Adolf Wagner (1 October 1890 – 12 April 1944) was a Nazi Party official and politician who served as the Party's Gauleiter in Munich and as the powerful Interior Minister of Bavaria throughout most of the Third Reich. Early years Born in Algringen (today, Algrange) in Alsace-Lorraine to a coal miner and his wife, Wagner attended volksschule locally and realschule in Metz and Pforzheim. After serving as a one-year volunteer with Infantry Regiment 143, Wagner then studied natural science and mathematics at Strasbourg University for a year and then mining at RWTH Aachen University for three years. He received his certification as a mining engineer in 1914 but when the First World War broke out he volunteered for service with the Imperial German Army. He was assigned to Infantry Regiment 135 as a non-commissioned officer on the western front, was commissioned a Leutnant in 1917 and served as a company commander and as an orderly officer at regimental headquarters. He was twice wounded, first by poison gas and in 1918 he lost his right leg below the knee. He was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd class, and was discharged at the end of the war in 1918. Wagner returned to Lorraine after the war but in 1919 was expelled by the French authorities when the area was returned to France under the terms of the Versailles Treaty. He moved to Bavaria and found employment as a manager at the United Coal and Ore Mining Union in Erbendorf. He later worked as a business manager at the Pinzgau Mining Company across the Bavarian border in Austria. He was employed at these companies from 1919 to 1929. Nazi career Wagner joined the Nazi Party in 1923 (membership number 11,330) and became the Ortsgruppenleiter (Local Group Leader) in Erbendorf. He participated in the abortive Beer Hall Putsch of 9 November 1923, for which he earned the Blood Order. When the Nazi Party was banned after the failed coup, Wagner joined the Völkischer Block, a Nazi front organization. Under its banner, he, along with 22 others, was sent to the Bavarian Landtag in the April 1924 election, serving there until October 1933. In an incident in January 1932, Wagner was sentenced by a court to a fine of or ten days in jail for assaulting a journalist on the floor of the Landtag. Gauleiter Five months after the Nazi Party was re-established,