Lina Heydrich
| Lina Heydrich | |
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In Prague, the day before the attack that led to his death, Reinhard Heydrich and wife Lina attend a concert of Richard Bruno Heydrich's music in the Waldstein Palace, May 26, 1942.
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| Born |
Lina Mathilde von Osten 14 June 1911 Fehmarn, Germany |
| Died | 14 August 1985 (aged 74) Fehmarn, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Other names | Lina Manninen |
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Lina Mathilde Heydrich (née von Osten, later Manninen; 14 June 1911 – 14 August 1985) was the wife of assassinated SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, a central figure in Nazi Germany.
She was the daughter of a minor German aristocrat who worked as a schoolteacher. Lina met Reinhard Heydrich in December 1930; the two wed on 26 December 1931, and had four children. She later claimed she had known nothing about her husband's war crimes, committed while he was head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office; RSHA).
Lina's brother, Jurgen had joined the Nazi Party and was a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA). He spoke highly of the movement to Lina and she attended a Party rally in 1929 where Adolf Hitler spoke. Shortly thereafter, Lina von Osten joined the Nazi Party with party membership number #1,201,380.
On 6 December 1930, aged 19, she attended a rowing-club ball in Kiel and met then Naval Lieutenant Heydrich there. They became romantically involved and soon announced their engagement on December 18, 1930. In 1931, he was charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer and gentleman" for breaking an engagement promise to a woman he had known for six months before the engagement to Lina. Admiral Erich Raeder dismissed Heydrich from the navy that April. The dismissal devastated Heydrich, who found himself without career prospects.
Lina persuaded Heydrich to look into the recently formed Schutzstaffel (SS) as a career option. During 1931 SS Leader Heinrich Himmler began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS. Acting on the advice of his associate Karl von Eberstein, who was both the Heydrich family and von Osten's friend, Himmler agreed to interview Heydrich, but cancelled their appointment at the last minute. She ignored this message, packed Heydrich's suitcase, and sent him to Munich. Eberstein met Heydrich at the train station and took him to see Himmler. Himmler asked Heydrich to convey his ideas for developing an SS intelligence service. Himmler was so impressed that he hired Heydrich immediately as the chief of the new SS 'Ic Service' or Intelligence Service (which would later become known as the Sicherheitsdienst (SD)). He returned to Hamburg with the good news. He entered into the Hamburg SS on 14 July. In August, he was transferred to Munich where he lived alone in a boarding house which rented rooms to unmarried SS men. Lina later stated that Reinhard Heydrich never read Hitler's book, Mein Kampf. He and Lina wed at a small church in Grossenbrode on 26 December 1931.
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