Richard Witting

Richard Witting (actually: Witkowski) (born October 19, 1856 in Berlin , † December 22, 1923 in Berlin) was a German lawyer , administrative officer , bank director and politician . He was the brother of the journalist Maximilian Harden and the father-in-law of the pacifist Hans Paasche . From 1891 to 1902 he was Lord Mayor of Posen and a member of the Prussian mansion , from 1902 to 1910 director of the National Bank for Germany , then chairman of the supervisory board, 1907/08 member of the Prussian state parliament . He is regarded as the “gray eminence” of the imperial era and one of the fathers of the Weimar constitution , whose first drafts he worked out together with Hugo Preuss . After the end of the First World War , he postulated in the magazine Die Weltbühne that Germany was solely to blame for the outbreak of war.

Youth and Political Careers

Richard Witting was the seventh of nine children of the Jewish silk merchant Arnold Witkowski and his wife Ernestine. The family was in 1853 by Posen moved to Berlin, where Witting 1876 at the French gymnasium be High School made. At this point he converted to the evangelical faith and, like most of his family members, changed his family name to Witting. His younger brother Felix, who later became the publisher of the future , called himself Maximilian Harden in future.

After studying law and administrative sciences in Göttingen , where he became a member of the Hannovera fraternity , and Berlin, Witting entered the civil service. In 1879 he was appointed trainee lawyer and in 1884 court assessor. From 1886 on he worked as a magistrate's assistant in the Berlin municipal administration, from June 1889 to June 1891 as a city councilor in Danzig . He made a great contribution as Lord Mayor of Poznan, where he worked from 1891 to 1902. In the opinion of the biographer Arthur Kronthal, he has accomplished the “miracle”, “in little more than a decade, transforming the poor, quiet place away from all culture into a modern community with strongly developed business, flourishing industry and the seat of many high administrative bodies do". Despite these successes, which also made him an advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II , he was not ready to take over the office of President of the Authority for the Settlement (of Germans) in the provinces of West Prussia and Posen. He did not consider such a policy, as he explained to the Reich government, to be fundamentally wrong, but believed that more should be done to bind the Polish-speaking population to Germany. In 1902 he resigned from the communal service; the city of Poznan made him an honorary citizen and named a street after him. In addition, he was awarded the title of "Privy Councilor" by Kaiser Wilhelm II. He took over the management of the National Bank for Germany in Berlin. However, he did not limit himself to this activity only; in November 1907 he was elected to the Prussian House of Representatives, to which, however, he only belonged until April 1908.

In the years that followed, his name was used frequently when a ministerial post was open. "However, it was always a mere rumor," writes Kronthal, "although no other person was suitable for a leading political position in the state or the Reich." from Darmstädter Bank to Darmstädter und Nationalbank (Danat-Bank). According to journalist Felix Pinner, Witting's move to the supervisory board was more of a sign of failure: "Richard Witting, who was a very capable administrative officer and mayor, could not really get his way in the banking business and soon turned to the supervisory board."

Peace efforts in the First World War

As head of the Berlin Red Cross, Witting spoke in an interview with the Washington Post in October 1914 of a " war of annihilation " between Germany and England . In the interview he announced a fight "down to the last German" and expressed his hatred of the English, whom he called a nation of hypocrites and criminals. Five days after the interview was published, on November 5, 1914, one of his sons fell on the Western Front .

Despite these nationalistic and chauvinistic remarks, Witting soon switched to the camp of peace representatives. The change of attitude is said to have been caused by the fact that he received knowledge of the true situation on the fronts and the real reasons for the outbreak of war. Witting came to the conviction that "the war, which began negligently in ludicrous delusion, with its first blows - the break-in into neutral Belgium and the ultimatums and declarations of war on Russia and France - embittered the whole earth against us and could never be won" . During the war, he turned away from the National Liberals, whose right wing he had belonged to, and sought proximity to left-wing parties that stood up for peace. However , he dismissed the radical pacifist positions of his son-in-law Hans Paasche, who was murdered by Freikorpsmen in 1920 , as a crush.

In the further course of the war he relied on a quick end to the fighting and an understanding with France. This is said to have led to alienation from the emperor. He was also involved in the affair of Prince Karl Max von Lichnowsky by passing on a memorandum from the former German ambassador in London to Captain Hans Georg von Beerfelde , who secretly copied and circulated it. A discussion group was formed in Witting's house in Berlin's Tiergarten in 1916, including participants such as Hellmut von Gerlach , Hans Paasche, Eduard Bernstein , Kurt Eisner and occasionally Walther Rathenau . Friedrich Stampfer , editor-in-chief of the social democratic forward , called the villa “the most important of these 'sites of conspiracy'” in his memoirs. According to Stampfers, Witting worked "restlessly in the circles of the nobility, the diplomats and the high bureaucracy" in order to fight for a quick end to the war. However, it had no effect.

