Wolf Rüdiger Hess

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Wolf Rüdiger Heß (born November 18, 1937 in Munich ; † October 24, 2001 there ) was a German architect . He was the son of Rudolf and Ilse Hess and Adolf Hitler's godchild .

Life

Early childhood

Wolf Rüdiger Hess was an only child whose godfather Adolf Hitler was also the best man at the parents' wedding. The name of the child was also chosen accordingly: "Wolf" was a nickname Hitler used during his youth, Rüdiger was based on Rudolf.

After Hess' birth, each Gauleiter was instructed to send some “home soil” to his parents. The earth was scattered under his cradle in order to symbolically let Hess begin his life on the entire German soil. At the same time, it was intended to symbolize the joy of all of Germany about the long-awaited offspring in the Hess family.

After his father's flight to Great Britain , his mother moved with him to Bad Oberdorf on May 14, 1941 .

Life after World War II

Gravestone of Wolf Rüdiger Hess

On June 3, 1947, his mother was arrested together with the wives of all other convicts or executed in Nuremberg and interned in Augsburg-Göggingen . Until her release on March 24, 1948, Wolf-Rüdiger Hess lived with an aunt. He attended grammar school from 1947 and began studying architecture in the mid-1950s.

He campaigned for his father's release and rehabilitation all his life. After his death in August 1987, he expressed his conviction that his father had not committed suicide, but had been murdered by the British secret service SIS so that it could not reveal any unpleasant facts about his flight to Scotland in 1941. Hess published several books about his father, in which he spread the legend of the "Friedensflieger Hess" and claimed that his father had been murdered. His publications appeared in right-wing extremist publishers such as Druffel , but also by Langen-Müller .

Hess was married and had three children.

Hess died in 2001 in a Munich hospital as a result of a stroke. On Sunday evening, August 23, 1987 - one week after the death of his father - he suffered a stroke and was treated in a Munich hospital.

Political activities

Hess founded the Freedom Association for Rudolf Hess , which after the death of his father became the Rudolf-Hess-Gesellschaft e. V. was converted. According to its own information, the registered association had around 500 members in 1991. It is entered in sheet VR 12767 in the register of associations of the Munich District Court . Wolf Rüdiger Heß was chairman until his death in October 2001 and then his wife until 2006. The publisher Gert Sudholt was the deputy chairman at times .

The Rudolf-Heß-Gesellschaft (RHG) holds - like most associations - annual general meetings. In addition, public and non-public events are organized. The society entered the public eye at the beginning of the 1990s by participating in the Rudolf Hess memorial march, which is organized annually by neo-fascist groups, as well as through leaflets and postcards. The RHG occasionally publishes newsletters that report on club life. Individual documents and correspondence are distributed as documentation.

The RHG sees itself as an “international association of natural and legal persons, which has set itself the task of clarifying the historical significance of Rudolf Hess's political work, especially his work in the party and state, and the background to his flight to England on May 10, 1941 (...) and the circumstances surrounding his death in the Allied military prison on August 17, 1987. In addition, it should preserve the memory of Rudolf Hess ”.

Together with the now banned organization National List, the People's Loyal Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (VAPO) and the Samizdat-Publishers-Verlag, the RHG, under the responsibility of “Wehr Dich” publisher Berthold Dinter , demanded the rehabilitation of Rudolf Heß. B. by the reassignment of honorary citizenship of the city of Wunsiedel to Rudolf Hess, which was withdrawn from him after the war. In their statements, the members of the RHG refer positively to the publications of the Samisdat Publishers by Ernst Zündel .

While its predecessor organization gathered several thousand supporters around it in the 1970s, the later RHG isolated itself through contacts with militant neo-fascists. Nevertheless, according to its own statements, the company raised DM 162,385.45 in donations between 1988 and 1995 and is expecting a further DM 200,000 in donations for legal, translation and travel expenses. The expenses are related to the efforts to rehabilitate Rudolf Hess as a "peace aviator".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.merkur.de/bayern/brauner-erdfleck-bleibt-1331875.html
  2. ^ Serge Schmemann: Hess Is Buried Secretly by Family; Son Is Reported to Suffer Stroke, in: The New York Times, August 25, 1987, section a, p. 2.
  3. ↑ Statutes of the Rudolf-Heß-Gesellschaft e. V. (RHG), filed with the Munich District Court on January 20, 1989.
  4. ↑ Newsletter, No. 2/1995, p. 1.
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Wolf Rüdiger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German architect, son of Rudolf and Ilse Hess and godchild of Adolf Hitler
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 2001
Place of death Munich