[1][2][3][4] Karl Höltermann was born in Pirmasens, a town near the German border with France and Luxembourg known, then as now, a centre of Germany's shoe manufacturing industry.

[1] By 1919 Höltermann was working as a journalist, initially as a trainee with the Fränkische Tagespost, a party newspaper published in Nuremberg.

[2] Later in 1920 he moved to Magdeburg, taking a post as political editor with Volksstimme, a regional daily newspaper at that time, which usually featured favourable coverage of the SPD.

These Freikorps units generally made up of disillusioned, unemployed former soldiers, and were usually organised and led by former army officers committed to a nostalgic nationalism, which put them at odds with the ideals of the German Republic.

He also took charge of setting up and running (on an unpaid basis[2]) "Das Reichsbanner," a national newspaper for the organisation, which was produced in Magdeburg.

[7] He continued to serve until the banning of the organisation by the Nazi party, a move which came in the broader context of the cancellation of democracy in March 1933.

[4] The Great Depression's economic crisis during the later 1920s triggered massive unemployment and intensifying political polarisation across Germany, which increasingly spilled onto the city streets and squares.

Those still backing parties of the centre-right and centre-left - notably the SPD - were less attracted by this style of politics, but there was nevertheless a powerful yearning for protection from the hooligan extremists.

Support for the Iron Front came from the SPD, the mainstream (i.e. non-communist) trades union confederation and from the increasingly politicised associations and groupings of sports clubs.

[4][8] Between July 1932 and (notionally) June 1933 Karl Höltermann also sat in the Reichstag (national parliament), as an SPD member, representing Electoral District 10 (Magdeburg).

The National Socialist leader in any case had other plans, and used the parliamentary deadlock to maneuver his party into a semi-constitutional power grab, which took effect in January 1933.

One source mentions an attempt to set up an "alternative" London-based SPD leadership team, which came to nothing, as did his efforts to reconstitute Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold from exile, and use it to coordinate or at least encourage resistance back in Germany.

[2] A British "Naturalisation Certificate" was issued for his daughter on 5 August 1947, at which point the family were living in Kings Langley, a prosperous commuter village short distance outside London, and close to St Albans.

[14] Karl Höltermann remained in England until he died a couple of weeks short of what would have been his sixty-first birthday, on 3 March 1955.