Dietrich Eckart (23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German poet who was one of the founders of the Nazi Party.
Biography[]
Dietrich Eckart was born on 23 March 1868 in Neumarkt, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria in the German Empire. Eckart lost both of his parents by 1895, and he also became a morphine addict. In 1899 he moved to Berlin and became a successful poet and playwright there, with his 1912 adaptation of the Norwegian play "Peer Gynt" being shown 600 times. His play used the trolls as an allegory for Jews, which was one of the early signs of his anti-Semitism. After World War I, Eckart edited the antisemitic periodical "In Plain German" with Alfred Rosenberg and Gottfried Feder, and in 1919 Eckart, Feder, Anton Drexler, and Karl Harrer founded the German Workers' Party, which became the Nazi Party in 1920. Eckart introduced Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler, who became the head of the Nazi Party in 1921. Eckart supported Hitler in his rise to power, and he was arrested after the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923; released due to illness, he died of a heart attack soon after.
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