Franz Karmasin

Franz Karmasin (1901–1970) was an ethnic German politician in Czechoslovakia, who helped found the Carpathian German Party. During World War II he was state secretary of German affairs in the Slovak Republic, and rose to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer. Tried in absentia and sentenced to death, he fled to West Germany where until his death he was active in a right-wing organization that claimed to represent Sudeten Germans.

Karmasin was born on 2 September 1901 in Olomouc, a city formerly inhabited mostly by Germans, which only acquired a Czech majority after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. His father was a railway official from Brno. He attended the agricultural college in Děčín (1919–1923), and obtained an engineering degree. Karmasin did military service 1923–1924 at Hodonín and a military hospital in Olomouc. Between 1924 and 1926 he held different jobs in North Moravia and Bohemia.

In 1926 he moved to Slovakia, where he became increasing involved in organizational activities of the German community. Between April 1927 and 1930 he served as secretary of the (apolitical) German Cultural Union (Deustche Kulturverband, DKV) and led the DKV Zips organization based in Kežmarok. Between 1930 and 1935 he worked as Gau Secretary of DKV in Slovakia, based in Bratislava.

Whilst he held posts in the apolitical DKV, Karmasin engaged in political activities on the side. In 1927 he was one of the co-founders of the Karpatendeutsche Volksgemeinschaft, which soon evolved into the Carpathian German Party (KdP). Karmasin became a member of the Sudeten German Kameradenschaftbund (KB) and acted as a liaison between the KdP and the Sudeten German Party (SdP). In 1934 he founded the weekly Deustche Stimmen in Bratislava. However, as a DKV employee he could not hold any official leadership positions in KdP.

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