Ernst Moritz Hess

Ernst Moritz Hess (20 March 1890 – 14 September 1983) was a baptized German Jew who served in the Imperial German Army during the First World War. He commanded the company of the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 in which Adolf Hitler served during the war. During the inter-war period he served as a judge before being forced out of office after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws by the Nazis in 1935, as he was classified as a "full-blooded Jew" due to his mother being Jewish, even though he was baptised a Protestant.

He emigrated with his family to Bolzano in Italy to escape Nazi persecution but was eventually forced to move back to Germany, though as a former war comrade of Hitler's he was granted protection and some privileges for a while. However, his privileges were removed in 1941 and he spent the rest of the war as a forced labourer; his sister was murdered in Auschwitz but his mother managed to escape to Switzerland in 1945. Following the war he began a new career in railway management and was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services to the Deutsche Bundesbahn.

Early life and war service

Born in Gelsenkirchen in what was then the Rhine Province of the Kingdom of Prussia, Hess lived in Düsseldorf before the First World War. His father Julius was a lawyer and his mother Elisabeth was a member of a Jewish banking family from Wetzlar. Despite his Jewish ancestry on his mother's side, he was baptised and brought up as a Protestant Christian.

On the outbreak of war he enlisted as an officer in the 2nd Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry and was posted to the front line in Flanders, where he suffered a serious wound in October 1914. Hitler served as a Gefreiter in the same regiment and in the summer of 1916, Hess briefly became Hitler's commanding officer. He sustained another serious wound the following October and was sent to Germany to recuperate. Hess was well regarded as a soldier and was decorated several times, receiving the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class as well as the Bavarian Military Order of Merit. In 1918 he was promoted to Lieutenant and in 1934 he was awarded the Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918.

However, in the autumn of 1935 the Nuremberg Laws revoked this privilege and instituted a full ban on Jews in the civil service. Hess had to leave his job as a judge at the start of 1936 and was forced out of Düsseldorf after being beaten up by Nazi supporters outside his house in the autumn of that year. He moved with his family to Wuppertal, then in October 1937 emigrated to Bolzano in the German-speaking South Tyrol region of Italy, where he could continue the education in German of his 11-year-old daughter.

Loss of protection and enslavement

The protection that Hess enjoyed turned out to be only temporary respite from persecution. Hess's friend Wiedemann was dismissed from his position by Hitler and sent into de facto exile as Consul General to San Francisco. In May 1941, Hess was informed that the protection order had been revoked and that he was now regarded as being "a Jew like any other". Petitions to Berlin were unsuccessful, and in June 1941 he was summoned to the "Aryanization Office" in Munich. Lammers' letter of protection was taken from him and he was sent to Milbertshofen concentration camp near Munich, where he was put to work as a labourer. He was subsequently assigned to the Munich firm of L. Ehrengut and later to a plumber's, Georg Grau, where he served as a forced labourer until 20 April 1945. His wife Margarete remained in Unterwössen, where she lived with her parents, but his teenage daughter Ursula was forced to work in an electrical firm in Munich.

Hess's Jewish mother Elisabeth and sister Berta believed that the protection that he had received also extended to them. As a result, they did not comply with the restrictions imposed on Jews. However, when their case was reviewed in 1942, Adolf Eichmann of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) personally ordered their deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Berta was subsequently murdered in Auschwitz, while Elisabeth managed to escape to Switzerland in February 1945. She later emigrated to Brazil with her son Paul. Hess himself only survived because of his "privileged miscegenated marriage" with Margarete.

Post-war career

After the fall of Nazi Germany, Hess was nominated to serve again as a judge in Düsseldorf but declined, as he did not wish to work alongside former colleagues who had been part of the Nazi judicial system. He started a new career in the railways in 1946, and from 1949 to 1955 served as President of the German Federal Railways Authority in Frankfurt am Main. He was awarded a Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and was given a plaque of honour by the city of Frankfurt in 1970. He died there on 14 September 1983.