Karl-Heinz priest

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Karl-Heinz Priester (born March 20, 1912 in Frankfurt am Main , † April 16, 1960 in Wiesbaden ) was a member of the higher management level of the Hitler Youth and later publisher for Holocaust denial and historical revisionism in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

Before 1945

Priester grew up in Frankfurt and was a newspaper volunteer after school . He was editor of the Frankfurter Post , a newspaper of the German National Party .

During the Weimar Republic , Priester joined the Hitler Youth (HJ) and in 1932 was responsible for the press training of the HJ under the spell of Hessen-Nassau. In 1933 he became leader of Oberjungbanns I of the young people affiliated to the HJ in the same area. After that he was mainly active in the German Labor Front and was director of its sub-organization Kraft durch Freude from 1935 to 1939 .

There is different information about membership in the Schutzstaffel (SS). While some sources portray priests as members of the Waffen-SS who achieved the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer, others only speak of the "SS candidate" who was ultimately rejected by the SS.

In the Second World War he was a front-line reporter in the Luftwaffe from 1939 , later a lieutenant in the infantry and liaison officer to the Waffen-SS.

After 1945

After the end of the war in 1945, priest was initially not prosecuted in the French occupation zone of Germany. In 1946, however, when he moved to Hesse, he was interned by the American occupying forces and only released again in 1948.

After his release, he remained a political activist of the extreme right . His publishing house was in Wiesbaden. He was best known as a publisher of Holocaust deniers such as Maurice Bardèche , Paul Rassinier , Harry Elmer Barnes and FJP Veale.

In 1948 he joined the Hessian NDP and became a close associate of the party founder Heinrich Leuchtgens . However, he fell out with this when Leuchtgens decided in January 1950 to convert the NDP into the DRP . Priests and his supporters called for a national revolutionary and not a national conservative party. Then they founded the short-lived National Democratic Party - Nationale Reichspartei . Under the leadership of the priest, this acted as the Hessian regional association of the newly founded SRP by Fritz Dorls . Priest became SRP state chairman and briefly belonged to the SRP party leadership.

At the same time, priests became involved at the international level. In October 1950 he met Per Engdahl at a conference initiated by the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) in Rome and discussed the establishment of a European collection movement. Despite an entry ban, Priester was elected in absentia in May 1951 in Malmö / Sweden to the board of the fascist European Social Movement under the leadership of the Italian MSI. On March 29, 1951, he founded its German branch, the German Social Movement (DSB).

In 1951, Priester, along with the former SS-Sturmbannführer Arthur Ehrhardt and the writer and former SA-Obersturmführer Herbert Böhme, was one of the founders of the magazine Nation und Europa , which was intended as an organ of the German Social Movement. Together with Ehrhardt he acted as editor of the magazine. In addition to his publishing activities, Priester was busy founding or splitting numerous neo-Nazi groups and parties until his death.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Frederik: The right-wing radicals. Humboldt-Verlag, Munich 1965, p. 70.
  2. ↑ Karl Heinz Priester in memory. In: Nation Europe . Issue 10, October 1960, p. 43.
  3. ^ A b Kurt P. Tauber: Beyond Eagle and Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945. Volume 2, Wesleyan University Press, 1967, p. 1018.
  4. ↑ Richard Stöss: From nationalism to environmental protection. Westdeutscher Verlag, 1980, p. 56.
  5. ^ A b Richard Stöss: Party Handbook: the parties of the Federal Republic of Germany. 1945–1980. Westdeutscher Verlag, 1984, p. 1898.
  6. ↑ for example Eberhart Schön: The emergence of National Socialism in Hesse. Hain-Verlag, 1972, p. 207.
  7. ↑ The mirror. 3/1950 of January 19, 1950, p. 10.
  8. ↑ Hans Frederik: NPD, Danger from the Right? Verlag Politisches Archiv, 1966, p. 102.
  9. ^ Constitution of the state executive of the National Democratic Party of Germany (Nationale Reichspartei), January 29, 1950. Contemporary history in Hesse. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  10. ↑ Manfred Jenke : Conspiracy from the right: A report on right-wing radicalism in Germany after 1945. Berlin 1961, p. 88.
  11. ^ Horst Schmollinger: The National Democratic Party of Germany. In: Richard Stöss : Party Handbook. Westdeutscher Verlag , Opladen 1986, ISBN 3-531-11838-2 , pp. 1908f.
  12. ^ Henning Hansen: The Socialist Reich Party (SRP): Rise and Failure of a Right-Wing Extreme Party. Droste-Verlag, 2007, p. 68.
  13. ↑ Jens Mecklenburg (Ed.): Handbook of German Right-Wing Extremism. Elefanten-Press, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-88520-585-8 , p. 609.
personal data
SURNAME Priest, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS member and later revisionist publisher
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1960
Place of death Wiesbaden