Max Amann (24.9.1891 Munich – 30.3.1957 Munich)

In 1911, aged 20, Max Amann became a commercial apprentice with a law firm in Munich. He enlisted as a soldier at the very beginning of the First World War, serving in the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment (the List Regiment), in which he was Adolf Hitler’s superior officer. Amann joined the right-wing antisemitic network in Munich immediately after the First World War.

In August 1921, he became the Nazi Party’s business manager, taking charge of the Völkischer Beobachter (the Nazi Party newspaper) and the Eher Verlag publishing company shortly afterwards. In 1922, Hitler appointed him ‘Reich Leader for the Press’. Amman was one of the main organizers of the Hitler putsch of 1923. From November 9, 1924 until April 1933, Amann held a Nazi Party seat on Munich City Council, where he attracted attention on account of his aggressive behavior. When Hitler became Chancellor, Amann was responsible for smashing up the editorial offices of the anti-Nazi journal The Straight and Narrow (Der Gerade Weg) and maltreating its editor Fritz Gerlich. As President of the Reich Press Chamber and chairman of the Reich Association of German Newspaper Publishers, he concentrated his efforts on building the Nazi newspaper empire and ruthlessly bringing the German press into line, becoming a multimillionaire in the process.

Interned and prosecuted by the Allies in 1945, Amann tried in vain to pass himself off as a non-political businessman. Amann was initially sentenced to two years and six months in prison for maltreating Gerlich. In a criminal trial that took place in September 1948, Tribunal I in Munich then classified him as a ‘major offender’ and gave him the maximum penalty of ten years in a labor camp. His appeal was denied. Nevertheless, he was released in 1953. Amann died in Munich four years later.