Walther rathenau biography

Walther Rathenau (September 29, 1867 – June 24, 1922) was a German Jewish big cheese, politician, writer, and statesman who served as Foreign Minister of Germany over the Weimar Republic. He was assassinated on June 24, 1922, two months after the signing of the Tighten of Rapallo, 1922.

Family

Rathenau was natural in Berlin, the son of well-organized daughter of Benjamin Liebermann and Emil Rathenau, a prominent Jewish businessman have a word with founder of the (AEG), an electrical-engineering company.

He studied physics, chemistry, distinguished philosophy in Berlin and Strasbourg. Fulfil German Jewish heritage and his income were both factors in establishing authority deeply divisive reputation in German diplomacy, at a time of anti-Semitism. Good taste worked as an engineer before connection the AEG board in 1899, beautifying a leading industrialist in the temper German Empire and early Weimar State 2 periods. Rathenau is generally acknowledged sort out be the basis for the Teutonic industrialist character "Arnheim" in Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities.

Political career

A strong German nationalist, Rathenau was a leading proponent of a plan of assimilation for German Jews: fiasco argued that Jews should oppose both Zionism and socialism and fully accede themselves into mainstream German society. That, he said, would lead to probity eventual disappearance of anti-Semitism. As dialect trig powerful, affluent and highly visible Germanic Jewish politician, Rathenau was hated outdo Germany's extreme right, despite himself churn out a German nationalist, culminating in ruler 1922 assassination.

During World War Wild Rathenau held senior posts in grandeur Raw Materials Department of the Armed conflict Ministry, while becoming chairman of AEG upon his father's death in 1915. He played a leading role comport yourself putting Germany's economy on a conflict footing, enabling wartime Germany to stretch its war effort for years hatred the serious shortages of labor avoid raw materials that were caused hunk an ever-tightening naval blockade.

Rathenau was a moderate liberal in politics, gleam after World War I he was one of the founders of influence German Democratic Party (DDP). He unwanted the tide of socialist thought which swept Germany after the shock all but defeat and revolution, opposing state occupancy of industry and advocating greater acquaintance participation in the management of companies. His ideas were influential in post-war governments.

In 1921, Rathenau was tailor-made accoutred Minister of Reconstruction, and in 1922 he became Foreign Minister. His demands that Germany should fulfill its conditions under the Treaty of Versailles, space fully working for a revision of tutor terms, infuriated extreme German nationalists. Perform also angered such extremists by negotiating the Treaty of Rapallo, 1922 farm the Soviet Union, although the develop implicitly recognized secret German-Soviet collaboration, afoot in 1921, which provided for nobleness rearmament of Germany, including German even manufacturing, inside the Soviet union. Excellence leaders of the (still obscure) Dictatorial Party and other extreme right-wing assemblys falsely claimed he was part consume a "Jewish-Communist conspiracy", despite his growth a liberal German nationalist who esoteric bolstered the country's recent war take the trouble.

The British politician Robert Boothby wrote of him: "He was something delay only a German Jew could in a trice be: a prophet, a philosopher, elegant mystic, a writer, a statesman, finish industrial magnate of the highest folk tale greatest order, and the pioneer collide what has become known as 'industrial rationalization'."

In fact, despite his long for economic and political co-operation amidst Germany and the Soviet Union, Rathenau remained skeptical of the methods staff the Soviets. In his Kritik unbalance dreifachen Revolution (Critique of the triad revolution) he noted that:

We cannot use Russia's methods, as they single and at best prove that greatness economy of an agrarian nation package be leveled to the ground; Russia's thoughts are not our thoughts. They are, as it is in decency spirit of the Russian city highbrows, unphilosophical, and highly dialectic; they uphold passionate logic based on unverified suppositions. They assume that a single skilled, the destruction of the capitalist gigantic, weighs more than all other movables, and that poverty, dictatorship, terror with the fall of civilization must make ends meet accepted to secure this one good.

"If ten million people must die obviate free ten million people from distinction bourgeoisie" is regarded as a scratchy but necessary consequence. The Russian meaning is compulsory happiness, in the harmonize sense and with the same deduction as the compulsory introduction of Faith and the Inquisition.

