A special role in the early days of the National
Socialist movement was played by the poet and dramatist Dietrich Eckart, who
came from Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz. He joined the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei in the summer of
1919. The pinnacle of his philosophical work was the German translation of
Henrik Ibsen’s screenplay „Peer Gynt“, which was published in 1912. Eckart was
also author and editor of several anti-Semitic periodicals; for example the
weekly „Auf gut deutsch“, which was published since 1919 with support of the
Thule Society. Dietrich Eckart, who discovered Hitler in September 1919, became
for the latter a friend and teacher. He was with his radical nationalistic,
anti-democratic and anti-Semitic views Hitler’s ideological example. Dietrich
Eckart was already in 1920 convinced that the Jews needed to be destroyed.
Eckart got into trouble when in 1923
the public prosecuter decided during the period of the Republic of Weimar -
which was then very common - to indict the writer for defamation of character
in connection with his anti-Semitic attacks on the then Reichspräsident
Friedrich Ebert. The immediate cause was an in Bavarian dialect worded
pamphlet, „Miesbacher Haberfesttreiben 1922“, in which Friedrich Ebert was
presented as an instrument of Jewish, anti-German interests. Dietrich Eckart
did not appear at the session of the „Leipziger Staatsgerichtshof“, which took
place on 12th March 1923, so an arrest warrant was issued. At the end of April
it became clear that the „Leipziger Kriminalpolizei“ was looking seriously for
Dietrich Eckart. Adolf Hitler ordered armed SA-men to stand guard in front of
his house, but the arrest just seemed to be a matter of time.
Christian Weber, one of the few
intimate friends of Adolf Hitler and one of the early fighters of the NSDAP -
he had the party number 15 -, knew a retreat. He had a friend, Bruno Büchner,
who was leaseholder of the guest-house Moritz, the later Platterhof at the
Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden, with whom the wanted Dietrich Eckart could be
bided. The Chief of Staff of the SA, Ernst Röhm, secretly organized the
inconspicuous relocation of Dietrich Eckart to Berchtesgaden A few days later
Adolf Hitler visited him there. During the war, in the year 1941, he remembered
this first day at the Obersalzberg in one of his nightly monologues.
„I only knew that he was in a
guest-house above Berchtesgaden. One day in April I asked my younger sister to
come with me. I told her that I had a meeting with a few gentlemen there and
left her in Berchtesgaden to go up with Weber on foot. Now it went sheer uphill
and the road seemed interminable. It was just a narrow path in the snow. ‘Have
you gone mad?’, I said. Does that road never end? Do you think that I am going
to climb the Himalaya; that I have become a chamois? Good heavens, could you
not find a better place? If there is still a long way ahead of us I prefer to
return, pass the night down below and climb the mountain tomorrow by day.’ He: ‘We
will be at the top soon.’ And suddenly I saw in front of me a house: the
guesthouse Moritz. ‘Do we have rooms there?’ ‘No, but since there are no shoes
standing outside, we can go in.’ It had not been possible for us to announce
our arrival by phone. ‘Let us see if Dietrich Eckart is there.’ We knocked at
the door. ‘Diedi, Wolf is here.’’ He opened the door in his night-shirt. We
greeted each other. He was very touched. ‘What time do I have to get up
tomorrow morning?’ He: ‘At 7.00 AM is best.’’ - I had not seen anything of the
landscape yet. The next morning when I woke up, it was already light. I went to
the veranda and looked outside. What I saw was marvellous. The view of the
Untersberg was indescribable.’ Eckart was already downstairs. Frau Büchner
smiled friendly and Eckart introduced me to the Büchners: ‘This is my young
friend, Herr Wolf.’ No one suspected that I was the notorious Adolf Hitler.
Eckart stayed there as Doctor Hoffmann.“
After the failed march on the
Feldherrnhalle, 9th November 1923 - to which Eckart had encouraged Hitler - he
was taken into custody the next day. Because of his heart-disease, he was
released shortly before Christmas. On 26th December 1923 Dietrich Eckart died
at the age of fifty-five. He was buried on 30th December at the mountain-cemetery
in Berchtesgaden. Until this day one can find his impressive grave-stone there.
After 1923 Adolf Hitler glorified
his mentor and „fatherly friend“, as he called him in public, by erecting the
privileged room of Dietrich Eckart as a memorial. Nothing was allowed to be
changed in this room. Only a bust of the visionary poet was added. The Brown
House in Munich was also added. When, in 1938, a start was made with the
renovation and extension of the Platterhof - the plans foresaw a house with 150
rooms and 300 beds as well as all other necessary rooms - the old buildings
were torn down except for the Dietrich Eckart room, which was not touched. The
new Platterhof had to be built around this room.
Eckart was a key-figure in the early
rise of Adolf Hitler. Later he was frequently called a seer, because he had
already announced Adolf Hitler as the future Führer of the Germans at the
beginning-stage of the Movement.
Hitler, who regarded himself as a
disciple of Dietrich Eckart and expressed in a homage that Eckart „has written
poems as beautiful as Goethe“, honoured him as no other of his old fighters. In
his book „Mein Kampf“ he called him literally a martyr and dedicated the
closing sentence of his book to him:
And among them I could also reckon
that man who as no one else has devoted his life to the awakening of his, of
our nation in writing, poetry, thought and finally in the deed:
Dietrich Eckart.
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