WESSEL, HORST

WESSEL, HORST (1907–1930), SA* leader; his murder by a member of the KPD, one of the infamous episodes in the struggle for Berlin's* streets, induced the Nazis to turn him into a martyr. Born in Bielefeld to a Lutheran pastor, he went to Berlin to study; instead, he joined the NSDAP in 1926. A leader of the SA in Berlin's Friedrichshain district, a KPD stronghold, he was shot and killed on 17 January 1930 by Albert Ho¨hler, a Communist and pimp who had fought with Wessel over a prostitute. Within days of Hitler's* seizure of power, Ho¨hler was killed by members of the SA. Wessel is best remembered for the lyrics to the Horst-Wessel Lied, first published in September 1929 as a poem in Der Angriff.* A renowned Nazi marching song, it vied in importance during the Third Reich with the national anthem Deutschland, Deutschland u¨ber alles. Joseph Goebbels* transformed the murdered Wessel into a ‘‘blood witness'' for the movement. The Nazis later named numerous streets for him.