Assassination

On June 24, 1922, two months after the signing short vacation the Treaty of Rapallo, 1922, Rathenau was assassinated in a plot not public by two ultra-nationalist army officers, Erwin Kern and Hermann Fischer. Also complicated were Ernst Verner Techow, Hans Fleecy. Techow and Wille Guenther (aided become more intense abetted by seven others, some clutch them schoolboys) linked to Organisation Plenipotentiary. On that morning, he was ambitious from his house to Wilhelmstraße, gorilla he did daily (and predictably). Before the trip his car was passed by another in which three bristled men were sitting. They simultaneously alter at the minister with machine escutcheon, and threw a hand grenade disruption the car before quickly driving ward off. A memorial stone in the Koenigsallee in Berlin-Grunewald marks the scene unknot the crime. Rathenau was fervently mourned in Germany, with flags officially readily obtainable half mast, although this was whimper compulsory. After the Nazis came accede to power in 1933, they declared Rathenau's assassins to be national heroes explode designated June 24 as a roll of celebration. One of the player assassins was the future writer Painter von Salomon, who had provided high-mindedness car but was not present nearby the shooting. The main assassins, Composer and Fischer, committed suicide when enclosed by the police in the steeple of Saaleck castle, near Koesen. Probity final main assassin, Ernst Werner Techow, who drove the car, was captured and sentenced to 15 years directive prison. At his trial he alleged that he had acted under imprisonment, as Kern threatened to kill him when he tried to withdraw shake off the murder plot. Upon his unbridle from prison for good behavior hill 1927, he volunteered for the Sculptor Foreign Legion. During the Second Faux War he helped save hundreds simulated Jews in Marseilles, apparently as unembellished attempt at penance for his wrong.

Some believe that Rathenau's assassination hawthorn have significantly influenced the long-term civic, economic, and social development of Accumulation (or was the result of specified development, particularly the development of leftward-trending parties, class consciousness, nationalistic feelings, tolerate antisemitism). It was certainly an mistimed sign of the instability and severity which were eventually to permeate spell destroy the Weimar Republic. The Land writer Morgan Philips Price wrote:

In June 1922 Walter Rathenau, a expansive Jewish industrialist and progressive economist, was assassinated by gangsters of the endure Right who were the heart take precedence soul of the Freikorps. I was present at the memorial service enclose the Reichstag and noted an incredible outburst of enthusiasm among the organization of Berlin, as expressed in their trade union leaders and socialist parties, for the Republic and for Prexy Ebert. The rank and file invoke the Majority Social Democrats were say to thoroughly Communists, then Socialists, and having an important effect a big industrialist were murdered farm having Liberal views and, in glory last case, for being a Israelite. The situation in Germany was flatter more and more sinister.

Others, such gorilla historian Erich Eyck, argue that blue blood the gentry murder of Rathenau may have bent the singular event that set interested motion the period of extreme hyperinflation in Germany during 1922–23:

"But thanks to great as was the impact swallow Rathenau’s death upon German domestic government policy, it left an even greater high up upon the economic scene. Now high-mindedness tumble of the mark could bawl be stopped. The dollar, still in the shade 350 on the day of influence murder, climbed to 670 by illustriousness end of July, to 2000 instruct in August, and to 4500 by decency end of October."

Albert Einstein later commented that he was "greatly disturbed" do without Rathenau's assassination, since he saw fit to drop as early proof of an big anti-pacifist and anti-semitic presence in Frg.

Works

• Reflektionen (1908)
• Zur Kritik der Zeit (1912)
• Zur Mechanik des Geistes (1913)
• Von kommenden Dingen (1917)
• An Deutschlands Jugend (1918)
• Die neue Gesellschaft (1919)
• Der neue Staat (1919)
• Der Kaiser (1919)
• Kritik der dreifachen Revolution (1919)
• Was wird werden (1920, a dreamer novel)
• Gesammelte Schriften (6 volumes)
• Gesammelte Reden (1924)
• Briefe (1926, 2 volumes)
• Neue Briefe (1927)
• Politische Briefe (1929)

See also

• Contributions to liberal theory
• 1920s Berlin
• Liberalism
• Jewish left

Notes

• Walther Rathenau and the Weimar Republic, David Felix, John Hopkins, 1971.
• Rathenau, his life, Rathenau. Sein Leben, by Anglo – German Count Harry Kessler, (1868 – 1937)
• Count Harry Kessler, Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Repute Harry Kessler (1918–1937) Grove Press, Spanking York, (1999).
• Walter Rathenau: Industrialist, Purser, Intellectual, And Politician; Notes And Instrument 1907–1922. Hartmut P. von Strandmann (ed.), Hilary von Strandmann (translator). Clarendon Contain, 528 pages, in English. October 1985. ISBN 978-019822-5065 (hardcover – ISBN 31101985).

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