December 2021 Auction
Lot 806:
Sold for: $2,000
Description
This is a very nice Hitler signed postcard done in lead pencil. The signature is in Hitler’s signing style dating to the early 1930’s. It’s a tan postcard depicting Horst Wessel, the left side gives German lyrics to Die Fahne Hoch, the national anthem of Nazi Germany. On the right is a portrait of Wessel in uniform wearing a Swastika pin on his tie. The back is dated 4/26/31 with a message written and then appears to be signed by a number of other people. April 26, 1931 is the likely date that Hitler signed this postcard, as it is postmarked April 27, 1931. There is a note on the back that states "The Fuhrer’s signature". Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel (9 October 1907 – 23 February 1930) was a Berlin Sturmführer ("Assault Leader", the lowest commissioned officer rank) of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party’s stormtroopers. After his murder in 1930, he was made into a martyr for the Nazi cause by Joseph Goebbels.Wessel first joined a number of youth groups and extreme right-wing paramilitary groups, but later resigned from them and joined the SA, the brownshirted street-fighting stormtroopers of the Nazi Party. He rose to command several SA squads and districts. On 14 January 1930, he was shot in the head by two members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was arrested and charged with his murder. Höhler was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but was forcibly taken out of jail and killed by the SA after the Nazis came to power.Wessel’s funeral was given wide attention in Berlin, with many of the Nazi elite in attendance. After his death, he became a major propaganda symbol in Nazi Germany. A march he had written the lyrics to was renamed the "Horst-Wessel-Lied" ("Horst Wessel Song"), and became the official anthem of the Nazi Party. After Adolf Hitler came to national power in 1933, the song became the co-national anthem of Germany, along with the first verse of the "Deutschlandlied", also known as "Deutschland über alles".
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