BERLIN (JTA) — The mayor of a small German town wants to withdraw the honorary citizenship granted in 1933 to Adolf Hitler.
Matthias Thuerauf, mayor of Schwabach in Bavaria, is urging local politicians to affirm his view. A vote is expected Friday.
Local legislators also are considering posthumously stripping citizenship from Nazi officials Julius Streicher, publisher of the notorious "Der Sturmer," and high-ranking Nazi official Adolf Wagner.
Hitler, born in Austria, used his honorary German citizenship as a means to achieve political power. The Nazi dictator committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in the final days of World War II.
Among the towns that have revoked his citizenship in recent years is Bad Doberan, which did so shortly before the 2007 G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm, within its jurisdiction.
That same year, members of the Social Democratic Party in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony urged that Hitler’s German nationality be canceled. But the suggestion drew criticism from the state’s minister of the interior, Uwe Schunemann of the Christian Democratic Union party, who suggested that such a move could be seen abroad as an attempt to deny German history.
Hitler was stateless when he was granted German citizenship on Feb. 26, 1932 after becoming a civil servant in Braunschweig, in the region now encompassed by Lower Saxony. His status enabled him to run for president that year.
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