Hermann Esser entered the Nazi party with Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in 1920, became the editor of the Nazi paper, Völkischer Beobachter

Völkischer Beobachter

The Völkischer Beobachter was the newspaper of the National Socialist German Workers' Party from 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from February 8, 1923...

, and a Nazi member of the Reichstag

Reichstag (Weimar Republic)

The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...

. In the early history of the party, he was Hitler's de facto deputy.

Esser was born in Röhrmoos

Röhrmoos

Röhrmoos is a municipality in the district of Dachau in Bavaria in Germany. It is located ca. 25 km northwest of München.Röhrmoos has 14 lots :...

, Kingdom of Bavaria

Kingdom of Bavaria

The Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806 to 1918. The Bavarian Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...

. He did service in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and was for a short time a Social Democrat.

He was an effective public speaker and was the Nazi party's first chief of propaganda. After the Beer Hall Putsch

Beer Hall Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch was a failed attempt at revolution that occurred between the evening of 8 November and the early afternoon of 9 November 1923, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff, and other heads of the Kampfbund unsuccessfully tried to seize power...

 fiasco, he was excluded from the party, along with Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher

Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...

, under the temporary leadership of the Strassers

Strasser brothers

Strasserism refers to the strand of Nazism that called for, and the neo-Nazism that currently calls for, a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of National Socialism, particularly hostile to finance capitalism from an antisemitic basis, to be initiated alongside nationalism...

. He was a renowned pervert and after being involved in a scandal in which he sexually assaulted the underage daughter of a businessman, disgusted other top Nazis, leading to his suspension from the organisation. Even Hitler said of him: 'I know Esser is a scoundrel, but I shall hold on to him as long as he is useful to me.'
But he knew too much to be cast aside, and Hitler gave him various minor roles in the party.
He was a good public speaker and was later re-admitted by Hitler and became influential in the reorganisation of the party. From 1929 to 1933, he was the party's floor leader in Munich's city council. Afterwards, he became a member of the Reichstag and Bavaria's minister of economics. From 1939 to the end of the war he served as the undersecretary for tourism in the Reich propaganda ministry.

He was imprisoned twice for a total of four years and died in Dietramszell (Bavaria) aged 80 in 1981.