Biography
Born in Munich, Drexler was a machine-fitter before becoming a railway locksmith in Berlin in 1902. He joined the Fatherland Party during World War I. He was a poet and a member of the völkisch agitators who, together with journalist Karl Harrer, founded the German Workers' Party (DAP) in Munich with Gottfried Feder and Dietrich Eckart in 1919.
At a meeting of the Party in Munich in September 1919, the main speaker was Gottfried Feder. When he had finished speaking, a member of the audience stood up and suggested that Bavaria should break away from Prussia and form a separate nation with Austria. Adolf Hitler sprang up from the audience to rebut the argument. Drexler approached Hitler and thrust a booklet into his hand. It was My Political Awakening and, according to Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, it reflected the ideals he already believed in. Later the same day Hitler received a postcard telling him that he had been accepted for membership of what was at that time the German Workers' Party. By 1921, Hitler was rapidly becoming the undisputed leader of the Party. Drexler was thereafter moved to the purely symbolic position of honorary president, and left the Party in 1923.
Drexler was also a member of a völkisch political club for affluent members of Munich society known as the Thule Society. His membership in the NSDAP ended when it was temporarily outlawed in 1923 following the Beer Hall Putsch, in which Drexler had not taken part. In 1924 he was elected to the Bavarian state parliament for another party, in which he served as vice-president until 1928. He had no part in the NSDAP's refounding in 1925, and rejoined only after Hitler had come to power in 1933. He received the party's Blood Order in 1934 and was still occasionally used as a propaganda tool until about 1937, but he was never again allowed any real power.
Read more about this topic: Anton Drexler
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