Eberhard Reinert

Eberhard Reinert (born May 8, 1893 in Groß Strehlitz , Upper Silesia, † October 16, 1982 in Wiesbaden ) was a German officer, newsman and politician (DP).

Live and act

Youth and military career

Reinert was a son of Major Felix Reinert and his wife Elisabeth, née Guse. In his youth he received private lessons, then he attended a grammar school in Freienwalde .

As an adolescent, Reinert embarked on a military career: For this purpose, he went through the Köslin and Lichterfelde cadet institutions (1904 to 1908 and 1908 to 1912), after graduating on March 22, 1912, as an ensign in the Graf Kirchbach infantry regiment (1 . Lower Silesian) No. 46 in Poznan. From August 1912 to April 1913 he attended the war school in Hanover. The promotion to lieutenant followed on June 16, 1913 (with a patent on June 2, 1911).

From 1914 to 1918 Reinert took part in the First World War. During the war he was deployed as platoon, company and battalion commander as well as battalion, regimental and brigade adjutant. He was injured several times (loss of hearing on the right side) and was awarded the EK of both classes and the Hohenzollern House Order. On August 18, 1916, he was promoted to first lieutenant.

In September 1918 Reinert was taken prisoner by the English. In the summer of 1919 he managed to escape from captivity in the Wes-Pen camp near Le Havre and to flee to Spain. From there he was able to return to Germany via Italy in October 1919.

Reinert left the army on March 31, 1920. On May 14, 1920 he was subsequently given the character of a captain. After leaving the military, he settled in Kassel. There he initially worked for a short time in the general agency of the insurance company of the Automobile Club of Germany for Hessen-Kassel, in order to then take over the development of the state management of Greater Hessen for the Escherisch organization.

Career as an intelligence service (1920 to 1934)

From October 1, 1920 to March 31, 1931 Reinert was in the service of the intelligence service at the German Overseas Service (DÜD), for which he carried out tasks in the field of espionage and defense. From 1921 to 1928 he worked in the Kassel office of the DÜD, where he worked very closely with Herbert von Bose . In this position Reinert was, among other things, involved in the intrigue with which the Reichswehr and political legal circles tried in 1926 to overthrow Artur Mahraun as head of the Jugo. He was also in contact with the people behind the Rathenau murder in 1922. However, the main focus of his work in Kassel was counter-espionage against France. In particular, he was also involved in the defensive battle against the French occupation of the Ruhr area.

After the Kassel office was closed, Reinert was transferred to the Berlin office of the DÜD in October 1930, where he worked until its liquidation on March 31, 1931. From May 1, 1931 to December 31, 1932, Reinert worked in the steel helmet's intelligence service under Jenö von Egan-Krieger . In this position he maintained contact with Bose, Heinrich Gärtner , Herbert von Mudra and numerous other journalists and political intermediaries. Since autumn 1931 he has been volunteering for the General Association for Employment and Employment Promotion. In his spare time he developed a mock machine gun for shooting training.

From July 1933 to the beginning of January 1934, Reinert worked in the intelligence service of the Diels'schen Gestapa, which was brought up by Konrad Nussbaum . According to a report by the Gauleitung Groß-Berlin from March 1934, his work for this service was "primarily [...] against the machinations that were carried out from abroad, especially by the emigrants, against the national state." his confidants have explored the connections between official personalities in Germany and foreign government agencies or between agencies of political Catholicism and “Jewish-Masonic circles” in Germany on the one hand and similar agencies abroad.

On January 20, 1934, Reinert was taken into protective custody by the Gestapo on personal instructions from Hermann Göring and held in the Columbia-Haus concentration camp until March 20, 1934 . The background to this measure was that it had been established that Reinert had given an informer named Schmerl internal information from the Gestapa, which the latter was using for "large-scale intelligence fraud".

Next life

At the beginning of April 1934, Reinert took on a position as treasurer of the Reich Association of National Correspondence Publishers. On August 1, 1935, he returned to the service of the army: initially he was used as an e-officer. On February 1, 1940, he was returned to active military service - having had the rank of major since August 2, 1936 - in the further course of the war he was deployed as battalion commander, regiment commander and regiment commander. By the end of the war, Reinert had achieved the rank of colonel.

After 1945 Reinert first lived on a manor in Wettesingen in the Wolfshagen district (Wettesingen No. 3). He now earned his living as a farmer and fur breeder. In 1957 Reinert ran for the German party in constituency 126 for the Bundestag and in 1953 and 1957 for the Hessian state parliament. On August 16, 1955, he moved to Wiesbaden, where he spent the last years of his life.

marriage and family

Reinert was married to Barbara von Doemming since May 31, 1921 (born September 30, 1894 in Altona; April 25, 1976 in Kiedrich). The marriage resulted in three children - Wulf (born April 19, 1922; † 1942), Gisela (born October 25, 1923 in Kassel) and Regina (born June 11, 1927 in Kassel).

Archival tradition

Two military personnel files on Reinert have been preserved in the Federal Archives-Military Archives (PERS 6/300413 and PERS 6/6026).

literature

• Rainer Orth : The official seat of the opposition. Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor 1933/1934 , Cologne 2016, pp. 666–668.