Jakob Sprenger


Jakob Sprenger was a Nazi politician.
Sprenger was born in Oberhausen near Bad Bergzabern in the Palatinate. In 1922, when employed as a postal inspector, Sprenger became a member of the Nazi Party. He was anti-Semitic, and rose quickly through the ranks. He became Gauleiter of Hesse-Nassau South on 1 April 1927, and by September 1930 was an elected member of the Reichstag.
When his Gau was merged with the neighboring Gau of Hesse-Darmstadt on 1 January 1933, he became the Gauleiter of the unified Gau Hesse-Nassau. On 5 May 1933, Sprenger was appointed Reichsstatthalter of the People's State of Hesse. In the process of the Gleichschaltung, in particular due to the Reichsstatthaltergesetz of 30 January 1935, he was also appointed Minister-President and took over leadership of the state government from Philipp Wilhelm Jung on 1 March 1933. Besides Martin Mutschmann of Saxony, he was the only Reichsstatthalter charged with such a double function.
On 1 September 1939, SA-Obergruppenführer Sprenger became Reich Defense Commissioner for Military District XII, and as of 1 December 1943 also for the Gau of Hesse-Nassau. In 1943, the Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Hesse-Nassau, Philipp von Hessen, fell out of favor and was removed from office. Subsequently, the province was partitioned in two, effective 1 July 1944, and Sprenger was appointed Oberpräsident of the new Prussian Province of Nassau. He thus united under his control the highest party and governmental offices in the province, as he had already done in the State of Hesse.
On the night of 25 to 26 March 1945, Sprenger fled from the advancing U.S. Army from Frankfurt to Kössen, Austria, where the Russians and US Army were subsequently in a pincer to cover the whole country. Trapped, he and his wife committed suicide on 7 May 1945.