Background
Rolf Rienhardt was born in Bucha on 2 July 1903, the son of a Lutheran pastor.
Rolf Rienhardt was born in Bucha on 2 July 1903, the son of a Lutheran pastor.
Studied law at Berlin and Munich.
Rienhardt became legal counsel to the Eher Verlag in 1928, having been drawn into National Socialism through his friendship with Gregor Strasser.
At the latter's suggestion he was placed on the NSDAP list in the Reichstag elections of July 1932 and re-elected in November. In the same year he became divisional head in the Reich Organization Office under Strasser. Though purged with other Strasser supporters in December 1932, Rienhardt’s organizational talents, legal skills and phenomenal capacity for work made him an ideal choice as staff Director in Amann’s administrative office for the Party press and as Deputy Director of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association.
Rienhardt was the real brains and driving-force of Amann’s publishing.empire, the man who wrote his speeches and articles, and drafted his most important directives. Rienhardt was a leading personality in the Reich Press Chamber, a member of the German Law Academy, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Deutscher Verlag (formerly Ullstein), Managing Director of Herold Verlagsanstalt GmbH (1939) and permanent Deputy Director of the Reichsverband der Deutschen Zeitungsverleger (the German Publishers’ Association) whose affairs he effectively controlled. The latter position gave him broad powers over the privately owned press, whose gradual liquidation and ‘quiet’ absorption by the National Socialist press was largely a product of his legal ingenuity and undeviating purpose.
By 1939 Rienhardt’s position in the publishing field was unchallenged, even though he was only exercising powers delegated by his superior. Max Amann. The latter’s inferiority complex vis-à-vis his chief assistant, vastly superior in education and ability, led to increasing tension between the two men. Rienhardt’s dilatory handling of Hitler’s order to suspend the Frankfurter Zeitung finally gave Amann the pretext to dismiss summarily his staff Director in November 1943. Rienhardt left office without severance pay, pension rights or a substantial bank account.
He was inducted into the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler Regiment, where he served until the end of the war.