Everything about Walther Rathenau totally explained
Walther Rathenau (
September 29,
1867 –
June 24,
1922) was a
German industrialist, politician, writer, and statesman who served as
Foreign Minister of Germany during the
Weimar Republic.
Family
Rathenau was born in
Berlin, the son of
Emil Rathenau, a prominent
Jewish businessman and founder of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (
AEG), an electrical-engineering company. He studied physics, chemistry, and philosophy in Berlin and
Strasbourg. His religious heritage, wealth, and association with
Freemasonry were all factors in establishing his deeply divisive reputation in German politics
; rumors that he was a homosexual may also have been a factor. He worked as an engineer before joining the AEG board in
1899, becoming a leading industrialist in the late
German Empire and early
Weimar Republic periods. Rathenau is thought to be the basis for the German industrialist character "Arnheim" in
Robert Musil's novel
The Man Without Qualities.
Political career
Rathenau was a leading proponent of a policy of
assimilation for
German Jews: he argued that Jews should oppose both
Zionism and
socialism and fully integrate themselves into mainstream German society. This, he said, would lead to the eventual disappearance of
anti-Semitism. As a powerful, affluent and highly visible Jewish politician, Rathenau was disdained by Germany's extreme right, culminating in his 1922 assassination.
During
World War I Rathenau held senior posts in the Raw Materials Department of the War Ministry, while becoming chairman of AEG upon his father's death in 1915. He played a leading role in putting Germany's economy on a war footing, enabling wartime Germany to continue its war effort for years despite shortages of labor and raw materials.
Rathenau was a moderate liberal in politics, and after WWI he was one of the founders of the
German Democratic Party (DDP). He rejected the tide of
socialist thought which swept Germany after the shock of defeat and revolution, opposing state ownership of industry and advocating greater worker participation in the management of companies. His ideas were influential in post-war governments.
In 1921, Rathenau was appointed Minister of Reconstruction, and in 1922 he became Foreign Minister. His insistence that Germany should fulfill its obligations under the
Treaty of Versailles, while working for a revision of its terms, infuriated German nationalists. He also angered nationalists by negotiating the
Treaty of Rapallo with the
Soviet Union. The leaders of the (still obscure)
Nazi Party and other right-wing groups claimed he was part of a "
Jewish-Communist conspiracy."
The British politician
Robert Boothby wrote of him: "He was something that only a German Jew could simultaneously be: a prophet, a philosopher, a mystic, a writer, a statesman, an industrial magnate of the highest and greatest order, and the pioneer of what has become known as 'industrial rationalization'."
In fact, despite his desire for economic and political co-operation between Germany and the Soviet Union, Rathenau remained skeptical of the methods of the Soviets. In his
Kritik der dreifachen Revolution (
Critique of the triple revolution) he noted that:
» "We can't use Russia's methods, as they only and at best prove that the economy of an agrarian nation can be leveled to the ground; Russia's thoughts are not our thoughts. They are, as it's in the spirit of the Russian city intelligentsia, unphilosophical, and highly dialectic; they're passionate logic based on unverified suppositions. They assume that a single good, the destruction of the capitalist class, weighs more than all other goods, and that poverty, dictatorship, terror and the fall of civilization must be accepted to secure this one good."
» "If ten million people must die to free ten million people from the bourgeoisie, then this is a harsh but necessary consequence. The Russian idea is compulsory happiness, in the same sense and with the same logic as the compulsory introduction of Christianity and the Inquisition."
Assassination
On
1922 June 24, two months after the signing of the
Treaty of Rapallo, Rathenau was assassinated in a plot led by two right-wing army officers (aided and abetted by others) linked to
Organisation Consul:
Erwin Kern and
Hermann Fischer.
(External Link
) On that morning, he was driving from his house to
Wilhelmstraße, as he did daily (and predictably). During the trip his car was passed by another in which three armed men were sitting. They simultaneously shot at the minister with machine guns and then quickly drove away. A memorial stone in the Koenigsallee in
Berlin-Grunewald marks the scene of the crime, which was officially (with flags legally at half mast) but not necessarily fervently mourned in Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they declared Rathenau's assassins as national heroes and designated
June 24 as a holiday of celebration. One of the assassins was the future writer
Ernst von Salomon——he had provided the car but wasn't present at the shooting. Curiously, he managed to stay out of the
Nazi party and had a
Jewish wife, whom he managed to protect throughout the Nazi years largely because of his credibility with the Nazis in having facilitated Rathenau's assassination. His anti-American book after the war,
Der Fragebogen ("The Questionaire"), about the history of
Germany between 1918 to 1946, was one of the bestsellers in
West Germany while simultaneously being
banned in
U.K. schools for being anti-British.
Some believe that Rathenau's assassination may have significantly influenced the long-term political, economic, and social development of Europe (or was the result of such development, particularly the development of leftward-trending parties, class consciousness, nationalistic feelings, and antisemitism). It was certainly an early sign of the instability and violence which were eventually to permeate and destroy the Weimar Republic. The British writer
Morgan Philips Price wrote:
» "In June 1922 Walter Rathenau, a big Jewish industrialist and progressive economist, was assassinated by gangsters of the extreme Right who were the heart and soul of the
Freikorps. I was present at the memorial service in the
Reichstag and noted an extraordinary outburst of enthusiasm among the workers of Berlin, as expressed in their trade union leaders and socialist parties, for the Republic and for President
Ebert. The rank and file of the Majority Social Democrats were now thoroughly aroused...first Communists, then Socialists, and now a big industrialist were murdered for having Liberal views and, in the last case, for being a Jew. The situation in Germany was becoming more and more sinister."
Others, such as historian
Erich Eyck, argue that the murder of Rathenau may have been the singular event that set into motion the period of extreme
hyperinflation in Germany during 1922-23:
» "But as great as was the impact of Rathenau’s death upon German domestic politics, it left an even greater mark upon the economic scene. Now the tumble of the mark couldn't be stopped. The dollar, still under 350 on the day of the murder, climbed to 670 by the end of July, to 2000 in August, and to 4500 by the end of October."
Albert Einstein later commented that he was "greatly disturbed" by Rathenau's assassination, since he saw it as early proof of an immense anti-
pacifist and
anti-semitic presence in Germany.
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