Jakob Grimminger

Biography

Jakob Grimminger was born in 1892 in Augsburg, Germany, and at the age of 16 enlisted in the Imperial German Army. He served as a mechanic in an Air Service Regiment from 1914 to 1917, transferring to the Infantry in August 1917. He saw one year of active service in Palestine and returned to Germany at the end of the war. He was discharged on April 3, 1919. In 1922, Grimminger joined the Nazi Party and became a storm trooper in the Sturmabteilung, serving in the city of Munich. In 1926 he was selected to join an elite group of Storm Troopers known as the Schutzstaffel (the SS) and was enlisted as an private serving in the Nazi Party's National Headquarters in Munich. Between 1926 and 1942 he was promoted within the SS many times, finally reaching the rank of colonel in 1943. In 1946, Grimminger was put on trial by the Allies on a criminal charge of membership in the SS. He was not sent to prison, but his financial assets were seized by the Allies in 1947. By 1948, he was living in Munich, West Germany. In the 1950s, he briefly attempted to enter Munich politics and served a term as a Munich city counsellor. However, his status as a former SS-Colonel prevented him from continuing in politics and, by 1960, he had faded into obscurity. Jakob Grimminger died in poverty on January 28, 1969, at the age of 76.