Werner Küchenthal (13 January 1882 - 20 June 1976) was a German jurist and public official who became a leading politician (DNVP, NSDAP) in what was then the Free State of Brunswick ("Freistaat Braunschweig").
[1][2] Werner Küchenthal was born in Münchehof, a small manufacturing country town focused on limestone extraction and cement production, positioned in the countryside between Braunschweig to its north and Göttingen to its south.
He received his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1907[1] His dissertation concerned property and possession rights in respect of game killed by poachers and the duties and rights of lawful huntsmen and gamekeepers against poachers ("Über den Eigentumserwerb am Wilderergute und die Ansprüche und rechtlichen Befugnisse des Jagdberechtigten gegen den Wilderer").
After his promotion to the higher ranks of the public service (als "Oberregierungsrat") in 1920 he worked in the tax department of the Regional Finance Office in Hanover.
[3] On 1 October 1930 these two, with the other smaller parties to the new governing coalition, voted Werner Küchenthal in as chair of the Council of Ministers / Minister-president of Braunschweig, the duties to be combined with departmental responsibilities for Finance and Justice.
[5] Along the way, it was discovered by eagle eyed readers of the constitution that if Hitler could be found a job in government service, German citizenship might be conferred automatically.
On 26 February 1932 Adolf Hitler was duly appointed to the appropriately obscure post of "Regierungsrat der braunschweigschen Gesandtschaft beim Reichsrat" (loosely "Government official of the Braunschweig delegation to the National Council").
[5][6] On 1 May 1933 Werner Küchenthal joined the Nazi Party less than two months after the Enabling Act of 1933 which enshrined in statute the transformation of Germany into a one-party state.