Rolf Rienhardt

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Rolf Rienhardt (born July 2, 1903 in Bucha ; † March 16, 1975 in Badenweiler ) was a German lawyer. As legal advisor to Max Amann , he was jointly responsible for the economic and political successes of Franz-Eher-Verlag .

Life

Rienhardt was the son of a Lutheran superintendent and studied law in Berlin and Munich . His career within the NSDAP began after he became a party member in 1923, when he was introduced to the party leadership by his friend Gregor Strasser . As a speaker for the NSDAP he was active in the state and Reichstag elections in Bavaria in 1924, where he sometimes appeared together with Wilhelm Frick .

In the mid-1920s, Rienhardt was a partner of the alchemist Franz Tausend , who tried to produce gold through transmutation . The alleged “research” was financed by “rich citizens pushing for the National Socialist Party”. The " Gesellschaft 164 " founded by Rienhardt, Tausend and General Erich Ludendorff for this purpose actually served as a money laundering facility for illegal party donations , and Ludendorff used the majority of the money to finance the deficit Nazi party publication Völkischer Kurier .

In 1928, Rienhardt was placed on the list of candidates of the NSDAP for the Reichstag election in July 1932 , with Strasser's support , and then also elected to the Reichstag , also in the Reichstag election in November 1932 . Strasser, at that time the party's head of the Reich organization, got him a post as head of department in his office that year, but in December he fell, like other followers of Strasser, out of favor. Furthermore, his candidacy for the 1933 Reichstag election was canceled. Rienhardt was a member of the Academy for German Law and was involved in the Association of National Socialist German Lawyers .

Rienhardt's initially halted career was given a new boost when Max Amann , after he had become President of the Association of German Newspaper Publishers (VDZV) in April 1933 , appointed him his deputy. Rienhardt became head of staff in Amann's administrative office for the Nazi press and deputy head of the VDZV. Rienhardt - and not Amann - developed into the real doer in the background, was the one who wrote Amann's essays, which appeared under his name in the VDZV's newspaper publishing house , and wrote Amann's speeches. Although the last word was with Amann and Rienhardt adhered to his guidelines, all important orders were made by him. Rienhardt was the initiator of the newspaper Das Reich , which was conceived as a showcase newspaper, and organized the construction of the network of occupation newspapers that appeared in the occupied territories during the Second World War . In the end, he was the one who ensured the Nazification of the German press and built the massive party trust. It was thanks to him that Amann was able to make high profits from 1938 onwards. Oron J. Hale then also characterizes Rienhardt as a highly intelligent, incorruptible idealist who has achieved impressive things with enormous work and a small staff of no more than 20 people, all of this with a will to power that was accompanied by a fear of publicity. In his opinion, Rienhardt was the most influential person in the German press.

In the year in which the high phase of the Eher publishing house began, i.e. 1938, Rienhardt's relationship with Amann began to deteriorate so much that it ultimately led to his dismissal. According to Hale, the end of the Frankfurter Zeitung may have played a role in the final break , and according to an employee of Amann and Rienhardt, one of the reasons was that Amann was “far inferior to Rienhardt in terms of intellectual talent and education”. In addition, there were complaints from some Gauleiter who disagreed with Rienhardt's power over the Gau publishers. According to Fritz Schmidt , author of Presse in Fesseln , however, the decisive factor for the end of Rienhardt's time at Eher-Verlag was that he applied to Martin Bormann for a vacant seat in the National Socialist Reichstag in the summer of 1943 and that Amann had made Adolf Hitler aware of this that Rienhardt once belonged to Strasser's people. Hitler then refused to give his consent, whereupon Amann interpreted this as a sign of his attitude and now saw the right time to get rid of his chief of staff. Rienhardt, for whom his work did not generate large financial assets, was dismissed by Amann in November 1943 without notice and without any severance pay and had to forego all pension claims. He then joined the " Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler " as the SS - armored infantry and served throughout the war as a combat soldier. His successor in the publishing house was Wilhelm Baur .

After the war, Rienhardt was the managing director of Heumann advertising company, of the Westfälische Zeitung in Bielefeld and later of Burda .

Memberships

Quote

“Rienhardt shows me the first issue of ' Das Reich '. Turned out very well. [...] An appealing propaganda tool abroad. "

- Joseph Goebbels : Diary entry from May 24, 1940.

literature

  • Oron J. Hale: Press in the Straitjacket 1933–45. Droste, Düsseldorf 1965, German translation of The captive press in the Third Reich. University Press, Princeton 1964.
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • The fact of being a slave - Erich Peter Neumann on Hans Dieter Müller's facsimile volume “Das Reich” . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1964 ( online - with background information on Rienhardt's role in Das Reich ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rienhardt also enrolled at the University of Rostock in the summer semester of 1922, but withdrew his matriculation after a few weeks. See the entry of Rolf Rienhardt's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 497.
  3. ↑ Two years. In: Social Democratic Press Service. November 11, 1930, p. 14 (PDF; 3811.89 kB).
  4. ↑ From a "gold maker" in Bavaria. In: Kölnische Volkszeitung. October 12, 1929 ( facsimile ( memento of February 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive )); Statement by Franz Tausend. Process protocol 1921, State Archives Munich AG 69.264; excerpt. printed in: Franz Wegener: The Alchemist Franz Tausend. Alchemy and National Socialism. Gladbeck 2006, pp. 52-57.
  5. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 131.
  6. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 497.
  7. ↑ a b Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933–45. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 132.
  8. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 280.
  9. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, pp. 296-297.
  10. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, pp. 130-132 u. 294-298.
  11. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the Strait Jacket 1933-45, Düsseldorf 1965, p. 130.
  12. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, pp. 294-296.
  13. ↑ Oron J. Hale: Press in the straitjacket 1933-45. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 297.
  14. ^ Arnulf Kutsch: Broadcasting Studies in the Third Reich. History of the Institute for Broadcasting Studies at the University of Freiburg. Munich-Pullach / Berlin 1985, p. 490.
  15. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 497.
  16. ↑ quoted from: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 497.
personal data
SURNAME Rienhardt, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, press officer and politician (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Bucha
DATE OF DEATH March 16, 1975
Place of death Badenweiler