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VERY CLEAN SPRENGER SIGNATURE ON A 1939 LETTER TO A POLICE OFFICIAL, KARL RUHL, RARE

Jakob Sprenger (24 July 1884 – 7 May 1945) was a Nazi Party official and politician who was the Party’s Gauleiter of Hesse-Nassau South from 1927 to 1933 and Gau Hesse-Nassau from 1933 to 1945. He was also the Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governor) and Minister-President of the People’s State of Hesse, the Oberpräsident of the Prussian Province of Nassau and an SA-Obergruppenführer.

As American armed forces approached Frankfurt, Sprenger issued further orders on 23 March 1945 prohibiting any able-bodied man or woman from leaving the city. Despite this, on the night of 25 to 26 March just before the start of the Battle of Frankfurt, Sprenger himself fled from Frankfurt to Kössen in eastern Tyrol, Austria where the Russians and U.S. Army were executing a pincer maneuver to envelop the whole country. Trapped, Sprenger and his wife committed suicide by ingesting poison on 7 May 1945.