met Lina, the party had achieved electoral successes of which Hitler, not
even a German citizen at this point, could hardly have dreamed. In the
general elections of September 1930 – barely three months before
Reinhard and Lina first met – the Nazi Party had secured nearly
6.5 million votes, establishing itself as the second largest party in the
German national parliament, the Reichstag.116
The influence of Lina and her family on Heydrich’s political awakening
is difficult to overestimate, but it was only in the following year, triggered
by the greatest personal disaster in his life, that his complete conversion to
Nazism would begin. For the time being, he was glad that he had passed
the initial test of meeting Lina’s parents: Jürgen von Osten could find
no fault with Heydrich, not even when his future son-in-law confessed
that no financial riches were to be expected from the once flourishing
music conservatories in Halle and Dresden. A smart, ambitious naval
officer with a seemingly secure pension and an apparently bright career
ahead of him was more than the Ostens might have expected and it suited
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43
Jürgen von Osten’s image of a prospective son-in-law. An official engage-
ment followed at Christmas, which Reinhard and Lina celebrated with her
parents.117
Back at work after his first visit to Lütjenbrode, Reinhard wrote to his
parents-in-law on 3 January 1931:
Dear parents-in-law! Back in service and hard at work, I would like to
thank you once more with all my heart for having received me so kindly
and like a son in your house. I will never forget my first days in Lina’s
childhood home. I am so grateful to you for your consent to our engage-
ment. I realize more and more every day that it was the right thing to
do. Lina does not have to resort to secrecy in Kiel and we can be
together often and get to know each other better and better without
having to pay attention to the gossip of others. – Regarding our wedding
date: please, please allow us to marry in September (17.!) . . . There is
nothing worse than uncertainty. I would be very, very grateful to you if
you could agree on September – my parents, too, will be available then.
Accept my sincere thanks, Your Reinhard.118
What Heydrich had conveniently omitted to mention to his future bride
was that she was not the only woman in his life at the time – a detail that
would shake the very foundations of his life.
Dismissal and Crisis
The young couple’s happiness was short lived. Heydrich sent the newspaper
announcement of his engagement to several friends and acquaintances.
One of the recipients was a young woman from Berlin, whom Heydrich
had met and befriended more than half a year earlier at a bal organized
by the Colonial Women’s School in Rendsburg. Since the two had enjoyed
a sexual relationship over the fol owing months and had visited each
other in Berlin and Kiel, the young woman had assumed that she was
herself engaged to Heydrich. Reinhard, who continued to cultivate the
relationship even after he had met Lina, invited her to Kiel and, despite her
request for a separate room in a hotel, encouraged her to spend the night
in his living quarters. Further rapprochements probably occurred on this
occasion. In any case, the young woman saw herself as compromised and
reacted to the receipt of Heydrich’s engagement notice with a nervous
breakdown.119
Ever since the end of the Second World War, there has been much
speculation about the identity of the young woman in question, but al that
can be said with certainty is that her father must have had close connections
44
HITLER’S HANGMAN
to the navy’s senior officer staff. In response to his daughter’s breakdown, he
lodged an official complaint against Heydrich with the Commander-in-
Chief of the German navy, Admiral Erich Raeder. The complaint had
serious consequences for Heydrich: in early January 1931, he was summoned
before a military court of honour under the chairmanship of Admiral
Gottfried Hansen, Commander of the Baltic Fleet, and invited to explain
himself.120 A broken engagement promise was a clear violation of the officer
corps’ code of conduct, but it was not a major offence automatical y
warranting the immediate dismissal of the officer in question. The embar-
rassing episode could have ended in little more than a reprimand for
what was, after al , a ‘girl’s story’, but Heydrich’s arrogant attitude got him
into trouble with the three members of the court: Admiral Hansen, his
training officer Gustav Kleikamp and the senior member of Heydrich’s
crew, Hubertus von Wangenheim. Instead of accepting responsibility and
settling for a minor punishment, Heydrich insisted that the woman had
herself initiated their sexual relationship. He also denied ever having
promised her marriage in return, describing their liaison in dismissive
terms that annoyed the members of the court. Although no records of
the court hearing have survived, having possibly been destroyed by the
Gestapo in the 1930s, the proceedings were reconstructed by fel ow
officers after the Second World War. Heydrich’s roommate in Kiel,
Heinrich Beucke, recal ed that ‘Heydrich sought to wash his hands of the
matter and to implicate [the girl in question]. His attitude before the court
of honour, his lacking the guts to tel the truth, to accept the blame and to
defend the woman, that was what led to his dismissal, not the actual offence
itself.’121
One of the members of the court of honour, Gustav Kleikamp,
confirmed this version and testified that Heydrich’s ‘proven insincerity,
aimed at whitewashing himself ’, irritated the court more than the actual
offence. The most junior member of the court, Hubertus von Wangenheim,
apparently pressed for Heydrich’s dismissal, arguing that his behaviour
had dishonoured the German officer corps.122
The court concluded its deliberations by asking whether it was ‘possible
for an officer guilty of such unforgivable behaviour to remain in the navy’,
although it avoided making any recommendation itself. The matter was
passed on to Admiral Raeder, who decided that Heydrich was ‘unworthy’
of being an officer and should be dismissed immediately. Kleikamp added
emphatically: ‘It was a decision which – if harsh – was recognized by all
as impartial and correct and to which there was no alternative for anybody
familiar with the facts.’123
On 30 April 1931 Heydrich’s promising naval career came to an abrupt
and unexpected end. ‘Discharge from the navy’, Lina recalled after the
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45
war, ‘was the heaviest blow of his life . . . It was not the lost earning
capacity which weighed on him, but the fact that with every fibre of
his being he had clung on to his career as an officer.’124 At first he
hoped for reinstatement, but an official appeal against the dismissal
submitted to Reich President Paul von Hindenburg was turned down.
