Erhard Heiden

Erhard Heiden (born February 23, 1901 in Munich , † between April and September 1933 ) was a German political activist. He was an early member of the NSDAP and, as a predecessor, Heinrich Himmler's third Reichsführer of the SS .

Life

Activity in the early NSDAP

Erhard Heiden among the defendants in the minor Hitler trial before the Munich People's Court.

Heiden was a son of Maria Heiden. After the war, Julius Schaub remembered that an uncle von Heiden was a jeweler in Munich, which suggests a family relationship with the Theodor Heiden company, a jewelery, gold and silversmith's workshop at Promenadeplatz 19 in Munich, the only one in Munich's address books contained jewelry company, which was run by a person named Heiden, as the owners of the jewelry Theodor Heiden and the goldsmith Wilhelm Schmied are recorded.

Heiden joined the Bavarian Army in 1918, in the last months of the First World War. In 1919 he belonged to a paramilitary formation in Berlin and then to a unit in Munich.

Heiden had been active in the Munich NSDAP since the summer of 1923. At that time he was already a member of the so-called Adolf Hitler raid , a forerunner organization of the SS. Heiden caused a public sensation during this time after one night in autumn 1923, together with his shock troop colleague Joseph Berchtold, he attacked the Vice President of the Munich Chamber of Commerce and Industry , Siegmund Fraenkel, a Jew , together with his wife and son, and brutally beat them down. The Völkischer Beobachter responded with the sardonic remark, "that we are happy when Munich gradually gets the reputation that it is better for Jews and other foreigners not to enter the city at all."

In November 1923 Heiden took part in the failed Hitler putsch in Munich. On April 23, 1924, he was sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment by the People's Court at Munich Regional Court I in the so-called "Little Hitler Trial" along with 39 other defendants for participating in the putsch for "aiding and abetting high treason". He had to serve almost five months of this, while the rest was parole. In addition to a few days of pre-trial detention, he spent from August 8 to December 24, 1924 and from January 13 to 16, 1925 as a fortress prisoner at Landsberg Fortress, where he was in the company of numerous other participants in the 1923 coup, including Hitler, found.

In the period between the ban on the NSDAP after the coup was suppressed and its re-establishment in the spring of 1925, he worked in various party's rescue organizations.

Activity in the SS (1925 to 1929)

When Adolf Hitler re-founded the NSDAP in spring 1925, Heiden was one of the first to join the “new” party (membership number 74). After the establishment of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in April 1925 - which was set up as a guard within the party's combat units - Heiden was also appointed deputy to the first leader of the SS, Julius Schreck (1925–1926). Apparently the idea of ​​organizing special protection for leaders came from pagans. Even after Schreck was replaced as head of the SS in 1926 by Joseph Berchtold, who headed the SS from 1926 to 1927, Heiden retained the post of deputy leader of the SS. After Berchtold's resignation as Reich SS leader, Hitler appointed Heiden, then in the rank of SS Sturmbannführer, as the new SS chief in March 1927. Heiden appointed Heinrich Himmler, a member of the Munich Sturmabteilung (SA), as his deputy .

Under Heiden's command, the number of SS members was subsequently reduced from 1,000 to 280 men. This was done with the intention of increasing the exclusivity of SS membership through as small a group of members as possible in order to underline the “ elite idea ” of the SS within the SA and the NSDAP.

Together with Adolf Rottenberger , Heiden also ran a business called the "Reichswirtschaftsstelle" (Reichswirtschaftsstelle) since 1926, which supplied NSDAP members, and especially SA and SS members, with uniforms and equipment. Edmund Heines also worked in this company until he was expelled from the party in May 1927 . In June 1927, the deal was finally confirmed by Hitler as the sole supplier of the SA.

On January 6, 1929, Heiden was removed from his position as Reichsführer of the SS by Hitler. The new SS chief was Heinrich Himmler, who would remain so until 1945. The exact background of the change in the staffing is not clearly clarified: In the order of January 20, 1929, which communicated Heiden's dismissal, Hitler stated that Heiden had already asked him on December 1, 1928 to remove him, Heiden, from “family and economic reasons "to remove his position as SS chief. The penultimate sentence of Hitler's decree suggests an alternative or complementary background, in which the NSDAP chief emphasizes that Heiden's dismissal is not to be seen in connection with “slander” of Heiden by the social democratic press. The background to this sentence was a critical article in the Munich Post ("Jews as Hitler Suppliers") from January 21, 1929, in which it was alleged that the Rottenberger goods brokerage, in which Heiden was involved as a second partner, had at times obtained materials from a company, whose owner was a Jew. In the article alleged profit calculations were presented, according to which Rottenberger and Heiden to the detriment of their customers - v. a. Party members - would have made significant profits through excessive prices and that they would also have withheld significant sums of money from both the tax authorities and the party (which held dividend claims) through creative accounting. To what extent these allegations were correct cannot be inferred from the files received. Rottenberger gave up a lawsuit against the Munich Post for defamation .

The later Munich city councilor Karl Ortner declared after the Second World War that Heiden had resigned as SS chief "with noise" "because of business differences" with the Reich treasurer of the NSDAP Franz Xaver Schwarz as well as because of "personal differences with Hitler". He was murdered “because he constantly uttered massive threats against Hitler” that increased “to death threats” and he also kept talking about the fact that he was “in Switzerland with a book about Hitler with information about his intimate private life “Wanted to publish, into which Heiden had the best insight into the 1920s, along with Emil Maurice , Julius Schreck and Julius Schaub .

In a letter dated January 22, 1929, Heiden announced his resignation from the SS, which - as far as can be determined - followed a short time later. Instead, he actively turned back to the SA.

