Ernst von Salomon

Freikorps (Germany, 1918–1923) Counter-revolutionary forces 1902–1972 ○ Heart failure

Freikorps fighter and Organisation Consul member jailed over the Rathenau assassination who became a novelist

After the Freikorps were dissolved he joined Organisation Consul and in 1922 provided the car for the assassins of foreign minister Walther Rathenau. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

Born in Kiel and raised as a cadet, he joined Maercker’s Freikorps in December 1918, fought the Spartacist uprising in Berlin in January 1919 and later that year the Bolsheviks and the Estonian and Latvian armies in the Baltic. He took part in the Kapp Putsch of 1920 and fought Polish insurgents in Silesia in 1921. After the Freikorps were dissolved he joined the terrorist Organisation Consul, provided a car for the assassins of foreign minister Walther Rathenau in 1922 and was sentenced to five years. Released, he moved among Conservative Revolutionary circles and wrote the novel The Outlaws. Under the Nazis he wrote screenplays for UFA, and after the war his satire of denazification, The Questionnaire, became a bestseller.