Heydrich was suddenly confronted by the grim reality of being unem-
ployed in 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression. Ejected from
the navy less than a year before he would have secured his entitlement
to a pension, his future looked gloomy, even though he continued to
receive a severance payment of 200 Reichsmarks a month for the next
two years. He locked himself in his room and cried for days in rage and
self-pity.125
Heydrich’s dismissal indeed occurred at the worst possible moment.
Following the crash of the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street on
29 October 1929, the German economic situation had deteriorated
dramatically. Millions of jobless workers were plunged into terrible
suffering, while German industry and trade experienced dramatic drops in
turnover. The economic crisis was further exacerbated by the collapse of
the last Weimar coalition government and its replacement by a minority
cabinet under the authoritarian Centre Party politician Heinrich Brüning.
Brüning’s deflationary policies, designed to demonstrate Germany’s
inability to pay further reparations to the Western Allies, exacerbated the
already grim situation. By the spring of 1931, there were over 4.5 million
Germans unemployed, a figure that would to rise to more than 6 million
by February 1932.126
Shortly after his discharge Heydrich and his fiancée travelled to Halle
in order to inform his family of his dismissal and ask for their financial
support. But bad news awaited him there as well: the Conservatory, already
under serious strain since the post-war hyperinflation and the invention of
modern forms of musical entertainment such as radios and gramophones,
was facing bankruptcy. Bruno Heydrich, who had suffered a debilitating
stroke earlier that year, was no longer able to involve himself in the running
of the family business and now left most of the teaching to his wife and
daughter.127 Heydrich’s parents were thus no longer in a position to
support the couple. Elisabeth Heydrich, who until recently had been
able to afford a maid, had to do the housework herself when not teaching
the piano. Besides her husband, she now had to feed her daughter
Maria and her unemployed son-in-law Wolfgang Heindorf, as well as
her youngest son Heinz Siegfried, who had abandoned his studies in
Dresden and his fiancée, Gertrud Werther. The failed navy career of their
eldest son added to their own problems and Reinhard’s parents accused
him of foolishly ruining his future. In desperation Elisabeth argued
46
HITLER’S HANGMAN
endlessly with her brothers, Hans and Kurt, about selling the increasingly
improfitable Dresden Conservatory, which her father, Eugen Krantz, had
bequeathed to his three children. After the war, Lina vividly remembered
the depressing atmosphere in the Heydrich home, where the daily worries
about bills contrasted sharply with the remnants of the old furniture,
expensive china and silver cutlery that testified to past affluence and social
prestige.128
Worse was to come. In May 1931, Bruno Heydrich was informed
that, after a series of complaints about falling teaching standards, his
Conservatory was to be examined by a government commission. The
report submitted by the commission revealed that the Conservatory no
longer provided the necessary teaching level required for state certification
and that his pupils had demonstrated insufficient knowledge of their craft.
Physically incapacitated, financially ruined and professionally a broken
man, Heydrich responded to the school authorities by admitting ‘that my
seminar organization and training, which I have tested for thirty years, no
longer fulfils today’s expectations’. He voluntarily renounced state recog-
nition for his teaching seminar.129
Economic hardship also called into question Reinhard’s marriage to
Lina. Reinhard’s mother blamed Lina for his dismissal and her own
parents, too, had second thoughts about the relationship. Marrying an
unemployed ex-naval officer was a far less attractive prospect than a son-
in-law with high social standing and a dependable salary and pension.
Although Lina refused to break the engagement, marriage was impossible
until Reinhard found another job. Day after day, Lina urged her fiancé to
find an appropriate career that could sustain their future life as a family.130
Over the following four weeks, Heydrich considered and dismissed
different career options and sent his surprisingly positive certificate of
discharge from the navy to various potential employers:
All superior officers state that Heydrich is a conscientious and reliable
officer with a serious approach to duty . . . who has undertaken zealously
all duties required of him. Towards his superior officers he conducted
himself openly and in a proper military manner and is well liked
by fellow officers. He has treated the soldiers under his command well
and justly. Heydrich is physically very fit and he is a good fencer and
sailor.131
Heydrich did indeed receive several job offers, despite the economic
crisis. A friend from Kiel, Werner Mohr, offered him an opportunity to
work as a sailing instructor at the Hanseatic Yachting School in the town
of Neustadt on the Baltic coast of Holstein.132 Despite the relatively
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47
handsome monthly salary of 380 Reichsmarks, Heydrich rejected the offer
from Neustadt, as well as similar offers from Kiel and Ratzeburg; he