Age, Biography, and Wiki
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was born on March 7, 1904, in Halle, Germany. He was the son of Bruno Richard Heydrich and Elisabeth Anna Amalia Kranz. Heydrich joined the German Navy in 1922 but was discharged in 1931 after a scandal involving a shipyard director's daughter. Following this, he joined the SS and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a key figure in the Nazi regime. He died on June 4, 1942, in Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now the Czech Republic), after being assassinated by Czech resistance fighters.
| Occupation | Politician |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 7 March 1904 |
| Age | 121 Years |
| Birth Place | Halle an der Saale, Prussia, German Empire |
| Horoscope | Pisces |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Date of death | 4 June, 1942 |
| Died Place | Prague-Libeň, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (now Prague, Czech Republic) |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited information available about Reinhard Heydrich's height, weight, and other physical measurements. However, he was known to be physically fit and an accomplished fencer.
| Height | |
| Weight | |
| Body Measurements | |
| Eye Color | |
| Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
Reinhard Heydrich married Lina von Osten in December 1931. Lina was an ardent Nazi supporter and played a crucial role in persuading Heydrich to join the Nazi Party. The couple had four children together.
His father came from a Protestant family, but converted to Elisabeth's Roman Catholic faith upon marriage. Reinhard was an altar boy, attending evening prayers and Mass every week with his mother as part of the Catholic minority in Halle. Two of his forenames were musical references: "Reinhard" referred to the hero from his father's opera Amen, and "Tristan" stems from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Heydrich's third name, "Eugen", was his late maternal grandfather's forename (Eugen Krantz had been the director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory).
Heydrich's family held social standing and substantial financial means. Music was a part of Heydrich's everyday life; his father founded the Halle Conservatory of Music, Theatre, and Teaching and his mother taught piano there. As the oldest son, Reinhard was expected to inherit his father's music conservatory and was trained in music by his father. He learned the piano and violin by the time he was six years old. Heydrich developed a passion for the violin and carried that interest into adulthood; he impressed listeners with his musical talent.
His father was a German nationalist with loyalties to the Kaiser, who instilled patriotic ideas in his three children but was not affiliated with any political party until after World War I. The household was strict. Heydrich, initially a frail and sickly youth, was encouraged by his parents to exercise to build up his strength. He engaged his younger brother, Heinz, in mock fencing duels. He excelled in his schoolwork at the secular "Reformgymnasium", especially in the sciences. A talented athlete, he became an expert swimmer and fencer. He was shy, insecure, and was frequently bullied for his high-pitched voice and rumoured Jewish ancestry. These rumours increased after his maternal uncle Hans Krantz married a Hungarian Jew named Iza Jarmy. His family maintained cordial relations with the Jewish community; many Jewish students attended the Halle Conservatory, and its cellar was rented out to a Jewish salesman. Heydrich was friends with Abraham Lichtenstein, son of the cantor.
Himmler began developing the notion of a Germanic religion and wanted SS members to leave the church. In early 1936, Heydrich left the Catholic Church in favour of the Gottgläubig movement. His wife, Lina, had already done so the year before. Heydrich not only felt he could no longer be a member, but came to consider the church's political power and influence a danger to the state.
A Czech woman went to Heydrich's aid and flagged down a delivery van. He was placed on his stomach in the back of the van and taken to the emergency room at Bulovka Hospital. A splenectomy was performed and the chest wound, left lung, and diaphragm were all debrided. Himmler ordered Karl Gebhardt to fly to Prague to assume care. Despite a fever, Heydrich's recovery appeared to progress well. Hitler's personal doctor Theodor Morell suggested the use of the new antibacterial drug sulfonamide, but Gebhardt thought that Heydrich would recover and declined the suggestion. Heydrich reconciled himself to his fate on 2 June, during a visit by Himmler, by reciting a quotation from one of his father's operas:
Heydrich's widow, Lina, won the right to a pension following a series of court cases against the West German government in 1956 and 1959. She was declared entitled to a substantial pension as her husband was a German general killed in action. The government had previously declined to pay due to Heydrich's role in the Holocaust. The couple had four children: Klaus, born in 1933, killed in a traffic accident in 1943; Heider, born in 1934; Silke, born in 1939; and Marte, born shortly after her father's death in 1942. Lina wrote a memoir, Leben mit einem Kriegsverbrecher (Living With a War Criminal), which was published in 1976. She remarried once and died in 1985.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Lina von Osten (m. 1931) |
| Sibling | |
| Children |
Net Worth and Salary
Calculating Reinhard Heydrich's net worth today is speculative, as he died in 1942. However, during his time, his salary increased significantly. By 1938, he earned approximately 17,371 Reichsmarks annually, which is equivalent to around €77,580 in 2021. His wealth grew as his influence and power expanded within the Nazi regime.
