on a public building, City Hall, which occurred on 18 January 1931 two years before Hitler came to power. Schwede also got the city to grant Hitler an honorary citizenship on 16 October 1932, also the first to do so. All this created a cult of personality around Schwede, a highlight of which was the 1933 dedication of Coburg City Hall's new bell, bearing the rhyming inscription Zu Adolf Hitler ruf ich dich, Franz Schwede-Glocke heiße ich (roughly translated "To Adolf Hitler I call, I am called the Franz Schwede Bell"). Following the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, Schwede was directly appointed as Coburg's Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister). In March 1933, a terror campaign was launched under his leadership against Jews and opponents of the Nazis. By the end of April, 152 people had been arrested and harshly mistreated while in "protective custody", many in Schwede's presence. In 1939 Coburg was officially granted the title "First National Socialist City in Germany" (). Schwede was also made an honorary citizen of Coburg, as Hitler had been, and was awarded use of the suffix "Coburg" in his name. Gauleiter of Pomerania Schwede's political career continued its steady rise when, in November 1933, he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 26, Franconia. He also became a holder of the Golden Party Badge. On 1 July 1934, he was appointed Regierungspräsident (District President) of Lower Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate. Around the same time the existing Gauleiter of the Prussian Province of Pomerania, Wilhelm Karpenstein, ran afoul of NSDAP headquarters and was arrested during the Night of the Long Knives. Schwede's loyalty was rewarded when Hitler appointed him to the powerful NSDAP Gauleiter position in Pomerania on 21 July 1934 and made him Oberpräsident of the provincial government on 30 July. Thus Schwede united under his control the highest Party and governmental offices in the province. Schwede moved to Stettin, forced 23 of the 27 District Kreisleiters out of office, and replaced Karpenstein's staff with loyal friends from Coburg, including: Arno Fischer as state building surveyor, Kuno Popp as Gau propaganda leader and regional representative of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, Alfred Seidler as Gau treasurer, Johannes Künzel as a regional representative of the German Labor Front, Emil Mazuw as SS-Stabsführer of SS District XIII Pomerania, and Werner Faber as Lord Mayor of Stettin. On 9 September 1935,