Walter Heck

Walter Heck (8 December 1897 – unknown) was a German graphic designer who created the SS double 'Siegrune' symbol for the Schutzstaffel (SS), the elite corps of the Nazi Party, in 1929, the runic emblem of the Sturmabteilung (SA), and co-designed the all-black SS uniform in 1932.

"[1][2] In 1929,[3] Heck designed the SS logo, not based on some ancient Aryan Germanic rune as mythologised by the Nazis, but because he wanted to move away from the Fraktur lettering ubiquitous in Germany at the time and also thought that the capital "S" used in the standard Latin alphabet was too soft to represent the values of the SS.

[6][7] In 1944, during the Second World War, a fellow officer wrote to Heinrich Himmler on Heck's behalf asking for some special consideration for Heck on account of the very small payment he had received for his design work on the SS symbol, and the fact that he was impoverished and had not retained any copyright on the design.

Himmler wrote to Heck in response to say that, after the war was over, he intended to give Heck a family home with a garden but that he expected him to have started a family and have at least two children by then.

[8] In 2017, the German television channel ZDFinfo released a 50-minute documentary Signs of Evil – The Runes of the SS from Silke Potthoff, which explored the history of the "SS" symbol and Heck's role in its design.

Walter Heck designed the infamous typographic logo for the SS , the elite corps of the Nazi party , in 1929. He put together two lightning bolt-shaped ' Siegrunes ', a symbol based on the sig Armanen rune , which in turn was based on the historical sowilo rune .
A page from a uniform booklet published late 1932, where 'SS' ( Schutzstaffel ) is written in Fraktur script . The image also shows the early SS brown shirt uniform and an early variant of the Nazi elite corps' skull symbol ( Totenkopf ).
German uniform chart reproduced in an American newspaper in December 1933. At the top, Heck's new SS logo, his runic SA ( Sturmabteilung ) emblem, and the black SS uniform he designed together with Karl Diebitsch can be seen.