Heydrich became notorious for his numerous affairs. In December 1930 he attended a rowing-club ball and met Lina von Osten. They became romantically involved and soon announced their engagement. Lina was already a Nazi Party follower and antisemite; she had attended her first rally in 1929. Early in 1931 Heydrich was charged with "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" for a breach of promise, having been engaged to marry another woman he had known for six months before the Lina von Osten engagement. Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed Heydrich from the navy in April. He received severance pay of 200 Reichsmarks a month for the next two years. Heydrich married Lina in December 1931.
Although the starting monthly salary of 180 Reichsmarks was low, Heydrich decided to take the job because Lina's family supported the Nazi movement, and the quasi-military and revolutionary nature of the post appealed to him. At first he had to share an office and typewriter with a colleague, but by 1932 Heydrich was earning 290 Reichsmarks a month, a salary he described as "comfortable". As his power and influence grew throughout the 1930s, his wealth grew commensurately; in 1935 he received a base salary of 8,400 Reichsmarks and an allowance of 12,000 Reichsmarks and by 1938 his income increased to 17,371 Reichsmarks, annually. Heydrich later received a Totenkopfring from Himmler for his SS service.
Career, Business, and Investments
Heydrich's career was marked by his rapid rise through the SS ranks. He was instrumental in organizing the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence and surveillance arm of the SS. He played a central role in the Holocaust and was a key figure in the Nazi hierarchy. There is no information on traditional business investments, as his focus was on his role in the Nazi regime.
He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, SD), an intelligence organisation charged with seeking out and neutralising resistance to the Nazi Party via arrests, deportations, and murders. He helped organise Kristallnacht, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938. The attacks were carried out by SA stormtroopers and civilians and presaged the Holocaust. Upon his arrival in Prague, Heydrich sought to eliminate opposition to the Nazi occupation by suppressing Czech culture and deporting and executing members of the Czech resistance. He was directly responsible for the Einsatzgruppen, the special task forces that travelled in the wake of the German armies and murdered more than two million people by mass shooting and gassing including 1.3 million Jews.
In 1922, Heydrich joined the German Navy (Reichsmarine), taking advantage of the security, structure, and pension it offered. He became a naval cadet at Kiel, Germany's primary naval base. Many of Heydrich's fellow cadets falsely regarded him as Jewish. To counteract these rumours, Heydrich told people he had joined several antisemitic and nationalist organisations, such as the Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund. On 1 April 1924 he was promoted to senior midshipman (Oberfähnrich zur See) and sent to officer training at the Naval Academy Mürwik. In 1926 he advanced to the rank of ensign (Leutnant zur See) and was assigned as a signals officer on the battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein, the flagship of Germany's North Sea Fleet. With the promotion came greater recognition. He received good evaluations from his superiors and had few problems with other crewmen. He was promoted on 1 July 1928 to the rank of first lieutenant.
On 30 May 1931, Heydrich's discharge from the navy became legally binding, and either the following day or on 1 June he joined the Nazi Party in Hamburg. Six weeks later, on 14 July, he joined the SS. His party number was 544,916 and his SS number was 10,120. Those who joined the party after Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933 faced suspicions from the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters; the earliest party members) that they had joined for reasons of career advancement rather than a true commitment to Nazi ideology. Heydrich's date of enlistment in 1931 was early enough to quell suspicion that he had joined only to further his career, but was not early enough for him to be considered an Old Fighter.
On 1 August 1931, Heydrich began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service' (intelligence service). He set up office at the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. By October he had created a network of spies and informers for intelligence-gathering purposes and to obtain information to be used as blackmail to further political aims. Information on thousands of people was recorded on index cards and stored at the Brown House. To mark the occasion of Heydrich's December wedding, Himmler promoted him to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major).
In mid-1939, Heydrich created the Stiftung Nordhav Foundation to obtain real estate for the SS and Security Police to use as guest houses and vacation spots. The Wannsee Villa, which Stiftung Nordhav acquired in November 1940, was the site of the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942). Heydrich was the lead speaker. At Wannsee, senior Nazi officials formalised plans to deport and exterminate all Jews in German-occupied territory and those countries not yet conquered. This action was to be coordinated among the representatives from the Nazi state agencies present at the meeting.
