Rolf Reiner

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Rolf Reiner , also Rudolf Reiner (born January 2, 1899 in Gmunden am Traunsee ; † August 27, 1944 in Brăila / Romania ), was a German politician ( NSDAP ) and SS group leader .

Live and act

Training and First World War

Reiner was the son of Wilhelm Reiner and his wife Anna, née Hoffmann. In his youth, Reiner attended the Realgymnasium in Munich . On January 15, 1917, he volunteered as a flag squire in the replacement battalion of the 2nd Württemberg Infantry Regiment 120 (Ulm) . From January to November 1918 he was at the front with this regiment, first as an ensign, then, after his promotion to lieutenant on May 20, 1918, from July to October 1918 as leader of a company .

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, Reiner joined the Württemberg Freikorps Haas , to which he belonged from January to April 1919 and with which he took part in the fighting to destroy the Bavarian Soviet Republic , among other things . He then joined the Reichswehr : As a member of the 1st machine gun company of Rifle Regiment 13 (Schwäbisch Gmünd), he was one of the troops that were deployed to combat the unrest that broke out in Central Germany and the Ruhr area that year.

At the end of 1920 Reiner left the Reichswehr to begin studying at the University of Munich . In Munich he joined the extreme right wing hostile to the republic there : in 1921 he joined the " Reichsflagge " association led by Ernst Röhm . In 1923 he became adjutant to Hermann Kriebel , with whom he took part in the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch on November 9 of the same year. After the failure of the attempted coup Reiner was one year and three months imprisonment sentenced.

Reiner's career in the second half of the 1920s has not yet been fully clarified: According to the memories of Adolf Hitler's secretary Christa Schroeder , he accompanied Röhm to Bolivia , where he was deployed as a military inspector. This was probably confused with Martin Schätzl , Röhm's only constant companion in South America that is documented in the sources . Regardless of whether this information was correct, after Röhm's return from Bolivia in early 1931, Reiner became his personal adjutant and chief of staff (officially 1st adjutant to the chief of staff from July 1, 1932 to April 20, 1933). In 1932, Reiner came into the public eye because of his work in the Röhm area after the Munich Neue Post identified him as one of the "leading homosexuals" in the SA leadership in an article based on forged letters.

On December 18, 1931, Reiner moved from the SA to the SS while maintaining his position (SS no. 23,077). Reiner had already joined the NSDAP in September 1930 ( membership number 297,947).

Reiner was an enthusiastic rider, founding member and 2nd president of the Halali riding club in Munich.

time of the nationalsocialism

1933 to 1939

After the National Socialists came to power on January 30, 1933, Reiner gave up his previous post in Röhm's staff in order to switch to the party's leadership apparatus on February 1, 1933 as deputy head of the NSDAP's liaison staff. In connection with the takeover of government power by the NSDAP in Bavaria in March 1933, at the instigation of Ernst Röhm, he was accepted into the Bavarian civil service by the Bavarian governor Franz Ritter von Epp as a legation councilor . Within the SS, Reiner was promoted to the rank of SS group leader with effect from March 1, 1933 - the second highest rank existing within the SS at the time.

On the occasion of the Reichstag election in March 1933 , Reiner was on the list of candidates for the NSDAP. According to the contemporary publication of the party leadership of the NSDAP Adolf Hitler and his fighters from 1933, which provides an overview of the Reichstag members elected to the Reichstag in the course of the March elections, he was also one of those candidates of the Nazi party who were elected. Since Reiner does not appear in the Reichstag handbook for the electoral period beginning with the March elections or in the lists of representatives and minutes of the Reichstag for the period from March 1933, it is certain that he never took up or exercised his mandate for reasons that have not yet been clarified.

In May 1933, Adolf Hitler commissioned Reiner with the formation and management of a "leadership staff of the NSDAP at the Reichsbahn ", which would deal with the allegations of " compliance policy " and employment made by railway workers of the NS student council against the Reichsbahn general director Julius Dorpmüller and the Reichsbahnleitung Jews should investigate. Its main task was to channel the sometimes wild protests of some Reichsbahners. From September 1933 to the end of 1934, Reiner, who in the meantime had also become "Adjutant lecturing the SA to the Führer", was also a member of the administrative board of the Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft.

