Artur Dinter

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Arthur Dinter
Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia
In office
6 April 1925 – 30 September 1927
Appointed byAdolf Hitler
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byFritz Sauckel
Personal details
Born(1876-06-27)27 June 1876
Offenburg, Baden, Germany
Political partyNazi Party
Alma materUniversity of Strasbourg
OccupationWriter
Playwright
Theatre Director
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
Branch/service Imperial German Army
Years of service1914–1918
RankHauptmann
UnitAlsatian Infantry Regiment No. 136
Battles/warsWorld War I
AwardsIron Cross, Second Class

Artur Dinter (27 June 1876 – 21 May 1948) was a German writer and Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia.

Biography

Dinter was born in

Alsace-Lorraine, German Empire (now France) to Josef Dinter, a customs adviser, and his wife Berta, née Hoffmann, and he was baptized in the Catholic Church
.

After doing his school-leaving examination, Dinter began studying natural sciences and philosophy in 1895 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the University of Strasbourg. From 1901 to 1903, he worked as a chemistry assistant at the University of Strasbourg. He graduated in 1903 summa cum laude. Already while he was studying, he had been undertaking endeavours as a writer. His 1906 play Die Schmuggler ("The Smugglers") was awarded a first prize.

After graduation, Dinter was director of the botanical school garden in

Alldeutscher Verband
, from which he was excluded in 1917.

World War I

Dinter took part in

völkisch
movement.

Bestselling völkisch writer

In 1919 Dinter established himself as a writer in Weimar, after his 1917 anti-Semitic bestseller Die Sünde wider das Blut ("The Sin Against the Blood") came out, which was to sell more than 260,000 copies by 1934, and which vividly set forth in writing the stereotypes of the racial-völkisch perceptions of his time. Heartened as Dinter was by the great success, this novel became the first instalment in a trilogy later given the name "Die Sünden der Zeit" ("The Sins of the Time"). A short summary of the content of these books can be found in Richard Steigmann-Gall (2003), The Holy Reich, pp. 30–31.

Völkisch movement and the NSDAP

Dinter's thinking in the years after the war became steadily more radical and more

Deutsch-Völkische Freiheitspartei ("German- Peoples Freedom Party") and forged closer ties with Adolf Hitler. Dinter was elected in February 1924 to the Thuringian Landtag as a representative of the electoral alliance Völkisch-Sozialer Block ("Peoples Social Bloc"), becoming leader of its Landtag faction. However, in a dispute with other party members, he was removed as leader in July. He drew ever nearer the Nazi Party's position, and Hitler, while still in Landsberg Prison in December 1924, appointed Dinter the Nazi Party State Leader of Thuringia. Thuringia was the only German State that had not banned the Nazi Party after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923.[1] At the same time, Dinter became publisher of the newspaper Der Nationalsozialist, which appeared in Weimar. He fell out with his former associates from the VSB, leading to his expulsion from that party in December 1924. In February 1925, after Hitler had been released early from prison, the Nazi Party was re-founded after having been disbanded after the débâcle in Munich. For his "loyalty" to the Party, Dinter received the single-digit membership number "5", when re-enrolled in April 1925. On 6 April 1925 Hitler officially appointed him Landesleiter, later redesignated Gauleiter, of Thuringia.[2]

Deutsche Volkskirche

It soon began to stand out quite clearly that Dinter's goals were not so much political as overridingly religious. In 1927 he founded the Geistchristliche Religionsgemeinschaft ("Spiritual Christian Religion Community"), which in 1934 was given the new name "Deutsche Volkskirche" (German People's Church). Its goal was to "de-Judaicize" Christian teaching. The

Jewish. Dinter's special course promptly led to conflict with Hitler. Dinter's views that Nazism should lead a religious reformation were increasingly unpopular in the Party, and jeopardized the religious neutrality that Hitler cultivated.[3] On 30 September 1927, Hitler removed Dinter as Gauleiter and replaced him with Fritz Sauckel. Dinter was deeply shocked but increased his opposition, and started attacking Hitler in his magazine Das Geistchristentum. At a membership meeting on 2 August 1928, Dinter called for establishing a Party Senate to advise Hitler on all major policy issues. Hitler forcefully opposed the resolution, claiming sole leadership authority. Amid a chorus of boos, the proposal was unanimously defeated. Dinter still persisted, refusing to accede to Hitler's sole authority and continued his written attacks. This led to his formal expulsion from the Party on 11 October 1928.[4]
Even in the years that followed, the polemics against Hitler continued. In 1932, he even became the NSDAP's electoral rival, along with his "Dinterbund".

Later life

After the

Reichsmark for his anti-Semitic writings which the court ruled helped provide the intellectual basis for the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.[5]

Dinter died in 1948 in Offenburg, Baden, at the age of 71.

Quotation

"Ein Körper ist ja nur das Instrument, auf dem die Seele spielt."
"A body is only the instrument on which the soul plays."
(Artur Dinter in Die Sünde wider das Blut, 1917)

References

  1. ISBN 0-8229-3183-4
    .
  2. ISBN 978-1-932970-21-0
    .
  3. ^ Miller & Schulz 2012, pp. 121–122.
  4. ^ Orlow 1969, pp. 135–136.
  5. ^ Miller & Schulz 2012, p. 123.

Selected works

  • Jugenddrängen. Briefe und Tagebuchblätter eines Jünglings, 1897
  • Der Dämon, Schauspiel in fünf Akten, 1906
  • Das eiserne Kreuz. Volksstück in 5 Akten, 1913
  • Weltkrieg und Schaubühne, 1916
  • Mein Ausschluß aus dem "Verbande Deutscher Bühnenschriftsteller", 1917
  • Lichststrahlen aus dem Talmud, 1919
  • Die Sünden der Zeit (Trilogie)
    • Bd. I: Die Sünde wider das Blut. Ein Zeitroman, 1917
    • Bd. II: Die Sünde wider den Geist. Ein Zeitroman, 1920
    • Bd. III: Die Sünde wider die Liebe. Ein Zeitroman, 1922
  • Der Kampf um die Geistlehre, 1921
  • Das Evangelium unseres Herrn und Heilandes Jesus Christus, nach den Berichten des Johannes, Markus, Lukas und Matthäus im Geiste der Wahrheit, 1923
  • Völkische Programm-Rede im Thüringer Landtag, 1924
  • Ursprung, Ziel und Weg der deutschvölkischen Freiheitsbewegung. Das völkisch-soziale Programm, 1924
  • 197 Thesen zur Vollendung der Reformation. Die Wiederherstellung der reinen Heilandslehre, 1924

Literature

External links

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