Horst Wessel - Nazi Activist

Nazi Activist

By 1926 Wessel had become too radical for the German National People's Party, and in December of that year he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party), and its paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung (SA).

Wessel soon impressed Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party's Gauleiter, and in January 1928, during a period when the Berlin city authorities had banned the SA in an effort to curb political street violence, Wessel was sent on a trip to Vienna, to study Nazi organisational and tactical methods. In May 1929, Wessel was appointed leader of SA-Troop 34, based in the Friedrichshain district, where he lived. In October 1929 he dropped out of university to devote himself fulltime to the Nazi movement.

Wessel played the schalmei (shawm), a type of oboe popular in Germany, and he founded an SA Schalmeienkapelle (shawm band), which provided music during SA events. In early 1929, Wessel wrote the lyrics for a new Nazi fight song (Kampflied), which was first published in Goebbels's newspaper Der Angriff in September, under the title "Der Unbekannte SA-Mann" (the Unknown SA-Man). This song later became known as "Die Fahne hoch" and as the "Horst Wessel Song". It was later claimed by the Nazis that Wessel also wrote the music, but the tune was likely taken from a World War I German Imperial Navy song, and is probably originally a folk song.

At that time, the Alexanderplatz, the centre of Berlin's nightlife, was part of the territory of Wessel's SA troop. In September 1929, he met Erna Jänicke, an 18-year-old prostitute, in a bar. Soon he moved into her apartment in Große Frankfurter Straße (today Karl-Marx-Allee). The landlady was Elisabeth Salm, whose late husband had been an active Communist. After a few months, there was a dispute between Salm and Wessel over unpaid rent.

In the evening of 14 January 1930, Wessel answered a knock on his door, and was shot in the face by an assailant who then fled the scene. Wessel lingered in hospital until he died on 23 February. Albrecht Höhler, an active member of the local Communist Party (KPD) branch was sentenced to six years imprisonment for the shooting, and was executed by the Gestapo after the Nazi accession to power in 1933. The KPD, however, denied any knowledge of the attack and said it resulted from a dispute over money between Wessel and his landlady. It is possible that Salm asked her late husband's old comrades to help deal with her recalcitrant tenant. Another version says Wessel's murderer was a rival for the affections of Jänicke. It is also possible the shooting was revenge by local Communists for Wessel's alleged role in the murder of a 17-year-old Communist, Camillo Ross, earlier in the day..