Walter Riehl

Dr. Walter Riehl (8 November 1881 – 6 September 1955) was an Austrian lawyer and politician who was an early exponent of Austrian National Socialism. Belonging to the wing of that ideology that favoured links between Germany and an independent Austria, he lost influence as the drive for Anschluss grew within both Austrian National Socialism and German Nazism.

Early years A native of Wiener Neustadt, Riehl joined the army as a one-year volunteer in 1900. Following his military service he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Vienna University and, after also studying at several institutions in Germany, he graduated in 1908 with his doctorate in law. Despite this he joined the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP) in 1908. As a DAP member representing the middle classes he advocated a name change and a broadening of membership away from simply the working classes. Influenced by the radical racialist theories of Georg Ritter von Schönerer, Riehl took a leading role in organising the party's youth movement. He became deputy chairman of the DAP in March 1918 and two months later took over as leader.

As leader Riehl moved the DNSAP, which had mainly been an anti-Czech party towards anti-Semitism. He sought to blame Austria's problems on the Jews and wanted them expelled from the country. He also supported profit sharing and land reform and also sought to build up the party in universities, setting up a German Academic Association of National Socialists as early as June 1919. Where the DAP had been avowedly a "class" party, Riehl sought to distance the group from any such consideration, instead tying it in to the wider Völkisch movement. Certainly contact was established between the two very early and Carsten has suggested that Hitler added the epithet 'National Socialist' to his German Workers Party in imitation of Riehl's movement.

Riehl remained as leader of the DNSAP until 1923 when it split between the pro-Hitler and pro-independence factions. Riehl's party worked closely with the Greater German People's Party and in the 1927 election they presented a joint list under the name Nationale Einheitsfront. His involvement in the trial helped him to regain prestige in the DNSAP after resigning from the leadership following the schisms of 1923. Riehl gained notoriety for his defences of right-wing leaders in a number of cases and in the aftermath of the Schattendorf Incident it was he who secured the acquittal of the accused rightist leaders.

Riehl returned to the Nazis on 26 September 1930, being admitted as member number 360.702. Indeed, for Riehl anti-Semitism was the entire basis of the Nazis' appeal in Austria, along with their anti-communism.

Later years Despite his extreme views on the Jews, Riehl was more committed to constitutional methods than some of his DNSAP colleagues and he became a critic of some of the group's excesses, such that he was expelled again on 9 August 1933. Advocating a more Christianity-based form of nationalism, he established the Wiener Stadtklub as an ideological discussion group in 1937, although this proved to be largely Nazi in character. He was eventually allowed to join the Nazi Party although he was never more than a rank-and-file member.

He disappeared from the public eye after this although after the Second World War he held membership of the Austrian People's Party. Riehl died in Vienna.