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Heydrich had numerous affairs with women. Then he met Lina von Osten, a young woman from an impoverished aristocratic family. After two dates proposed to her. We are not sure what atracted him to her, probably the aristocratic name was a factor. She at first did not take the proposal seriously and wanted to date more to get to know each other. He was determined, however, and convinced her. The fact that he had been seeing another woman ruined his naval career. Heydrich married von Osten (December 1931). Heydrich's affairs, however, continued. Von Osten apparently encouraged him to join the NAZI Party. The couple had two sons and two daughters. We see the couple with the youngest boy, Heider in 1934 on the previous page. Here we see Von Osten with all four children (figure 1). Himmler and SA Chief Ernst Rohm were the godfathers of their first child, Klaus (1933-43). The other children were
Heider (1934), Silke (1939), and Marte (1942). The break in the birth of the boys and girls resulted from matrimonial difficulties. Heydrich was rarely home and both were having extramarital relations. Marte was born after her father's death. The marriage was to have a decisive influence on Heydrich. His wife was a NAZI with strongly nationalistic and virulent anti-Semitic beliefs. She proved to be a hard woman in the treatment of others after the NAZIs rose to power. Von Osten was a very ambitious woman and interested in success and relentlessly pushed her husband. The marriage was rather a sham. Heydrich was a workaholic. Von Osten said, I was married to Reinhard Heydrich for 10 years. He was not at home for 7 of those years." Heydrich was largely in the shadow of Himmler until Hitler appointed his Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia to bring the Czechs in line with the realities of NAZI rule (1941). He did so with great brutality. The appointment meant a huge step up the social ladder and access to substantial wealth. Just what Von Osten had desired. The family moved into an castle estate that had been seized from a Jewish family. Von Osten wrote, "I am a princess and I live in a fairy tale land." After the assassination of her husband, Hitler presented her the Czech estate, a generous pension, and an insurance policy which made her a very wealthy woman. Von Osten made renovations, including a swimming pool for the children. She turned much of the grounds into a potato farm. A miniature concentration camp was established with Jewish prisoners from the nearby Theresienstadt concentration camp to work as slaves on her estate. She abused the workers, spying on them with binoculars and ordering SS guards to whip those not working hard enough. She spat on and had any who were not sufficiently respectful to her beaten. Klaus was killed in a traffic accident while playing with his brother Heider just outside the court yard of the estate (1943). A grave for Klaus was dug by Jewish workers. Von Osten decided that was an obscene resting place for the boy and had German soldiers re-dig the grave. She wanted the Czech truck driver and passengers that hit Klus executed, but an investigation found them not responsible for the accident. As Jews in Theresienstadt were transported to Auschwitz, she lost her Jewish slave workers. She complained to Himmler who sent her a group of Jehovah Witnesses from the Flossenburg concentration camp. She refused to pay Flossenburg a labor charge so Himmler personally paid it. Von Osten hung on to her estate until the last minute when Red Army approached (April 1945). She fled back to Germany. The Czech Government after the War indited her for war crimes (1948), but the British occupation authorities rin Germany refused to extradite her. She opened restaurant for a time which was popular with SS veterans. She published a memoir, Life With a War Criminal. She wrote, "National Socialism was a faith and I can never renounce this faith." She met Finnish theatre director Mauno Manninen while she was vactioning in Funland (1965). They married, apparently to change her last name.
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