13 Facts About Artur Dinter

Artur Dinter was a German writer and Nazi politician who was the Gauleiter of Gau Thuringia.

Artur Dinter took part in World War I as an Oberleutnant in an Alsatian Infantry Regiment Number 136, and was quickly promoted to Hauptmann of the reserve and awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class.

In 1919 Artur Dinter established himself as a writer in Weimar, after his 1917 anti-Semitic bestseller Die Sunde wider das Blut came out, which was to sell more than 260,000 copies by 1934, and which vividly set forth in writing the stereotypes of the racial-volkisch perceptions of his time.

Artur Dinter's thinking in the years after the war became steadily more radical and more racist.

Artur Dinter was elected in February 1924 to the Thuringian Landtag as a representative of the electoral alliance Volkisch-Sozialer Block, becoming leader of its Landtag faction.

Artur Dinter drew ever nearer the Nazi Party's position, and Hitler, while still in Landsberg Prison in December 1924, appointed Dinter the Nazi Party State Leader of Thuringia.

Artur Dinter fell out with his former associates from the VSB, leading to his expulsion from that party in December 1924.

Artur Dinter was deeply shocked but increased his opposition, and started attacking Hitler in his magazine Das Geistchristentum.

At a membership meeting on 2 August 1928, Artur Dinter called for establishing a Party Senate to advise Hitler on all major policy issues.

Artur Dinter still persisted, refusing to accede to Hitler's sole authority and continued his written attacks.

Artur Dinter was rebuffed and the Gestapo intensified its surveillance of him throughout the 1930s and even arrested him for a short while.

Two years later the Reichsschrifttumskammer, Nazi Germany's official writers' association, expelled Artur Dinter, effectively banning him from publishing anything, as one had to be a member to do so.

Artur Dinter died in 1948 in Offenburg, Baden, at the age of 71.