Background
Heinz Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz. Her father was Eugen Krantz, director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory.
Heinz Heydrich was born in Halle an der Saale to composer Richard Bruno Heydrich and his wife Elisabeth Anna Maria Amalia Krantz. Her father was Eugen Krantz, director of the Dresden Royal Conservatory.
The Heydrich family were well-to-do Catholics. Heinz Heydrich was an Obersturmführer (lieutenant), journalist and publisher of the soldiers" newspaper, Die Panzerfaust. He was at first a fervent admirer of Hitler.
But before Reinhard Heydrich’s State funeral in Berlin in June 1942, Heinz Heydrich had been given a large packet containing his brother’s files, released from his strongbox at Gestapo Headquarters, 8 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin.
Heinz had shut himself away in his room with the papers. The files in the package were probably Reinhard Heydrich’s personal files, from which Heinz Heydrich understood for the first time in all its enormity the systematic extermination of the Jews, the so-called Final Solution.
Thereafter, Heinz Heydrich helped many Jews escape by forging identity documents and printing them on Die Panzerfaust presses. When in November 1944 an economic commission headed by a State Attorney investigated the editorial staff of Panzerfaust, Heinz Heydrich thought he had been discovered and shot himself in order to protect his family from the Gestapo.
Ironically, the attorney knew nothing about the forgeries, and was only trying to find out the reason for shortages in paper supplies.
Heinz Heydrich is buried in the Soldatenfriedhof (soldiers cemetery) Riesenburg, according to the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt). Heinz Heydrich had five children. In the book, Peter Heydrich describes how, as a youth, he enjoyed the fame of being a “crown prince,” the nephew of Reinhard Heydrich.
Even after the war, Peter still felt some pride in the familial relationship, if not so openly.
But finally, Peter Heydrich had to admit that Reinhard Heydrich was a protean schemer, who planned and executed the Holocaust and other crimes.
Schutzstaffel.