Horst Wessel - Transfiguration
Wessel’s life and death, with repetition, song, and ritual, created a usable past. The actual facts became irrelevant — what mattered was the emotional charge the myth carried. He was used to embody Blut und Boden (blood and soil) virtues — courage, loyalty, selflessness. His death at the hands of a Communist assassin became a rallying cry for his comrades all across Germany. Joseph Goebbels turned him into the Nazis’ principle martyr. Goebbels, who had already become aware of Wessel in 1927, was the first to recognize the propaganda potential of the case: "A new martyr for the Third Reich," he wrote in his diary on February 23. Thus began the mythologizing and political exploitation of this essentially ordinary criminal case.
The Nazis sought to present themselves as a respectable force in the nationalist camp—Wessel was ultimately a bourgeois—and portray themselves as a respected force in the nationalist camp. This worked quite well through the figure of Horst Wessel. He was, of course, very young; he was an academic, someone who had studied for a few semesters at Berlin University, and who, in his political autobiography, portrayed himself as a very typical representative of the young National Socialist. And the cult then essentially worked in such a way that Wessel was built up as a particularly energetic, capable, strategically gifted, and also courageous young National Socialist—after his death, that is. And he was particularly highly regarded by the National Socialists for going into the classic working-class neighborhoods to promote National Socialism there, and that was also a milieu the Nazis had to work hard to develop. He was portrayed as a worker by the National Socialists, even though he never was one.
The popular Horst Wessel movement somehow took on a life of its own, and there were a number of children's books that addressed the topic for different age groups. This myth — despite being very constructed on the one hand — was evidently very well received by sections of the population, and things were projected onto this figure that were viewed with suspicion by the Propaganda Ministry. In addition, there was soon a dispute between Goebbels and the NSDAP on the one hand, and the Wessel family on the other. It was primarily the mother and sister who were still alive, and that wasn't particularly helpful for the future. Wessel's mother appears to have exerted considerable influence, ensuring that her son "came across" as virtuous and well-behaved — an immoral relationship with an ex-prostitute (from the perspective of the time) was completely unacceptable.
His figure was, of course, always present as a name through the song, the Horst Wessel Song. In the SA "storm bars" -- which, according to the police, grew fivefold, to 107, between 1928 and 1931 -- SA members in their brown uniforms sang the anthem Wessel had supposedly written: "The flag on high! The ranks tightly closed! The SA marches with quiet, steady step." After 1933, the Horst Wessel Song became the Third Reich’s national anthem, legally protected and mandatory at public occasions. By ritualizing it, the Nazis embedded Wessel into the emotional core of the movement. There were Horst Wessel Streets, Horst Wessel Squares, a Horst Wessel Hospital — Friedrichshain even became Horst Wessel City.
The Deutschlandlied, the German national anthem, dates back to the liberal national movement of the 19th century. The words stem from the pen of August Heinrich Hoffmann (who added “von Fallersleben” to his name), a patriotic liberal poet and literary scholar. He wrote this "Song of the Germans" on the island of Helgoland, then a British possession, on 26 August 1841, weaving into the text quotations from and allusions to other popular songs. The melody, which predates the poem and was already envisioned by the poet as the music to which the poem should be set, was composed by Joseph Haydn in 1797 for the Austrian imperial anthem Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (“God Save Emperor Francis”).
During the era of National Socialist tyranny, this state symbol – like the flag – was reinterpreted to serve the purposes of the dictatorship: The first verse of the Deutschlandlied was sung together with "Die Fahne hoch!" (Lift the Flag!) - the Horst-Wessel-Lied (“Horst Wessel Song”), a Nazi fighting song. After World War II, the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany had difficulty deciding on a national anthem.
In the autumn of 1932, the first edition of the novel about Horst Wessel, conceived as a heroic saga, was published. Ewers is considered a "national revolutionary" writer both because of his Horst Wessel novel and because of the Freikorps novel "Riders in German Night". With the biographical novel »Horst Wessel. A German Destiny«, the popular author Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871–1943) made a spectacular contribution to the ideological glorification of the historical Horst Wessel in National Socialist propaganda.
In ethnic-nationalist and National Socialist circles, however, the book initially met with a consistently positive response, while it was vehemently condemned by the entire spectrum of the political left. Ernst Röhm (long-time SA chief), Baldur von Schirach (Reich Youth Leader), and the Hohenzollern Prince August Wilhelm showered the author with praise; even Heinrich Himmler (Reich Leader of the SS) thanked Ewers for the copy he had sent him.
Ewers' relationship with the National Socialists deteriorated unexpectedly and quickly after their seizure of power, dues to the (supposed) lack of anti-Semitism in Ewers' Wessel novel. From the spring of 1933, the slogan of the "fight for the streets" had to be abandoned, as the brutality of the SA gangs was no longer opportune for a party that was now supporting the state, and at the latest since mid-1934, in connection with the so-called "Röhm Putsch", the SA as a whole had outlived its usefulness as an instrument of power (as is well known, the Reichswehr had prevailed internally).
While the film adaptation of 'Horst Wessel' was still being shot in 1934, the Röhm Putsch took place and the major purge within the party, with which Hitler got rid of not only all inconvenient members but also all revolutionary activist elements he no longer needed after his successful seizure of power. Above all, the SA's adventurous and romantically disguised thuggery, which Ewers had glorified in 'Horst Wessel,' which was also intended to be a triumphant novel for the SA, was no longer needed. Eweres fell victim to the rabid anti-Semites around Alfred Rosenberg (at times an internal competitor of Joseph Goebbels). Extremely anti-Semitic circles that brought Ewers into such disrepute that his writings were burned in 1933.
Bertolt Brecht’s 1935 essay “The Horst Wessel Legend” was written in exile in Denmark, after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933. Brecht, committed to exposing fascism’s mechanisms, analyzed how the Nazis constructed Wessel’s cult of personality. His essay is both a critique of Nazi myth-making and an example of Brecht’s theory of ideology and art. This reflects Brecht’s Marxist concern with the machinery of ideology rather than with individuals. Brecht argues that the Nazis deliberately transformed Wessel’s personal story — full of ordinary and even sordid details — into a legend that served their political needs. Wessel was not a heroic figure, but rather a minor activist, killed during a personal quarrel. The Nazis erased the unheroic aspects of his life and death and replaced them with a sanitized legend. The Nazis needed martyrs to bind their movement emotionally. Wessel’s figure was elevated to symbolize youthful sacrifice, loyalty, and struggle, even though his real biography offered little of that.
Brecht showed how the Nazis mobilized cultural tools — posters, songs, ceremonies, parades — to embed the Wessel myth in popular consciousness. He identifies this as a deliberate political technique: turning private deaths into public spectacle. Brecht stressed that symbols, even built on falsehoods, can gain independent power. The Horst Wessel Lied, once sung widely, no longer depended on the truth of Wessel’s life; it worked because of its repetition and ritual function.
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