In March 1934 Reiner was appointed head of the so-called "ministerial office" of the Supreme SA leadership . This institution was newly created as a result of the appointment of the Chief of Staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, as a representative of the SA in the Reich Cabinet in the rank of minister in December 1933. While the Munich-based Supreme SA Leadership (OSAF) ​​served to lead the SA as a party-owned organization of the NSDAP, the purpose of the newly created ministerial office of the SA, which was based in Berlin's government district, was to act as the state-official equivalent to function as part of the OSAF party organization, i.e. analogous to the administration of the tasks arising in connection with the role of the SA as a party organization by the OSAF, the administration of the official business of the chief of staff of the SA in his capacity as minister of the Reich government. Reiner was thus something like a State Secretary of the SA, who was responsible for the day-to-day care of the "SA Minister" Röhm. In an interview with the Deutsche Zeitung on March 6, 1934, Reiner described his position as follows: Domestically, he was a kind of intervention point for "disputes between the SA and Reich offices", while in foreign policy he was responsible for "getting all the documents relating to foreign policy Touch the SA ”. Furthermore, he was entrusted with the "handling of all questions that affect the SA in constitutional or political terms". As the “political orientation point” of the SA chief of staff as the state's sovereign authority, Reiner also clearly distinguished himself from the SA as a party organization (“the ministerial office has nothing at all to do with the organization of the SA itself”). Before moving to the ministerial office, he had finished his position in the Reichsbahn leadership staff.

During the "suppression of the so-called Röhm Putsch ", i. H. the smashing of the SA as a political power factor in the days from June 30 to July 2, 1934, Reiner was also briefly imprisoned. Unlike Röhm and numerous other high SA leaders who were shot, he was not executed and was soon released again. However, he lost his post in the ministerial office and as adjutant lecturing to the Führer. On July 20, 1934, he was reassigned to Himmler's staff, but soon afterwards expelled from the SS as a result of his longstanding close relationship and collaboration with Röhm. In addition, Rudolf Hess issued an order on November 6, 1934 , by which he was also excluded from the NSDAP. Regardless of these external defenses, Reiner continued to enjoy the protection of powerful friends, especially SS chief Heinrich Himmler, so that he was able to continue his career in the Nazi state, at least in the economic field.

In 1935 he was employed as an authorized signatory at the Salzgitterwerke in Watenstedt near Braunschweig , which was subsequently converted into or merged with the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . Most recently he held the post of chief defense officer there.

From the second half of the 1930s, Reiner made repeated efforts aimed at re-entry into the NSDAP and the SS. With regard to the success of his efforts to get back into the party, the information in the relevant files is contradicting itself: For example, the Supreme Party Court of the NSDAP lifted Reiner's exclusion from the party on March 23, 1937. Since Hitler, who, according to a memorandum from Himmler from 1938, was still opposed to Reiner, according to information from Martin Bormann to Himmler, still spoke out against re-admitting Röhm's former close colleague to the NSDAP, but it is unclear whether Reiners was ordered by the Supreme Court Re-entry into the party was actually carried out.

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War , Reiner, who strove to rehabilitate himself by proving himself at the front and to be re-admitted to the SS, had his friend Heinrich Himmler reactivated as an officer: from 1939 to 1942 he worked for flak batteries in Braunschweig and Düsseldorf. With the permission of Hermann Göring , he was then deployed to the front in Russia with the Air Force from summer 1942. The reactivation within the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler previously requested by Reiner had been rejected by Himmler out of consideration of the foreseeable rejection of Hitler.

On November 13, 1942, Reiner suffered a severe wound on his left lower leg from the impact of shrapnel on the north bar near Stalingrad. As a result, he spent several months in hospitals until July 1943, where he had to undergo three operations. From 1944 Reiner was again active. He eventually died while serving on the Romanian front in August 1944.

A memorandum from Himmler in December 1944, in which Reiner is again referred to as a group leader, suggests the possibility that he had been re-admitted to the SS before his death.

Promotions

  • December 18, 1931: SS-Oberführer
  • March 1, 1933: SS group leader

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas Dornheim: Röhm's husband for abroad. Politics and murder of the SA agent Georg Bell , 1998, p. 288.
  2. ↑ Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Man for man. Biographical lexicon on the history of love for friends. 1998, p. 193.
  3. ↑ a b c d Alfred Gottwaldt: The Reichsbahn and the Jews 1933–1939 - Anti-Semitism on the railroad in the prewar period. Wiesbaden 2011, p. 439.
  4. ↑ Adolf Hitler and his fighters: 288 brown shirts in the Reichstag. The National Socialist Reichstag parliamentary group VIII electoral period March 5, 1933. 1933.
  5. ↑ Orlow: The History of the Nazi Party. 1933-1945. P. 73.
  6. ↑ Eberhard Kolb: The Reichsbahn from the Dawes Plan to the end of the Weimar Republic. In: Lothar Gall, Manfred Pohl (Hrsg.): The railway in Germany. From the beginning to the present. Munich 1999, p. 171.
personal data
SURNAME Reiner, Rolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reiner, Rudolf (alternative name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (NSDAP) and SA and SS leaders
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Gmunden am Traunsee
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1944
Place of death Brăila , Romania