ABSTRACT
Salomon, Ernst von (1902–72) Prussian nationalist author who achieved notoriety for his role in the murder of the German Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, Ernst von Salomon was born in Kiel on 25 September 1902, the scion of an old Huguenot family. At the time of the Armistice in 1918, von Salomon was still in the senior class of the Royal Prussian cadet school. Shortly after the war, he joined the Freikorps, participating in the fighting in the Baltic and in Upper Silesia. He was also involved in the Kapp putsch of 1920 and in nearly all the counter-revolutionary movements which aimed to destroy the hated Weimar Republic, to wipe out the ‘shame’ of the Versailles Treaty and restore the monarchy. His first novel, Die Geächteten (The Outlaws), which dealt mainly with the Freikorps struggle to gain the Baltic States for Germany, depicted the men of 1920 as savage nihilists seeking revenge for their feelings of despair and impotence following the military defeat of World War I. ‘We were a band of fighters drunk with all the passion of the world; full of lust, exultant in action. What we wanted, we did not know. And what we knew, we did not want! War and adventure, excitement and destruction …’
