Heinrich Himmler Signed Reichsführer-SS Promotion Document for Alfred Franke-Gricksch, 1944
$2,995.00
A promotion document on a Der Reichsführer-SS letterhead, dated at the Feld-Kommandostelle on 5 September 1944. It is addressed to SS-Sturmbannführer der Waffen-SS Alfred Franke-Gricksch, SS number 276 830, and promotes him to SS-Obersturmbannführer der Waffen-SS, effective 1 September 1944. It closes with the printed title “Der Reichsführer-SS” and an ink signature reading “H. Himmler,” alongside a purple stamp of the Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei with the national eagle. Handwritten initials appear beside the printed title.
Alfred Franke-Gricksch was born in Berlin on 30 November 1906 and died in Moscow on 18 August 1952. He came from a Berlin merchant family, was active in the youth movement, and began training as a teacher, then joined the NSDAP on 1 November 1928. He was a follower of Otto Strasser and went into exile with him in 1933, first to Austria and then Czechoslovakia, where he served as Strasser’s press chief and editor of the paper Deutsche Revolution. He broke with Strasser in 1934 and returned to Germany by way of Switzerland.
He joined the SS in 1935 and rose to SS-Hauptsturmfūhrer by 1941, serving last as intelligence officer on the divisional staff of the SS-Division Totenkopf under Theodor Eicke. From March 1941 he served with the SD in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and from August 1942 with the SS-Polizei-Division in Russia. He then moved to the SS-Personalhauptamt, where he headed the personal office of its chief, Maximilian von Herff, and led Amt I. In May 1943 he accompanied Herff on an inspection tour of the Generalgouvernement and wrote a report on the journey.
After the war he was interned by the British from 1945 to 1947 and went on to lead the nationalist cadre group known as the “Bruderschaft.” He was arrested by Soviet intelligence in East Berlin in September 1951, sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal on 17 May 1952 for his 1942 service in Russia, and executed in Moscow three days after his clemency plea was rejected. Russian authorities rehabilitated him in 1995 and annulled the verdict. COA accompanies.
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