Heiden is listed in the Munich address book for 1930 as the owner of a "Bild- und Buchversand" at Herrnstrasse 11/3. In 1931 he figured as a businessman and owner of the company "Waren- und Buchvertrieb Lützow", also in Herrnstrasse 11/3. And in 1933 he is registered with his residence at Pfisterstraße 5/1.

assassination

In March 1933, after visiting his friend Emil Maurice, Erhard Heiden was arrested by members of the Reichsführer SS security service while he was having dinner in the Munich coffee house “Orlando”. A little later he was murdered, presumably in the Munich office of the SD. Since March 18, 1933, he was officially missing.

On March 28, 1933, Paul Schulz noted that he learned the following about Heiden's disappearance:

"Today I learn that the former SS leader Hayden [recte: Heiden] disappeared some time ago (14 days). He was visiting his friend Maurice in the evening and went from there to his apartment, which is only a few houses away On the way he visited a pub nearby, drank his beer and ate alone. After a while an SA man came and asked him to come and see what he was doing. Since that time he never returned. After half an hour this SA man came again to pick up Hayden's coat and hat. Hayden went out without a coat or hat and without paying. "

Shortly after his disappearance, Heiden's mother asked his old friend Emil Maurice to look for him. He turned to Josef Gerum for help , who finally called on Heinrich Himmler, who was head of the Bavarian Political Police at the time, together with August Schneidhuber , about the disappeared person. When Gerum and Schneidhuber asked him about Heiden's whereabouts, Gerum later claimed that Himmler reacted "quick-tempered" and forbade any interference. According to Schulz, an SS-Sturmführer reportedly appeared at Maurice's house at the end of March and told him that if he dropped a word on the Heiden affair or made further inquiries into its whereabouts, he would be a child of death. When Maurice Hitler gave a lecture on the incident, the latter recommended that he withdraw from Munich for a while.

Heiden's body was only discovered months later, on August 13, 1933, in the Neufinsing works canal near Erding (protocol from the Erding District Court) and was buried on September 15. According to Karl Ortner, his body had a gunshot wound in the head. As part of an official determination of the date of death, March 19, 1933 was set as the probable date of death.

Research status and archival tradition

Erhard Heiden, although he held a nominally significant position within the party apparatus of the NSDAP for almost two years, has remained a phantom to this day. As the historian Hans Rudolf Wahl writes, Heinrich Himmler's predecessor as SS chief is "a historical figure about whom, apart from the fact that he was Reichsführer SS at the time, researchers know literally nothing to this day".

Documentary material on Heiden has survived only to a very limited extent. In particular, meaningful personnel files about him no longer seem to exist. The reason for this is likely that these were destroyed at the instigation of Himmler. In the Federal Archives there are only two index cards for Heiden's NSDAP membership in the NSDAP central index and in the NSDAP local index (BDC: 3100 and BDC: 3200) as well as a personal card for Heiden as an employee of the NSDAP (BDC: PK microfilm D 320, Figs. 313 to 318). A short estate file on Heiden (AG Mü. No. 1933/2272) and a prisoner's file for his time as a prisoner at Landsberg Fortress in 1924 and 1925 (JVA 12430) are kept in the Munich State Archives.

literature

• Christian Hartmann (arr.): Hitler. Speeches, writings, orders. February 1925 to January 1933 , Vol. III / 3, Munich 1995, p. 391, Document 82 (Hitler's decree of January 20, 1929).
• Mathias Rösch: The Munich NSDAP 1925–1933: an investigation into the internal structure of the NSDAP in the Weimar Republic (= studies on contemporary history 63). Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002; ISBN 3-486-56670-9 . At the same time: Dissertation at the University of Munich, 1998.

Individual evidence

1. ^ IfZ: Witnesses Schaub, p. 4: Minutes of an interview with Julius Schaub on July 26, 1951, p. 1 . Schaub also mentioned that Heiden's mother was still living in Munich. In the address book for Munich for 1943 ( [1] ) and in the address book for 1953 ( [2] ) a pensioner Maria Heiden can be found at Agnes-Bernauerstraße 76a. In the address book for 1916 ( [3] ) it is listed as "Komm.-We." in the Mariannenst. 1/1, in the address book for 1922 ( [4] ) it is as "Komm.-We." in the Herrst. 11/3 and in the address book for 1927 ( [5] ) it is listed as "Kommiss-We." in the Herrnstr. 11/33 recorded. It is missing in 1935 ( [6] ) and 1938 ( [7] ). For the Theodor Heiden company, see the entries in the address books for 1933 and 1943 .
2. ^ Institute for Contemporary History: ZS Ortner: Minutes of a conversation with Karl Ortner from June 2, 1951 .
3. ↑ Bundesarchiv Berlin: BDC: OPG file Adolf Rottenberger, kept as microfilm H 121, image 660: Confirmation letter from the management of the SS to Heiden dated January 23, 1929.
4. ^ Address book for 1930 ; Entry on Heiden in the address book for Munich for 1931 ; Address book for Munich for 1933 . In 1935, Heiden was still a merchant in Pfisterst. 5/1 recorded ( [8] ).
5. ↑ Anna Maria Sigmund : Des Führer best friend , 2003, p. 213.
6. ↑ Alexander Dimitiros: Weimar and the fight against right , Vol. 2 / II, Ulm 2009, p. 760.
7. ↑ Andreas Schulz, Günter Wegmann and Dieter Zinke: Germany's Generals and Admirals - Part V: The Generals of the Waffen-SS and the Police 1933–1945 . Biblio-Verlag, p. 233 (footnote).
8. ↑ Hans Rudolf Wahl: “National Pederasts”? On the history of the (Berlin) SA leadership 1925-1934 ”, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , vol. 56, 2008, issue 5, p. 454.