Fritz Reinhardt

Friedrich Rudolph (Fritz) Reinhardt (3 April 1895 – 17 June 1969) was an official in the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and in the government of the Third Reich, most notably, State Secretary in the German Finance Ministry. Early life The son of a bookbinder, Reinhardt was born in Ilmenau. He was educated in Ilmenau through high school, studied trade and commerce, and worked in business in Germany and abroad. At the outbreak of World War I, Reinhardt was in Riga, Livonia, and was interned by Russian forces. He ended up spending the war years in an internment camp in Siberia as an enemy alien, only returning to Germany in 1918. In 1919, he became the headmaster at the Thuringian Commercial School (Thüringische Handelsschule), and the head of the Academy for Economics and Taxation. From 1922, he worked as a tax administrator at the Thuringian State Finance Office. In 1924, he founded the first German Correspondence Trade School (Fernhandelschule) and became its Director. Nazi Party career Reinhardt was a member of the Deutsch-Volkischen Bund, a right-wing nationalist organization, and in 1923 he joined the Nazi Party before it was banned in the aftermath of the Beer Hall Putsch. Rejoining the newly refounded Party on 23 October 1925 (membership number 45,959) Reinhardt quickly established a career with his talent for speaking and his knowledge of economic and taxation systems. In 1926, he became the Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Group Leader) in Herrsching, in 1927 the Bezirksleiter (District Leader) in Upper Bavaria-South, and on 1 June 1928 he was named Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria-Swabia. On 1 October, the Gau was redesignated Upper Bavaria when Swabia became a separate Gau under Karl Wahl. In 1928 Reinhardt established the Correspondence Courses for Party Speakers at the Fernhandelschule. From 1929 to 1933, Reinhardt was the leader of the Rednerschule, the Nazi's official training school for Party speakers in Herrsching, and some 6000 party members eventually received propagandistic training there. In September 1930, Reinhardt became a member of the Reichstag for electoral constituency 24 (Upper Bavaria-Swabia). He took on the leading role in the NSDAP in financial issues, serving as the head of the Nazi Party faction on the budget committee and the Reich debt committee in the Reichstag. On 1 November 1930, he resigned as Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria due to his other increasing workloads and was succeeded by Adolf Wagner.