Edmund Heines (21 July 1897-30 June 1934) was a German Nazi Party politician who was purged during the Night of the Long Knives.
Biography[]
Edmund Heines was born in Munich, Bavaria, German Empire in 1897, and he served in the Imperial German Army during World War I. He suffered a serious head wound in 1915 and was discharged as a Lieutenant in 1918, after which he joined the far-right Freikorps movement. He fought in West Prussia and the Baltics from 1919 to 1922, and he also participated in the Kapp Putsch and joined the Nazi Party in 1922. Heines became a member of the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung paramilitary wing, taking part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. In 1928, he was arrested for a mruder which he had committed eight years earlier, and he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for manslaughter. He was released on bail in 1929 and amnestied, as he had a "patriotic" motive for the murder. He became a leader of the SA in Munich and served in the Reichstag from 1930 to 1934, all while developing a reputation as one of the Nazi Party's most brutal enforcers. On 30 June 1934, he and several other SA leaders were arrested during Adolf Hitler's "Night of the Long Knives" purge; he was among the purged SA leader Ernst Rohm's homosexual circle of friends. He was executed that same day at the age of 36.