Background
Max Amann was born in Munich on 24 November 1891.
Max Amann was born in Munich on 24 November 1891.
Amann attended business school in Munich.
He served an office apprenticeship in a Munich law firm before becoming business manager of the Nazi Party in 1921, and after 1922 Director of the Party publishing house, the Eher Verlag.
During World War I Amann served as Hitler's company sergeant in a Bavarian infantry regiment. During the Beer-Hall putsch, Amann along with other Party activists had been arrested and briefly jailed. In 1924 he was elected as a NSDAP candidate to the Munich city council and in 1933 became a Nazi member of the Reichstag for the electoral district of Upper Bavaria/Swabia.
On 8 September 1948 he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years' imprisonment by a Munich court and two months later the Central de-Nazification Court imposed ten years’ labour camp on him as a ‘Major Offender’.
After the fall of the Third Reich. Amann sought to pose as a businessman who had no ideological commitment to Nazism. His de-Nazihcation trial showed, however, that of all the Nazi leaders he had made the greatest material gains from his association with the Party.
The pint-sized Amann was the aggressive, rowdy type of Nazi, brutal, domineering and ruthless towards subordinates. He was also personally greedy, exploiting his appointment in November 1933 as President of the Reich Association of German Newspaper Publishers and President of the Reich Press Chamber, to pillage and plunder the non-Nazi newspaper chains. As chief actor in the Gleichschaltung of the press he was a master of the techniques of the legal freeze-out and enforced business deal, by means of which he established Party control of most of the press and gradually eliminated independent publishing.
Hitler's personal wealth owed a great deal to Amann’s shrewd business sense. The jovial Bavarian was his personal banker and, apart from overseeing his royalties from Mein Kampf, ensured that the Führer received huge fees from his contributions to the Nazi press. But his political services which earned him his appointment as a Reichsleiter were no less appreciated.
He used his job for personal interests. Amann enormously enriched himself through his monopoly over the world's largest press and publishing combine. His income increased from 108,000 to 3,800,000 marks between 1934 and 1944, besides his large salary from the Eher Verlag and 5 per cent of the net profits, he owned a substantial interest in the Muller printing company, and was able to pocket millions without paying income tax. As a Party man, Amann's talents were, however, very limited. He was no orator or debater and incapable of writing a single printable line by himself. All articles signed ‘Amann', addresses, important letters or announcements were written for him by his right-hand man Rolf Rienhardt.
Quotes from others about the person
Kurt Liidecke characterized this ‘Hercules of the Nazi publishing business': "A merciless man who sweated lesser Nazi workers for the least possible pay".
Hitler described Amann as ‘the greatest newspaper proprietor in the world".