The Making of a Nazi Hero

Daniel Siemens’ fascinating book, which originally appeared under the German title Horst Wessel: Tod und Verklärung eines Nationalsozialisten in 2009, is an outstanding example of micro-history. That is, Siemens takes a single historical incident—the murder of Nazi storm trooper Horst Wessel—and analyses that event, as well as developments leading up to and resulting from it. The product of the author’s effort is a thought-provoking overview of much of twentieth-century German history. Siemens begins his analysis with an account of the murder itself. Even today, historians cannot describe definitively what happened on 14 January 1930, when the Communist Ali Höhler shot SA man Horst Wessel in the latter’s apartment in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district. Following the crime, the Communists and the Nazis each propagated their own views concerning Höhler’s motivations. The National Socialists, of course, insisted that the killing was an act of political terrorism designed to silence one of the movement’s most effective fighters and propagandists. The Communists, seeking to undermine the Nazi interpretation of events, held that the entire incident was nothing more than a dispute between pimps arguing over the services of a prostitute, Erna Jaenichen. Relying upon every archival source imaginable, Siemens concludes that neither of these narratives hold water, and the murder was the result of Wessel’s refusal to pay the rent demanded by his landlady, Elizabeth Salm. Regardless of the motivations of the participants, there is no doubt that Wessel died of his wounds on 23 February 1930, becoming arguably the most important martyr to the Nazi cause.

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