Death Threat in the Reichstag, June 13, 1929: Nazi Parliamentary Practice and the Fate of Ernst Heilmann

While addressing the German Reichstag in 1929, the National Socialist deputy Wilhelm Frick issued a death threat against his Social Democratic colleague Ernst Heilmann. The fact that Frick suffered no consequences for this grave breach of protocol demonstrates both the brutalization of parliamentary etiquette and a failure to recognize the danger posed by the Nazi Party to the very existence of the Weimar Republic. This little-known incident, which occurred three and a half years before the Nazis came to power in 1933, assumes even greater significance in light of Heilmann’s 1940 murder in Buchenwald concentration camp.