Reinhard Höhn
Reinhard Höhn was a German jurist, historian, and a member of the Nazi Party. After World War II beginning in the 1950s, he developed the of business management, which exerted a strong influence on German management training until the 1980s. His past in the Nazi regime became widely known after investigative reporting in the 1970s.
Education and political career
Höhn was born 29 July 1904 in Gräfenthal, Germany. He went to school in Meiningen, had a doctorate in political science. He directed a group of young people from south Thuringia. He was an active militant nationalist joining in 1922 the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, an antisemitic Völkisch movement. He agitated for Der Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten, a German First World War veteran's organization existing from 1918 to 1935. He was arrested and spent a short while in prison. Between 1923 and 1932, Höhn was a member of Young German Order and was an important co-worker of Artur Mahraun. He was a member of the Nazi Party from 1933 and joined the Sicherheitsdienst in 1932, ultimately becoming a high-ranking officer in the SD and later the SS.He became professor of constitutional and administrative law at the Humboldt University of Berlin and chair of public law at the University of Jena from 1935–1945. During this time he was also director of the Institute for State Research. He was one of the architects of National Socialist theory in the Völkisch movement.
In 1937, Heinrich Himmler entrusted him with the organization of a festival of Nordicism to celebrate Henry the Fowler, founder of the first medieval German State. During this time he published a debate about whether soldiers should swear an oath to the constitution or to the head of state.
Post-war
He disappeared from view at the end of World War II, reappearing as a director for the, a business school he founded in 1956 in Bad Harzburg. There, he developed the of management, which exerted a strong influence on German management training until the 1980s.In 1971, the journalist Bernt Engelmann writing in the newspaper Vorwärts published by the Social Democratic Party of Germany brought his historic involvement with the Nazi government as an expert in economics and national-socialist politics to light. This caused public outcry and Helmut Schmidt stopped his academy from advising the Bundeswehr after March 1972.