Dietrich Eckart

Dietrich Eckart (23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German journalist, playwright, poet, and politician who was one of the founders of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Workers' Party - DAP), which later evolved into the Nazi Party (NSDAP). He was a key influence on Adolf Hitler in the early years of the Nazi Party and was a participant in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

He died shortly after the putsch, and was elevated during the Nazi era to the status of a major thinker and writer.

Eckart was born Johann Dietrich Eckart in 1868 in Neumarkt, Upper Palatinate (about twenty miles southeast of Nuremberg) in the Kingdom of Bavaria, the son of royal notary and lawyer Christian Eckart and his wife Anna, a devout Catholic. His mother died when he was ten years old. Young Dietrich was expelled from several schools; in 1895, his father died also, leaving him a considerable amount of money that Eckart soon spent.

Eckart initially studied law at Erlangen, later medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and was an eager member of the fencing and drinking Student Korps. But he finally decided in 1891 to work as a poet, playwright, and journalist. Diagnosed with morphine addiction and nearly stranded, he moved to Berlin in 1899. There he wrote a number of plays, often autobiographical, and became the protégé of Count Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler (1858–1922), the artistic director of the Prussian Royal Theatre.

After a duel, he was incarcerated at the Passau Oberhaus.

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