Commitment to a new constitution

Witting's call for a democratization of Prussia also went unheeded at first. However, when the Supreme Army Command began to be interested in proposals for constitutional reform, Witting passed this request on to his friend Hugo Preuss. In a commemorative publication for Preuss from 1926, the journalist Ernst Feder wrote: “Witting discussed it with his friend Preuss, and Preuss immediately set about adding to the building of the unfashionable imperial constitution and building a modern parliamentary people's state behind the imperial facade. His memorandum was completed in July 1917. ”Witting was not impressed by the unsuccessfulness of this memorandum and, according to Kronthal,“ worked out a democratic constitution as early as the winter of 1917/18. He then discussed this draft with Professor Hugo Preuss, which then formed the basis of the 'Weimar Constitution' ”. Siegfried Jacobsohn , editor of the Weltbühne, recalled the same thing : In April 1918 Witting showed him the design. "He didn't seem to underestimate his part in it."

After the war, Witting vehemently opposed the rise of the stab in the back legend and the claim that Germany only defended itself during the war. Under the pseudonym Georg Metzler, he wrote on January 9, 1919 in the Weltbühne :

“And the enemies are a hundred times right when they keep pointing out that Wilhelm and the other German princes were only chased away because they had lost this war. As if the German rulers did not deserve punishment and ruin because they started this criminal war that scorns every divine and human right, and because they continued it with the most nefarious means - by no means because they lost it! "

Witting also tried to mediate between Germany and France after the war. In an interview with the Paris newspaper Le Matin on July 20, 1922, he referred to the intertwining of interests between German and French industry. Witting died on December 22, 1923 in Berlin of complications from a heart condition.

Works

• Deposition of the West Enceinte in the fortified city of Poznan. Poznan 1898
• The Ostmarken problem. Berlin 1907
• Banking in: Philipp Zorn , Herbert von Berger (editor): Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Ed. By Siegfried Körte, Friedrich Wilhelm von Loebell, among others, 3 volumes. R. Hobbing, Berlin 1914.
• Foreign policy and diplomatic art. War mentality - Lehmann and Krause. Berlin 1917

literature

• Arthur Kronthal: "Witting, Richard", in: German Biographical Yearbook. Volume V. The year 1923. Berlin / Leipzig 1930, pp. 395–403
• S. [alomon] Wininger: Great Jewish National Biography , sixth volume, Steinheim branch, Tipografis "ARTA", Cernuci, 1932, p. 298
• Friedrich Stampfer: experiences and findings. Notes from my life. Cologne 1957, pp. 218-220
• Huber, Ernst Rudolf: German constitutional history since 1789, Vol. V: World War, Revolution and Reich renewal, Stuttgart a. a .: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1978, p. 243 and 978
• Joachim Bergmann: The Schaubühne - Die Weltbühne 1905–1933, bibliography and index with annotations. Saur, Munich 1991, p. 261
• Henning Tegtmeyer : Lord Mayor, Bank Director, Politician, Federal Brother , in: Federal Newspaper of the Green Hanoverians in Göttingen, Volume 89 (New Series), October 1999, No. 2, pp. 32–41
• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 6: T-Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5063-0 , pp. 355-358.
• Hugo Preuss: Collected writings. Volume 1. Politics and Society in the Empire. Edited and introduced by Lothar Albertin and Detlef Lehnert. Tübingen 2007, pp. 56-58

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Witting in the catalog of the German National Library
• Witting's letter to Siegfried Jacobsohn
• Friedhelm Greis: "Graue Eminenz der Kaiserzeit", in: Der Freitag , July 30, 2009, p. 12

Individual evidence

1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 6: T-Z. Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5063-0 , p. 235 ff.
2. ^ Arthur Kronthal: "Witting, Richard", in: German Biographical Yearbook. Volume V. The year 1923. Berlin / Leipzig 1930, pp. 395–403
3. ^ Mann, Bernhard (edit.): Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives. 1867-1918 . Collaboration with Martin Doerry , Cornelia Rauh and Thomas Kühne . Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1988, p. 422 (handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties: vol. 3)
4. ↑ Frank Fassland (Felix Pinner): “Business leader XXXI. Hjalmar Schacht ”, in: Die Weltbühne , January 24, 1924, p. 100ff
5. ^ "One Nation must die", in: Washington Post , October 31, 1914, p. 5
6. ↑ see Kronthal, p. 401
7. ^ Friedrich Stampfer: Experiences and knowledge. Notes from my life. Cologne 1957, p. 218
8. ^ Ernst Feder: Hugo Preuss - Ein Lebensbild , Berlin 1926, p. 19
9. ^ "Answers: Anti-Semite", in: Die Weltbühne , December 29, 1925, p. 1005
10. ↑ Georg Metzler: “The wicked lie”, in: Die Weltbühne , January 9, 1919, pp. 34–37

predecessor	Office	successor
Caesar Kalkowski	Lord Mayor of Poznan 1891–1902	Ernst Wilms