Chauffeur of Adolph Hitler and SS Oberführer, he was the son of Charles Emil Maurice and Amanda Hennings, and an early member of the Nazi Party (member #19). He was a close associate of Adolf Hitler with a personal friendship dating back to 1919 when they were members of the German Workers Party. In 1920 he became the first Oberster SA Führer when the Sturmabteilung (SA) was founded, and in 1923 he became the commander of the newly established Stabswache, a special SA company given the task of guarding Hitler at Nazi party meetings and rallies. He was imprisoned with Hitler and Rudolf Hess at Landsberg after the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in November, 1923. Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf" in prison as Maurice played the mandolin, and called him in the book "my brave Maurice". He was allowed to address Hitler as "Mein lieber Hitler" (my dear Hitler). In 1925 Maurice and Hitler refounded the Stabswache as the Stosstrupp Adolf Hitler which later that year was renamed the Schutzstaffel (SS). Hitler became SS Member #1 and Maurice SS Member #2. Maurice became an SS-Führer in the new organization, although the leadership of the SS was assumed by SS Brigade Führer and former driver Julius Schreck. Maurice became Hitler's chauffeur which he felt was a degradation. When the SS reorganized and expanded in 1932, he became a senior SS officer and was eventually promoted to the rank SS-Oberführer in 1939. While he never became a top commander of the SS, his status as SS Member #2 effectively credited him as the founder of the organization. Maurice was with Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives, and shot to death Edmund Heines and his boyfriend, and also shot and killed Father Bernhard Stempfle, who had been talking about Hitler's relationship with Geli Raubal. After Himmler became Reichsführer SS, Maurice fell afoul of racial purity rules for SS officers when he had to submit details of his family history before he was allowed to marry. All SS officers had to prove racial purity back to 1750, and it turned out that Charles Maurice Schwartzenberger, the founder of Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and a Jew, was his great-grandfather. Himmler, who had always been jealous of Hitler's close friends from the early days of the Party, and especially of the lack of control he had over Hitler's inner bodyguards, recommended Maurice be expelled from the SS, along with other members of his family. To Himmler's annoyance however, Hitler stood by his old friend, and in a secret letter written on 8/31/1935, Hitler compelled Himmler to make an exception for Maurice and his brothers, who were informally declared "Honorary Aryans" and allowed to stay in the SS. Despite his Jewish ancestry, Maurice was first and foremost a loyal companion to Hitler. In 1936 he became a Reichstag deputy for Leipzig and from 1937 on he was chairman of the Munich Chamber of Commerce. From 1940 to 1942, he served in the Luftwaffe. On 5/25/1945 he was captured by the American forces in Starnberg. In 1948, as a "Class II Nazi", he was sentenced to four years in prison, but appealed and his request for mercy was accepted and he was freed. After the war he became a watchmaker in Munich and spent the last years of his life in his house in Stöcking/Starnberg, his living room decorated with paintings of his Jewish ancestors and his SS number.