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March 2022 Auction Day 1
Lot 757:
BOOK ON THE R.A.D. LEADER KONSTANTIN HIERL. The 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 inch, 186 page hard cover book by Herbert Erb was pub-lished 1939 by Central Publishing House of the NSDAP in Munich, Germany. Offered is a copy of the second edition (2. Auflage 11.-20. Tausend) in near as new condition. The book is a biography of the life of the man who was in charge of the hundreds of thousands Arbeitsmänner and Arbeitsmaiden in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Reich Labor Service) in Nazi Germany. He was one of the major figures in the administration of the Third Reich and an associate of Hitler long before he came to power.Hierl was born in Parsberg, Bavaria. In 1919, as a major in the Reichswehr’s Political Department in Munich, Hierl ordered the ex-soldier Hitler to attend a meeting of the German Workers’ Party (which soon became the Nazi Party). On June 5, 1931, two years before the Nazi Party ascended to power, Hierl became head of the FAD (Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst), a state sponsored voluntary labour organization that provided services to civic and agricultural construction projects. There were many such organizations in Europe at the time, founded to provide much needed employment during the Great Depression. At the time, Hierl was already a high ranking member of the NSDAP and when they took power in 1933, he remained the head of the labour organization – now called the Nationalsozialistischer Arbeitsdienst, or NSAD. In 1934 it was yet again renamed, this time as the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and Hierl would control it until the end of World War II. When the Nazi Party came to power, Hitler named Hierl as the State Secretary for Labor Service, a Reich Labor Leader in 1935, a Reichsleiter in 1936, and a Reichsminister in 1943. On February 24, 1945, he was awarded the German Order, the highest decoration that the Nazi Party could bestow on an individual, for his services to the Reich. Hierl and Artur Axmann were the only recipients of the German Order who survived the war; the other recipients were awarded it posthumously. Hierl survived World War II, was tried and found guilty of “major offenses” after the war, and spent five years in a labour camp. He died in 1955 in Heidelberg.
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