful as it led to a gain in seats for the party in the parliament and the government meeting some demands.
Soon after, in December, Roth defined what the German Party wished at a conference: the unconditional recognition of the Romanian state of the Saxons, full political and parliamentary activity even in matters that did not concern the minority, and implementation of the people's political program. In parliament, Roth tried to secure the rights he thought were promised to Germans, including German-language schools, equal rights in the economy, preservation of assets of the Transylvanian Saxon University, and land ownership. In 1924, Roth made a repeated plea for denominational schools, saying it was clearly enshrined in the 1919 Peace Treaty, and saying that Romania was "virtually confiscating" minority rights. This eventually led to the Private School Act of 1925, which standardized the Saxon school system. Roth characterized the legislation as a test of Romania's tolerance towards minorities. That same year, with the growth of pro-Nazi Party sentiments in Transylvania, Roth stated in an essay that fascism was "a setback of the national political movement" which had fought for the protection of self-determination for ethnic minorities.
Alexandru Averescu's 1925 agrarian reforms led to famine among the German-Romanians, especially in Bessarabia. The shipping agency Cosulich Line exploited the desperate German farmers by charging excessive fees for emigration to Brazil, which Roth condemned. Roth, after visiting the emigrants, demanded an investigation into the line and heavily criticized the Romanian government for what he perceived as its failure in addressing that the line purposefully exploited and took away the belonging of the emigrants who wished to go to Brazil.
In the autumn of 1921, the Hungarian Union proposed a joint political approach, which Roth rejected as too early. By 1923, the two parties began to collaborate extensively to resist Education Minister Constantin Angelescu's school decree (Nr. 100.008 and 100.090) as the regulations threatened their denominational schools. They formally met in February 1925 after the Hungarians reorganized at the German House of Representatives in Bucharest, where it was agreed there would be liaison officers instead of a straight minority bloc. In August 1925, Roth formally proposed joint political action between the two minority parties, but the cooperation fell apart in 1926 when Roth found out that the Hungarian Union had been secretly negotiating with the National Liberal Party. In 1927, a brief Hungarian German Bloc occurred, but it dissolved soon after.
Roth officially retired from parliament in 1938. One of his last actions in parliament was in January when he was received by King Carol II of Romania, where they discussed the German ethnic groups in Romania. In 1939, he was made a senator by right in the Senate of Romania, which he was awarded because he had won a seat in parliament in ten elections in accordance with the 1923 Constitution of Romania.
Association of German Minorities In 1931, Roth was appointed Chairman of the Verband der deutschen Minderheiten in Europa (). By this time, Frühmesser, his biographer, interpreted that Roth approved of a pan-Germanist policy that included Austria because he expected it to have a positive impact on the Germans in Eastern Europe. His appointment as chairman was largely just a figurehead position, as the Reich wanted leadership that would not be portrayed in a radical National Socialist light and would not interfere in the Association's Berlin operations.
In 1933, Roth led a large-scale parade in Passau, where he said that Germans feel unimaginable pain due to conflicts. On 15 June 1933, in his capacity as chairman, Roth had a conversation with Adolf Hitler. In the meeting, Roth drew attention to the fact that the anti-semitic measures of the German Reich could have a negative impact on the treatment of German minorities, although Hitler defended his moves and dismissed Roth's concerns. This caused Roth to start rejecting Hitler and Nazism. Three months later at the European Congress of Nationalities, Roth spoke about nations dissimilating, a nod to Jewish Germans being excluded. His views were inconsistent, as he still at first advocated for dissimilation, while at the same time saying no nation-state can be built on the annihilation of other people. This led to many Jews in Transylvania having an increasingly harsher stance against Roth, as they believed he no longer took any stance against the persecution of Jews. He was replaced by in 1934.
Rise of Nazism and World War II