1922001
Karl Wolff
Wolff sends a tightly-controlled confidential note from Heinrich Himmler
about the divorce of an important Nazi SS officer
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff, 1900–1984. Nazi SS Obergrüppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS; Chief of the Personal Staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, 1936–1943. Typed Letter Signed, Wolff, one page, 8” x 11½”, on stationery of the Reichsführer-SS, Chief of the Personal Staff, Führer Headquarters (likely Rastenburg, East Prussia), March 3, 1943. In German, with translation.
This letter has a fascinating association that is not evident in the language of the letter itself. Wolff writes to send a confidential communication from Himmler relating to the divorce of SS-Oberführer Fritz Kranefuß, an important Nazi industrialist who was part of Himmler’s inner circle. The very month that Wolff wrote this letter, however, he angered Himmler by his own divorce and remarriage. Himmler believed that family was the nucleus of the SS and had denied Wolff permission to divorce, but Wolff went over his head and obtained permission directly from Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler. Wolff knew that he was on the bubble, since his closest confidant, Reinhard Heydrich, was dead. Indeed, Himmler dismissed Wolff as his Chief of Staff, and the following month Wolff was relieved of his duties as the SS liaison to Hitler, a powerful position as Himmler’s inside man in Hitler’s headquarters.
So this letter drips with irony. Wolff writes to Maximilian Karl Otto von Herff (1893–1945), chief of the SS Personnel Main Office, to pass along Himmler’s own note about Kranefuß’s divorce. Access to the note, he says, is tightly controlled. In full: “In the adjacent envelope there is a note from the Reichsführer-SS in the matter of the divorce of SS Oberführer Kranefuß. This envelope may be opened only by the Reichführer-SS, the Chief of the Personal Staff Reichführer-SS and the Chief of the SS Personnel Main Office and must be closed and sealed after inspection.”
Friedrich Carl Arthur
Kranefuß (1900–1945) was a director
of Braunekohle-Benzin AG, a group of coal mining and chemical firms involved
in the production of synthetic fuel. He was also a director of the
Dresdner Bank. Close to Himmler, he was head of the Freundeskreis der
Wirtschaft, or Circle of Friends of the Economy, which entitled him
to the rank of SS-Oberführer, or senior colonel, the rank he held when Wolff
wrote this letter, and ultimately to SS-Brigadeführer, or major general, in
1944. It is no
wonder, then, that Himmler dealt carefully with his divorce.
Wolff has signed this letter with a large signature in black fountain pen. The letter has one normal
horizontal mailing fold, typical file holes in the left margin, staple holes
and a light paper clip stain in the blank upper left margin, and typical markings.
The lower right corner appears to have been purposely clipped. Overall
the letter is in fine
condition.
We
reject Nazism and all that it represented. We nevertheless offered this
document because the German Third Reich, although despised, spawned World
War II and thus played a critical
role in the
history of the 20th Century.
Unframed.
_____________
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