In order to pre-empt the claims that I read swirling about the internet, and even occasionally in print, that such and such prominent member of the Third Reich had jewish ancestry. I thought I would check the background of Adolf Hitler's deputy: Rudolf Hess.
Similarly to Joachim von Ribbentrop - whose ancestry I have covered in a separate article - (1) Hess comes in for a lot of negative comments from historians. Hess was actually a rather hard-working man, like his father, but unlike Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and other NSDAP bigwigs: he had a rather unassuming personality. He wasn't a charming conversationalist, a fiery speaker or a dazzling intellectual, but he was extremely (and quietly) industrious.
Just like Franz Xavier Schwarz, the long-time treasurer of the NSDAP, Hess was a man whose worth was not to be seen in his external appearance, words and rhetoric, but rather his focus was on what mattered: action and implementing ideas. That is often overlooked by historians who commonly focus on style over substance, but when all is said and done what matters are actions not words or promises.
But I am straying from the question that I posed: was Rudolf Hess jewish?
The simple answer is no.
Hess was born Walter Rudolf Richard Hess to Johannes Fritz Hess and Klara Munch in the Alexandrian suburb of Ibrahimieh on 26th April 1894. (2) His father was a prominent German import-export merchant in Egypt and the owner of the company founded by his father Christian called Hess & Co. (3)
Fritz, like his father before him, was a respected member of the narrow and selective German colony in Alexandria, (4) which was later suggested as part of the reason for Hess' lack of skill as a conversationalist by other prominent members of the NSDAP. (5)
Hess' mother Klara Munch was equally German; the daughter of a textile manufacturer in Thuringia. (6) She was not - as has been often claimed - Greek (7) or related (as far as I can see) to the Georgiadis family in Athens, (8) but rather a German. She was - according to the official documentation - was the daughter of Rudolf Munch (born in Gera in Thuringia in 1831) and Adelheid Ferber (born in Hof in 1838). (9)
Neither of whom appear to have been anything, but German.
Despite the fact that Hess was referred to as 'the Egyptian', while at boarding school at Bad Godesberg on the Rhine and later in the NSDAP. (10) He simply doesn't have any Egyptian, Greek or jewish ancestry that I can find any record of!
References
(1) https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/was-joachim-von-ribbentrop-jewish
(2) David Irving, 2010, 'Hess: The Missing Years 1941-1945', 3rd Edition, Focal Point: London, p. 4; Peter Padfield, 2001, 'Hess: The Fuhrer's Disciple', 2nd Edition, Cassell: London, p. 3
(3) Idem.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Padfield, Op. Cit., p. 3
(6) Irving, Op. Cit., p. 4
(7) For example: http://www.freeinfosociety.com/article.php?id=274 (cited by http://ethniko.net/blog/rudolf-hess-greek/ among others) as well as http://rudolfhess.net/
(8) https://www.joanne16.com/2011/07/rudolf-hess-hitlers-deputy-is-in-news.html
(9) https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=192440#p1738329
(10) Padfield, Op. Cit., p. 4