Passage: He was born in 1912 in Salzburg, then part of Austria-Hungary, as son of the artist Carl Anton Reichel and Hilde Constance Dolmatoff. Oriented in the classics (Latin and Greek) he did most of his high school at the Benedictine school of Kremsmunster in Austria. From 1926 until 1935, was a member of the Sturmabteilung, the NSDAP and SS (1926-1935). During the 54th International Congress of Americanists held in Vienna in July 2012, the Colombian and US archaeologist and associate professor Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo (University of Florida) presented a conference with German anthropologist Manuela Fischer and others, where they alleged having information of Reichels youth and Oyuela has been since claiming that Reichel-Dolmatoff at age 14 in 1926 formed part of the Hitler Youth and later was SS between 1932-1935 and says he was also NSDAP member in Austria, and as a SS Sergeant in Dachau (1934-1935). Oyuela-Caycedo says he has documental support from the SS file and NSDAP file of his activities, and documents from the Federal Archive in Berlin and the National Archive in Washington D.C. In the newspaper "The Third Front", published by Otto Strasser who had been a leader of the NSDAP, allegeldy notes taking from an alleged "diary" of Reichel were published in 1936. Strasser became opposed to Hitlers branch of the Nazi party after the killing of his brother Gregor Strasser in 1934.  According to the conference paper presented by Oyuela-Caycedo and article published in December 2012 and also in further newspaper interviews and some publications Oyuela-Caycedo continues to reiterate this about Reichels past.  Oyuela-Caycedo also says Reichel by 1936 was expelled from the SS and following a mental crisis Reichel-Dolmatoff abandoned the Nationalsocialist party and SS and left Germany and Austria, and is in 1937 later living and studying in Paris. He attended classes at the Faculté des Lettres of the Sorbonne  and in the École du Louvre from late 1937 to 1938. Gerardo emigrated to Colombia in 1939, where he became a Colombian citizen in 1942. Reichel became member and was the Secretary to the France Libre/Free (1942-1943) France Movement with the help of  his colleague and friend the French ethnologist Paul Rivet who was the Delegate of the Resistance of France Libre and living in Colombia. General Charles De Gaulle later awarded Reichel-Dolmatoff with the medal of the Ordre du Mérite. The rest of his life Reichel-Dolmatoff spent in research in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, ethnoecology, ethnohistory, ethnoastronomy, material culture, art, vernacular architecture, among others.
For how many years was Reichel a member of the SS?