Ilse Hess
Ilse Proehl was born on the 22nd of June 1990 into the wealthy family of Dr Friedrich and his wife, Elsa. Her father was killed in action in May 1917, and her mother remarried Carl Horn, director of the National Art Museum in Bremen.
Ilse was an intellectual and one of the first female students at Munich University, where she met Rudolf Hess. In 1921 she joined the NSDAP party and became a close associate of Hitler. Ilse married Rudolf on the 20th of December 1927. Adolf Hitler was a witness at the wedding and was godfather to their only son Wolf Ruediger who was born in 1937.
After her husband’s flight to Scotland, Ilse left Munich with her son and lived in relative obscurity in the Alpine resort town of Bad Hindelang.
On the 3rd of June 1947, Ilse Hess was arrested and imprisoned at an internment camp in Augsburg until she was released without charge in 1948.
In 1952 her book England-Nuremberg-Spandau; Ein Schicksal in Briefen was published by the far-right publishing house Druffel-Verlag.
Ilse Hess remained unrepentant and loyal to Hitler and National Socialism, maintaining regular correspondence with Winifred Wagner and Himmler’s only daughter Gudrun until she died aged ninety-five in 1995.
