Background
Adolf Wagner was born on 1 October 1890 in Algrange, Lorraine.
Adolf Wagner was born on 1 October 1890 in Algrange, Lorraine.
An officer during World War I, then Director of a mining company in Bavaria, Wagner joined the NSDAP in 1923. Together with Max Amann, Schwarz and Hermann Esser, he belonged to the old Munich comrades of Hitler. In 1924 he became a member of the Bavarian diet and on 1 November 1929 he was appointed Gauleiter of the NSDAP for Munich-Upper Bavaria.
In March 1933 Wagner was made Staatskorumissar (State Commissioner) for Bavaria and in April of the same year he became Minister of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister of Bavaria. As a result of his instructions, the numbers of those arrested rose considerably, including non-communist opponents of the Nazi régime.
Wagner also served as a Reichstag member for the electoral district of Upper Bavaria-Swabia from 1933. A member of the clique who helped massacre Rohrn's followers, he was appointed in 1935 to the personal staff of Hitler at the Brown House in Munich.
On 28 November 1936 he was made Bavarian Minister of Education and Culture. On the outbreak of war in September 1939 Wagner was appointed Reich Defence Commissioner for Military Districts VII and XIII.
He fell from power early in the war and died on 12 April 1944.