The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel

by Daniel Siemens

On 14 January 1930, Horst Wessel, a young and ambitious member of the SA was shot at close range at his home in Berlin. Although the crime was never completely solved, the murder was most likely committed by a group of communists with close ties to the city's gangland. Wessel later died from his injuries. Joseph Goebbels, whose attention had already been drawn to Wessel as a possible future Nazi leader, was the first to recognize the propaganda potential of the case. 'A young martyr for the Third Reich' he wrote in his diary on 23 February 1930 immediately after receiving the news of Wessel's death. This was the beginning of the myth-making that transformed an ordinary individual into a masculine role model for an entire generation. Two months later, thousands of people lined the streets for Wessel's funeral parade and Goebbels delivered a graveside eulogy. In the years that followed - and as Nazi power increased - Horst Wessel became the hero of the Nazi movement - with his elaborate memorial quickly becoming a site of pilgrimage.
The song Die Fahne Hoch for which Wessel had written the lyrics (and which subsequently became popularly known as the Horst Wessel Song) became the official Nazi party anthem and the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, where Wessel was murdered was renamed Horst-Wessel-Stadt in his honour. Numerous biographies and films followed. Using previously unseen material, Daniel Siemens provides a fascinating and gripping account of the background to Horst Wessel's murder and uncovers how and why the Nazis made him a political hero. He examines the Horst Wessel 'cult' which emerged in the aftermath of Wessel's death and the murders of revenge, particularly against Communists, committed by the SA and Gestapo after 1933. At the same time, the story of Horst Wessel provides a portrait of the Nazi propaganda machine at its most effective and most chilling.

Genres: History, Nazi Party, World War II

336 pages, Hardcover

First published December 24, 2012

Reviews

[Joseph Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a formidable examination of not just Horst Wessel (the son of a protestant minister drawn to the banner of the Nazis), but the whole concept of martyr cults and how their political expediency sometimes tramples the truth underfoot. These sorts of hagiographies based more on the need of the living rather than on anything like honoring the memory of the dead tend to cast a lot of fascinating (and sometimes ugly) realities to the side. To show how the phenomenon is a cross-cultural constant, just take the example of the young gay man Matthew Shepard, canonized by some as the victim of a fatal homophobic attack, who retrospective inquiry suggests may have actually been killed for burning someone on a meth amphetamine deal. Others likewise tried to re-purpose the death of Cassie Bernall in the Columbine Massacre into a tale of Christian martyrdom.

Siemens' book is thorough without being exhaustive, and takes the reader on a journey through the typically pastoral childhood of a German boy to the street fights between Nazis and Communists in the unstable Weimar Republic. It then moves on into the Nazi years and the post-War era when Germans seemed to develop collective amnesia about the fiery abyss in which the whole country had sunk for about a decade.

The work is well-written and, just as important, well-organized. There are a good number of photographs scattered throughout the book, of both victims and perpetrators (the lines not always being clear, since quite a bit of the "Kampfzeit" involved mutual combat and there were few if any neutral observers).

The book is ultimately essential to understanding how political movements with the trappings of cults turn flesh-and-blood creatures into symbols who outgrow their human dimensions, and cast long shadows over history. Highest recommendation for history buffs and those who just want to know how thorough research can be integrated into a highly-readable and compelling account.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my minor literary obsessions is the life and work of the German writer Hanns Heinz Ewers, author of horror and decadence, who wrote the often-filmed ALRAUNE. Biographical info on Ewers is scarce in English, so when a compadre told me this disturbing account of Nazi herocraft included details on Ewers' flirtation with the Third Reich, when he volunteered to write the official party bio of dead Horst. Hanns and the Nazis were a bad mix, partly because Ewers more recent work included FUNDVOGEL, a fantasy about gender swapping. His intrusion into the Wessel travesty did not end well for him or his postwar reputation.

The book itself is excellent and stunningly well researched, tracing Wessel's life and career as a street thug prior to his assassination. The repercussions of the killing, the elevation to near godhood, the commercialization and exploitation, the insane funhouse of justice, and the Cold War aftermath are all fascinating.

[Yusuf Aden]

Good relatively unbiased book that looks with empathy at the motives of Horst Wessel and other youg germans living during this time. Rather than pathologizing their stance as irrational, Siemens (jew?) does a good job looking at the attractions of the movement and what a escape it was from day to day life in the Weimar Republic. 8/10

[Nathaniel Flakin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horst Wessel was a local Nazi leader in Friedrichshain, a very red neighborhood in Berlin. The 22-year-old was shot in his apartment by a group of communists on January 14, 1930. Wessel died almost a month later, and Joseph Goebbels transformed him into the Nazis' central martyr. After 1933, streets and squares and schools and hospitals and even Friedrichshain itself were named after Wessel. The Horst Wessel Song became the national anthem of the Third Reich — in fact it was the very last thing the Nazis played on the radio after announcing their unconditional surrender.

Two myths have since competed about Wessel's murder: the Nazis said he was killed by a red hit squad because he was such an effective Nazi; the communists said he was a pimp and was killed in a dispute with another pimp, and it was a coincidence that they were aligned to opposing parties. (Season 3 of Babylon Berlin combines both versions with an overarching conspiracy theory.) Both these myths are false, and the real story combines a banal dispute about rent with violent political struggles.

The East German columnist Heinz Knobloch published a short book about the murder of Wessel in 1993. That book is told from the perspective of the Jewish communist Sally Epstein, who supposedly stood watch outside during the murder and was executed by the Nazis in 1935. Knobloch's wonderful book "Der arme Epstein" is, unfortunately, not available in English.

This is the other book about Wessel, from the historian Daniel Siemens. (It was published in English as "The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel," but I only read the German version.) This book is three times longer than Knobloch's, and contains far more detail, especially about the Nazis' pagan cult around Wessel — an interesting fate for the son of a protestant pastor. A long chapter traces what happened to everyone involved in the murder — it will be no surprise that after 1945, the surviving Nazis fared much better than the few surviving communists did.

After reading Knobloch, though, I was left wondering if this book was actually necessary. All the detail is interesting, but… Knobloch explains in a few sentences that Wessel's father, the pastor Ludwig Wessel, was a fanatical war monger ("he was unafraid of death — for others"). Do we need, in addition, 10-20 more pages about reactionary tendencies in early 20th century German protestantism?

This book is written according to the needs of the academy, with plenty of references to obscure theoretical debates. But the author, despite years of research, doesn't seem to have much of an idea of what this story *means.* To be fair, though, no one would look good in a direct literary showdown with an amazing author like Knobloch. Siemens, to his great credit, got the Berlin prosecutor's office to reverse the convictions of Sally Epstein and Hans Ziegel in 2009.

I am going to offer a walking tour about the murder of Horst Wessel soon. I am really excited about this, and I think I can draw out more political lessons than this academic book allows.