A German mayor is refusing to remove a decorative SS steel helmet from the tombstone of a Nazi general who was one of Hitler’s oldest friends.

Hermann Kriebel was Obergruppenführer of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the brutish, original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. This “Storm Detachment” carried out pogroms and other vicious attacks on Jews in Nazi Germany and Austria in 1938.

Since his death aged 65 in 1941, Kriebel’s large tombstone in Aschau, Bavaria, has been adorned with a Nazi soldier’s helmet.

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Kriebel (left) and below with Hitler, with whom he organised the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch

For some local residents, this is an outrage. Natascha Mehler, who was born and bred in Aschau, told the JC: “The facts about Hermann Kriebel are horrible. I find a steel helmet as a grave decoration neither appropriate nor contemporary, especially if you consider the biography of Kriebel and his Nazi past.”

In 2020, historian Sabine Schalm of the Munich Institute for Urban History and Remembrance Culture contacted the local authority about the helmet.

She said that as the helmet bore the swastika, it was a public display of an unconstitutional symbol, which is an illegal act in Germany.

In response, the local authorities arranged for the swastika to be filed off earlier this year. But now Aschau’s mayor Simon Frank is refusing to remove the Nazi helmet from the grave, or even accept that allowing his grave to be decorated with such a helmet is unacceptable.

When asked by the JC why it has still not been removed, Mr Frank said he simply saw “no need”. He added: “The issue was already discussed privately in the municipal council in 2019 before my term of office. As a result, there is currently no need for action from the point of view of the municipality.”

A key problem is that although the municipal cemetery is a public area, the grave is the property of Kriebel’s family.

Now local politicians from Aschau have been joining in a series of talks where issues including Kriebel’s grave have been discussed.

Kriebel, who was born in 1876, had a lengthy military career that saw him serve in the Sea Battalion of the Imperial Navy and with the German Expeditionary Corps in China.
In 1919, he was chief of staff of the Bavarian State Association of Resident Guards, and met Hitler in 1922. He repeatedly urged him to go ahead with a putsch and march on Berlin.

Alongside Hitler, Kriebel and fellow-Nazi Erich Ludendorff were the driving forces in planning the Beer Hall Putsch of 8 November, 1923.

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Kriebel with Hitler

The last secret preparatory talks took place in Kriebel’s flat. Alongside Hitler, Kriebel led a march directly into the gunfire of the Bavarian police, who soon quashed the putsch. Hitler, Ludendorff and other conspirators were then imprisoned. Kriebel fled to the Bavarian forest but surrendered in January 1924.

He and Hitler were each sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in Landsberg fortress.
Visitors were allowed to come and go as they pleased, and the prisoners were free to meet up, drink coffee, read and play music together. The plotters were released after just one year.

Kriebel had some success as a politician in the Nazi party and in the SA, but it paled in comparison to Hitler’s rise. Eventually, he returned to China, as military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek and consul-general in Shanghai.

When he died, Hitler organised a special ceremony to honour him as a comrade-in-arms. The event was attended by leading SS and Nazi party figures, and Hitler raised his right arm in a Sieg Heil salute as Kriebel’s coffin was laid to rest.