Jakob Sprenger

Sprenger, the son of a farmer, was born in Oberhausen near Bad Bergzabern in the Palatinate. After graduating from high school, he served as a one-year military volunteer. From 1902 he was employed in the administrative service of the Imperial Postal Service. Sprenger volunteered for service in the First World War and became an NCO, at first training volunteers and reservists. He was then deployed to the front and saw action in France and in Russia where he was promoted to Leutnant. He was decorated for valor and awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. Discharged in 1918, he resumed his career as a postal inspector in Frankfurt.[1]

In 1922, Sprenger became a member of the Nazi Party. He was anti-Semitic, and rose quickly through the ranks. When the Party was re-founded in February of 1925 after being banned in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch, Sprenger re-joined in August (membership number 17,009) and became a Bezirksleiter (Regional Leader) in Hesse-Nassau South. He also became an SA leader in Frankfurt. He was appointed Gauleiter of Hesse-Nassau South on 1 April 1927. In 1929 he joined the Frankfurt City Council. He also became the Nazi faction leader in the municipal and provincial Landtags.[2]

In September 1930 he was elected a member of the Reichstag for electoral constituency 19, Hesse-Nassau. The same year, he founded a Nazi newspaper in Frankfurt called Frankfurter Volksblatt. From 1930 to 1933 he also sat on the administrative board of the German Postal Service. On 15 July 1932 came his appointment as Landesinspekteur-Southwest. In this position, he had oversight responsibility for his Gau and four others (Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Nassau North & Württemberg-Hohenzollern).[2] This was a short-lived initiative by Gregor Strasser to centralize control over the Gaue. However, it was unpopular with the Gauleiters and was repealed on Strasser's fall from power in December 1932. Sprenger then returned to his Gauleiter position in Hesse-Nassau South.[3]

When his Gau was merged with the neighboring Gau of Hesse-Darmstadt (comprising the federal People's State of Hesse) on 1 January 1933, he became the Gauleiter of the unified Gau Hesse-Nassau. On 5 May 1933, Sprenger was appointed Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) of the People's State of Hesse. In the process of the Gleichschaltung, in particular due to the Reichsstatthaltergesetz (Reich Governors Law) of 30 January 1935, he was also appointed Minister-President and took over leadership of the state government from Philipp Wilhelm Jung on 1 March 1935. Besides Martin Mutschmann of Saxony, he was the only Gauleiter to simultaneously hold the positions of Reichsstatthalter and Minister-President. He was promoted to SA-Obergruppenführer in 1938.[4]

When the Second World War broke out on 1 September 1939, Sprenger was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) XII, based in Wiesbaden. This encompassed the western half of his Gau along with Gau Koblenz-Trier, Gau Saarpfalz and part of Gau Baden. On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and he remained Commissioner for only his Gau of Hesse-Nassau. In 1943, the Oberpräsident (High President) of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau, Philipp von Hessen, fell out of favor and was removed from office. Subsequently, the province was partitioned in two, effective 1 July 1944, and Sprenger was appointed Oberpräsident of the new Prussian Province of Nassau. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the province, as he had already done in the State of Hesse.[4]

On the night of 25 to 26 March 1945, Sprenger fled from the advancing U.S. Army from Frankfurt to Kössen, Austria, where the Russians and US Army were subsequently in a pincer to cover the whole country. Trapped, he and his wife committed suicide on 7 May 1945.[5]

• Goeschel, Christian (2009). Suicide in Nazi Germany. OUP Oxford. ISBN 0191567566.
• Höffkes, Karl (1986). Hitlers Politische Generale. Die Gauleiter des Dritten Reiches: ein biographisches Nachschlagewerk. Tübingen: Grabert-Verlag. ISBN 3-87847-163-7.
• Orlow, Dietrich: The History of the Nazi Party: 1919-1933 (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1969, ISBN 0-8229-3183-4.

• List of Gauleiters

• Jakob Sprenger in the German National Library catalogue
• Page on Gau leadership at the Wayback Machine (archived October 29, 2009)
• Newspaper clippings about Jakob Sprenger in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW