When Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, the German Republic crumbled in a single day. Crowds gathered outside the Reich Chancellery, drawn by his fiery rhetoric and nationalist promises. Behind the new government lurked a paramilitary force known as the Sturmabteilung, or SA.
Nicknamed the Brown Shirts for their distinctive uniforms, these men thrived on violence and intimidation. They shielded Nazi rallies, assaulted political opponents, and seized city streets by force. One of the SA commanders who became notorious for both brutality and scandal was Edmund Heines.
Edmund Heines was born on July 21, 1897, in Munich, then part of the German Empire. His mother, Hela Martha Heines, worked as a household maid, and his father, Edmund von Parish, came from a Hamburg merchant background. Because his parents were not married, his upbringing was marked by social stigma.
Despite these challenges, Heines received an education at a local high school. He eventually volunteered for service in the German army during the First World War and was deployed to the Western Front. In 1915, he sustained a severe head wound that forced him to convalesce for some time.
He was recognized for bravery and devotion to duty, receiving decorations including the Iron Cross First and Second Class. By 1918, he had achieved the rank of reserve lieutenant. After the collapse of the German Empire and the armistice in November 1918, Germany was thrust into political and economic chaos.
Many former soldiers felt disillusioned with the new German Republic and sought purpose in the paramilitary groups that surfaced across the country. One of these was the Freikorps Rossbach, which Heines joined. The Freikorps movements were filled with ex-soldiers determined to battle communists and other perceived enemies of Germany.
In March 1920, Heines participated in the Kapp Putsch, a failed coup attempt by extreme right-wing factions aiming to topple the republican government and restore an authoritarian regime. After the putsch collapsed, Heines and his associates took cover in various parts of Germany. A few months later, a violent incident deeply marked his reputation and legal standing.
This was the so-called Fememord of Willmitz. The term refers to extrajudicial executions carried out by fanatics who believed they were protecting Germany from traitors or subversives. In this case, Heines and other former Freikorps men suspected Willi Schmidt of planning to report hidden weapons caches to the authorities or to political enemies of the far-right movement.
Fearing betrayal, they chose to silence him forever. Schmidt was allegedly taken into a wooded area, severely beaten, and then shot. When the crimes came to light, they triggered an investigation and later prosecutions. Meanwhile, the Nazi Party was growing stronger in Germany.
Hitler's group embraced extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and calls to overturn the Treaty of Versailles. They initially created the SA as a paramilitary force to defend party rallies, break up competing gatherings, and project an image of militant strength. Heines found this environment appealing because it aligned with his sense of direct and brutal action.
He joined the SA and the Nazi Party and began to rise through the ranks. In these circles, he first met Ernst Röhm. Röhm, a key figure in the Nazi movement, was famous for his own frontline service and for shaping the SA. Röhm welcomed tough individuals into his ranks and took a liking to Heines.
In November 1923, the Nazi Party attempted its own coup in Munich, the infamous Beer Hall Putsch. Though it ended in failure, Hitler was arrested, as were many who had marched with him. Heines also received a prison sentence for his role in the coup, but it did not stop him from remaining loyal to Hitler's cause.
After the unsuccessful coup, the Nazi Party was banned. The situation shifted again after Hitler was released in 1924, and the ban on the party was lifted a year later. By the late 1920s, Heines had resumed a leading position in the SA.
At that time, state officials discovered enough evidence to charge Heines with involvement in Schmidt's killing in 1920. The legal proceedings, often referred to in the press as the Fememord trial, would eventually find Heines guilty of manslaughter. He claimed Schmidt was shot in a moment of panic or confusion, but the court believed his motives were steeped in the vigilante mentality of the times.
On January 22, 1928, Heines was arrested in Schongau for his involvement in the Willmitz murder. He was transferred to what is today Polish Stettin as the main defendant in the trial for Schmidt's murder. The prosecution demanded the death penalty, but the court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for manslaughter, later lowered to five years.
On May 14, 1929, Heines was released from custody by a court decision on bail of 5,000 Reichsmarks. In 1930, he won a seat in the Reichstag, the German Parliament, as a Nazi representative. The Reichstag was often the stage for rowdy exchanges, especially between Nazi members and left-wing politicians.
Because Heines had no patience for the parliamentary process, he engaged in physical confrontations. In one notorious incident in 1932, Heines and other like-minded deputies assaulted a former Nazi who had defected to the Social Democrats. The man, Helmut Klotz, had revealed private letters of Ernst Röhm discussing homosexuality.
Heines and his colleagues physically attacked Klotz in the Reichstag cafe, leading to a public scandal. This incident followed just a few months after the SA structures were shaken to their foundations. In 1931, the leader of the Berlin SA, Walter Stennes, rebelled against the SA leadership.
Stennes declared that he and his followers would never serve under a notorious homosexual like Röhm and his "Päderasten," meaning male prostitutes. Among those described as Röhm's associates was Edmund Heines. The internal opposition to Röhm intensified in February 1931, when Hitler replaced Stennes with Paul Schulz, who promoted Heines and Karl Ernst, both homosexuals within the Berlin SA.
Despite these controversies regarding homosexuality among the highest ranks of the SA, Heines climbed higher. After Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi takeover of Germany entered its final stage. The SA gained enormous influence as it was unleashed on political enemies across the country.
The SA's brand of street violence targeted communists, social democrats, and anyone labeled an opponent of the new regime. Heines, however, was especially noted for his brutality. In the spring of 1933, he was assigned as deputy to Helmuth Brückner, Gauleiter of Silesia, and later became police president of Breslau.
In that role, he oversaw the creation of a small concentration camp named Dürrgoy, sometimes referred to as Heines's private camp. Former or potential opponents of the regime were detained there, experiencing harsh conditions and violent treatment. Accounts from detainees point to an environment of fear, highlighting the willingness of local SA leaders to torture at will.
His track record gave Heines a sense of impunity. He often considered himself unstoppable. Meanwhile, the German army, conservative elites, and some members of the Nazi Party grew more uneasy about the growing might of the SA.
By 1934, the SA had millions of members and significantly outnumbered the Reichswehr, the German military. Its leadership under Röhm advocated for radical changes in German society and army structure. Röhm's dream was to merge the SA with the Reichswehr, giving him direct control of a mass army loyal to him.
Hitler, by contrast, had consolidated power by forging alliances with traditional institutions, including the army and large industrialists. With rumors swirling that Röhm was planning to push Hitler into a second revolution or even dethrone him, tensions within the regime intensified. The crisis peaked in late June 1934.
Hitler had no intention of allowing the SA to overshadow him or the Reichswehr. Behind the scenes, he coordinated with Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring to stage a purge. On June 30, 1934, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives, the SS eliminated top SA figures.
Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, was arrested in Bad Wiessee, a small Bavarian resort near Lake Tegernsee where many other SA leaders had been summoned to attend an SA conference. Hitler himself reportedly arrived there in the early hours, unexpectedly catching the SA men off guard. Among those staying in Bad Wiessee was Edmund Heines.
Sources indicate that the SS found him in a compromising position. He was caught in bed in the arms of a male later identified as his 20-year-old driver, Erich Schiewek. Heines refused to cooperate and get dressed. When the SS detectives reported this to Hitler, who had arrived by then, he stormed into the room and yelled that if Heines was not dressed in five minutes, he would be shot on the spot.
After five minutes had passed, Heines had still not complied. Hitler became furious and ordered his SS men to have both men executed. While the personal habits of Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders were known to Hitler, the specific circumstances surrounding Heines that morning provided ample ammunition for Nazi propaganda to claim publicly that the SA had become a nest of moral degenerates.
The question of Heines's sexuality was used to discredit him and, by extension, the SA's radical leadership. Hitler was apparently furious upon seeing Heines in that situation, and the official government press soon circulated the story as a justification for the purge. Edmund Heines thus became one of the most infamous figures arrested during the Night of the Long Knives.
Many who knew him described him as a violent, sadistic personality who took pride in his capacity for cruelty. He was rumored to have personally shot or tortured political detainees on multiple occasions. Some contemporary accounts from socialists or communists who ended up in his jails recall him as frighteningly unpredictable, a man who seemed to enjoy inflicting harm.
Official remarks by the courts during his earlier convictions labeled him as someone who leaned toward acts of brutality. Even within the Nazi Party, colleagues found him difficult. His homosexuality was also widely discussed, especially after it was revealed in the infamous Bad Wiessee incident.
Homosexuality was a crime under Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code at that time, and the Nazi regime publicly spoke against it. In practice, however, leaders like Ernst Röhm and some high-ranking SA men were rumored to be homosexual. Hitler had tolerated Röhm's orientation for a time, but once the Night of the Long Knives came, the regime exploited the scandalous revelations about Heines to paint the SA elite as immoral.
The official press hammered the message that Hitler was ridding the party of what they called perverse elements. Heines was arrested, taken into custody, and moved to Munich's Stadelheim prison. There, on June 30, 1934, the 36-year-old Heines was shot by members of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.
Many SA leaders were executed, including Ernst Röhm. The regime used these killings to claim it had saved Germany from a conspiracy, but in reality it was a brutal removal of potential rivals. Even family members of certain SA men, such as Heines's younger brother Oskar, were killed.
The scale of the violence showed how Hitler was willing to sacrifice former allies to reassure the army's generals and conservative power brokers. In the press and among the public, the death of Heines in June 1934 was to many a relief from a man they saw as a ruthless killer. People in Breslau, for example, who had experienced his management as police chief, apparently received the news of his death with little regret.
Hitler's official statements claimed the purge was an unfortunate but necessary step to remove traitors from the Nazi movement. The regime pointed to Heines's uncovered private life, plus an alleged plan by Röhm and his henchmen to overthrow Hitler, as proof that the SA was out of control. In the event, the entire leadership of the SA was decapitated, marking a decisive moment in the consolidation of Nazi power. There were no tears shed for Edmund Heines.