Horst Ludwig Georg Erich Wessel was a Berlin Sturmführer of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party's stormtroopers. After his murder in 1930, he was made into a martyr for the Nazi cause by Joseph Goebbels.
Wessel first joined a number of youth groups and extreme right-wing paramilitary groups, but later resigned from them and joined the SA, the brownshirted street-fighting stormtroopers of the Nazi Party. He rose to command several SA squads and districts. On 14 January 1930, he was shot in the head by two members of the Communist Party of Germany. Albrecht "Ali" Höhler was arrested and charged with his murder. Höhler was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but was forcibly taken out of jail and killed by the SA after the Nazis came to power.
Wessel's funeral was given wide attention in Berlin, with many of the Nazi elite in attendance. After his death, he became a major propaganda symbol in Nazi Germany. A march he had written the lyrics to was renamed the "Horst-Wessel-Lied", and became the official anthem of the Nazi Party.