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Authors: Robert. Gerwarth
Tags: Yale University Press
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money more quickly than he earned it. Bruno’s
musical talents and social skills, combined with his wife’s fortune, secured
the Heydrich family a respected place in the Halle community. They
cultivated personal relationships with the Mayor of Halle and the editor
of the local newspaper, the Saale-Zeitung . Another close family friend was
Count Felix von Luckner, who would rise to fame during the Great War
as one of Germany’s most celebrated naval war heroes.24
Reinhard Heydrich was therefore born into a family of considerable
financial means and social standing, a family that endeavoured to lead an
orderly life characterized by regularity and hard work, as was typical for
an upwardly mobile German bourgeois family at the turn of the century.
While Heydrich’s mother devoted herself entirely to the household and
the children’s wellbeing, occasionally working as a piano teacher in her
husband’s Conservatory, his father Bruno primarily gloried in his profes-
sion as a director. The gender-specific distribution of roles in the Heydrich
household was normal for the time: the father was the unchallenged head
of the family and made all important decisions concerning child-rearing
YO U N G R E I N H A R D
21
and education, while the mother – together with governesses in the case
of the Heydrich family – looked after the children’s everyday needs. Girls,
including Reinhard’s elder sister Maria, were prepared for their antici-
pated roles as mothers and wives, whereas boys were raised as future
providers and heads of their own household.25
Only four months after Reinhard’s birth, in the summer of 1904, the
Heydrichs moved into a significantly larger home. The swell of new
students and the resulting space shortage had forced Bruno Heydrich to
look for new premises. In July 1904, Bruno Heydrich’s Conservatory for
Music and Theatre moved from two separate buildings in Marienstrasse
to Poststrasse, one of the more salubrious districts of Halle’s city centre.
This neighbourhood, with its grand-looking buildings, offered a perfect
environment for the Heydrich family business, entirely focused on the
educational and representational needs of the middle-class community.
The new Conservatory also provided a spacious home for the owner’s
family and offered a larger number of classrooms and musical instruments,
as well as its own rehearsal stage.26
Young Reinhard clearly benefited from the musical talents of his
parents. As the eldest son, he would one day inherit the Conservatory, a
professional destiny that required rigorous musical training from an early
age. Even before starting primary school in 1910, he had learned musical
notation; he could play Czerny’s piano études perfectly and had begun
violin lessons. His father encouraged his musical interests and in 1910, at
the age of only six, Bruno and his son attended an exceptional musical
highlight in the Halle City Theatre: a staging of the Ring of the Nibelung
with the Bayreuth cast. The passion for romantic music, and for the
mythical world of Wagnerian opera in particular, would remain with
Reinhard for the rest of his life – a passion he shared with the future
Führer of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.27
The Heydrich family’s daily life ran according to precisely determined
and consistently maintained rules. Elisabeth Heydrich took both religious
education and active participation in church life extremely seriously.
Two conversions had turned the Heydrichs from the Protestant to the
Catholic Church. On his marriage to the Catholic Maria Antonie
Mautsch, Reinhard’s maternal grandfather Eugen Krantz had converted
from Protestantism. In the subsequent generation, the Protestant Bruno
Heydrich gave in to his wife’s demands and converted to Catholicism.
This was not an easy decision in an overwhelmingly Protestant society.
Religion, always an important force in German life, had acquired a new
and
musical talents and social skills, combined with his wife’s fortune, secured
the Heydrich family a respected place in the Halle community. They
cultivated personal relationships with the Mayor of Halle and the editor
of the local newspaper, the Saale-Zeitung . Another close family friend was
Count Felix von Luckner, who would rise to fame during the Great War
as one of Germany’s most celebrated naval war heroes.24
Reinhard Heydrich was therefore born into a family of considerable
financial means and social standing, a family that endeavoured to lead an
orderly life characterized by regularity and hard work, as was typical for
an upwardly mobile German bourgeois family at the turn of the century.
While Heydrich’s mother devoted herself entirely to the household and
the children’s wellbeing, occasionally working as a piano teacher in her
husband’s Conservatory, his father Bruno primarily gloried in his profes-
sion as a director. The gender-specific distribution of roles in the Heydrich
household was normal for the time: the father was the unchallenged head
of the family and made all important decisions concerning child-rearing
YO U N G R E I N H A R D
21
and education, while the mother – together with governesses in the case
of the Heydrich family – looked after the children’s everyday needs. Girls,
including Reinhard’s elder sister Maria, were prepared for their antici-
pated roles as mothers and wives, whereas boys were raised as future
providers and heads of their own household.25
Only four months after Reinhard’s birth, in the summer of 1904, the
Heydrichs moved into a significantly larger home. The swell of new
students and the resulting space shortage had forced Bruno Heydrich to
look for new premises. In July 1904, Bruno Heydrich’s Conservatory for
Music and Theatre moved from two separate buildings in Marienstrasse
to Poststrasse, one of the more salubrious districts of Halle’s city centre.
This neighbourhood, with its grand-looking buildings, offered a perfect
environment for the Heydrich family business, entirely focused on the
educational and representational needs of the middle-class community.
The new Conservatory also provided a spacious home for the owner’s
family and offered a larger number of classrooms and musical instruments,
as well as its own rehearsal stage.26
Young Reinhard clearly benefited from the musical talents of his
parents. As the eldest son, he would one day inherit the Conservatory, a
professional destiny that required rigorous musical training from an early
age. Even before starting primary school in 1910, he had learned musical
notation; he could play Czerny’s piano études perfectly and had begun
violin lessons. His father encouraged his musical interests and in 1910, at
the age of only six, Bruno and his son attended an exceptional musical
highlight in the Halle City Theatre: a staging of the Ring of the Nibelung
with the Bayreuth cast. The passion for romantic music, and for the
mythical world of Wagnerian opera in particular, would remain with
Reinhard for the rest of his life – a passion he shared with the future
Führer of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.27
The Heydrich family’s daily life ran according to precisely determined
and consistently maintained rules. Elisabeth Heydrich took both religious
education and active participation in church life extremely seriously.
Two conversions had turned the Heydrichs from the Protestant to the
Catholic Church. On his marriage to the Catholic Maria Antonie
Mautsch, Reinhard’s maternal grandfather Eugen Krantz had converted
from Protestantism. In the subsequent generation, the Protestant Bruno
Heydrich gave in to his wife’s demands and converted to Catholicism.
This was not an easy decision in an overwhelmingly Protestant society.
Religion, always an important force in German life, had acquired a new
and
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