Heydrich created the "Zentralstelle IIP Polen" unit of the Gestapo to coordinate the ethnic cleansing of Poles in "Operation Tannenberg" and the Intelligenzaktion, two codenames for extermination actions directed at the Polish people during the German occupation of Poland. Among the 100,000 people murdered in the Intelligenzaktion operations in 1939–1940, approximately 61,000 were members of the Polish intelligentsia: scholars, clergy, former officers, and others, whom the Germans identified as political targets in the Special Prosecution Book-Poland, compiled before the war began in September 1939.
Heydrich was, for all intents and purposes, military dictator of Bohemia and Moravia. His changes to the government's structure left President Emil Hácha and his cabinet virtually powerless. He often drove alone in a car with an open roof – a show of his confidence in the occupation forces and in his government's effectiveness.
On 10 October 1941, Heydrich was the senior officer at a "Final Solution" meeting of the RSHA in Prague that discussed deporting 50,000 Jews from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to ghettos in Minsk and Riga. Given his position, Heydrich was instrumental in carrying out these plans since his Gestapo was ready to organise deportations in the West and his Einsatzgruppen were already conducting extensive killing operations in the East. The officers attending also discussed taking 5,000 Jews from Prague "in the next few weeks" and handing them over to the Einsatzgruppen commanders Arthur Nebe and Otto Rasch. Establishing ghettos in the Protectorate was also planned, resulting in the construction of the Theresienstadt Ghetto, where 33,000 people would eventually die. Tens of thousands more passed through the camp before being sent East to be murdered. In 1941 Himmler named Heydrich as "responsible for implementing" the forced movement of 60,000 Jews from Germany and Czechoslovakia to the Łódź (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto in Poland.
After an elaborate funeral held in Prague on 7 June 1942, Heydrich's coffin was placed on a train to Berlin where a second ceremony was held in the new Reich Chancellery on 9 June. Himmler gave the eulogy. Hitler attended and placed Heydrich's decorations—including the highest grade of the German Order, the Blood Order Medal, the Wound Badge in Gold, and the War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords—on his funeral pillow. Although Heydrich's death was employed for pro-Reich propaganda, Hitler privately blamed Heydrich for his own death through carelessness:
Heydrich's time in the SS was a mixture of rapid promotions, reserve commissions in the regular armed forces, and front-line combat service. During his 11 years with the SS Heydrich "rose from the ranks" and was appointed to every rank from private to full general. He was also a major in the Luftwaffe, flying nearly 100 combat missions until 22 July 1941, when his plane was hit by Soviet anti-aircraft fire. After this, Hitler personally ordered Heydrich to return to Berlin to resume his SS duties. His service record also gives him credit as a Navy Reserve Lieutenant, but in 1931 he was dismissed for conduct unbecoming an officer with loss of rank, and during World War II he had no contact with the Navy Reserve.
Social Network
Given the time period in which Heydrich lived, there is no relevant social network presence. His influence was primarily within the Nazi Party and the SS.
Education
Reinhard Heydrich's educational background is not extensively documented. However, he was known for his intelligence and strategic thinking, which contributed to his rapid advancement in the Nazi hierarchy.
As a result of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles as well as Germany's large war debt, hyperinflation spread across Germany and many lost their life savings. Halle was not spared. By 1921, few townspeople there could afford a musical education at Bruno Heydrich's conservatory. This led to a financial crisis for the Heydrich family.
Heydrich was assigned to help organise the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. The games were used to promote the propaganda aims of the Nazi regime. Goodwill ambassadors were sent to countries that were considering a boycott. Anti-Jewish violence was forbidden for the duration, and news stands were required to stop displaying copies of Der Stürmer. For his part in the games' success, Heydrich was awarded the Deutsches Olympiaehrenzeichen or German Olympic Games Decoration (First Class).
On 3 June, Heydrich fell into a coma; he died the following day. An autopsy concluded that he died of sepsis. Professors R. J. Defalque and A. J. Wright of the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that pulmonary embolism and/or brain ischemia may have been decisive factors. He was 38 years old.
Heydrich began training as a pilot in 1935, and undertook fighter pilot training at the flight school at Werneuchen in 1939. Himmler initially forbade Heydrich from flying combat missions, but later relented, allowing him to join Jagdgeschwader 77 "Herz As" (Ace of Hearts) in Norway, where he was stationed from 15 April 1940 during Operation Weserübung. He returned to Berlin on 14 May after his plane crashed at Stavanger the previous day. While in Norway, Heydrich also organised the arrests of political opponents and arranged for a contingent of 200 SiPo and SD men to be stationed in several major cities.
