Adolf Koester

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Foreign Minister Adolf Köster, around 1920

Carl Heinrich Adolf Köster (born March 8, 1883 in Verden an der Aller , † February 18, 1930 in Belgrade ) was a German publicist , politician ( SPD ), Reich Minister of the Interior, Reich Foreign Minister, diplomat, war correspondent and writer. His eldest son was the diplomat Kai Köster .

Life

Adolf Köster was the son of Franz Peter Hermann Köster and Auguste Köster, b. Ahrend . He attended schools in Hamburg and Wandsbek, and spent holidays in Kappeln . He received his Abitur in 1902 at the Matthias-Claudius-Gymnasium . As a student, he joined the SPD. He studied philosophy and theology in Heidelberg , Halle , Marburg and Zurich . In 1905 he passed the first theological exam in Marburg. He received his doctorate on July 22, 1907 at the University of Erlangen . Until 1912 he taught literary history at the Technical University of Munich , from 1913 he worked for the Swabian Tagwacht , initially as a freelance journalist and during the First World War as a reporter on the Western Front. In 1913 he and his wife bought "Rutsch 1" in Hamburg-Blankenese . By the end of the war, he reported in hundreds of articles not only for the social democratic but also increasingly for the bourgeois press from almost all theaters of war. In addition, there were later propaganda lectures on behalf of the war press office.

After the November Revolution in 1918, he took on a position in the Prussian State Chancellery with Curt Baake , since the beginning of 1919 in the Reich Chancellery , from May 1919 as State Commissioner, and later also as Prussian State Commissioner (PrStKom) of the province of Schleswig-Holstein in the Schleswig-Holstein voting area . In March 1921 he was elected to the Reichstag and until May 1924 represented the Schleswig-Holstein constituency 14.

From April 10 to June 8, 1920, Köster was Foreign Minister of the German Reich in the first cabinet of Reich Chancellor Hermann Müller , a government coalition made up of the SPD, the Center and the DDP . In the second Wirth cabinet (center, SPD, DDP) from October 26, 1921 to November 14, 1922, he held the office of Reich Minister of the Interior . From January 1923 to January 1928 he worked as an envoy in Riga , Latvia , and from March 1928 in Belgrade. He was buried in Hamburg-Blankenese.

In 1910 he married Käthe Mahr , whom he had met in 1905/06 while working as a private tutor for the Mahr family in Wandsbek. The couple had five sons and a daughter who died in childhood, including Kai (1911-1976) and Uwe, whose parents made it possible for them to attend the reformed educational rural education home school by Martin Luserke on the North Sea island of Juist , which was founded in 1925 .

Honors

The Adolf-Köster-Damm in Hamburg-Neuallermöhe and the Kösterstrasse in Lünen are named after him.

Works

  • Pascal's ethics. A historical study . JCB Mohr, Tuebingen 1907.
    • Pascal's ethics . Inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the high philosophical faculty of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen . Laupp, Tübingen 1908. Internet Archive
  • The ten chimneys. Narratives . Albert Langen, Munich 1909.
  • Spinoza, Goethe, Kant . Berlin 1910.
  • The anxious night. Novel. Albert Langen, Munich 1913.
  • The young Kant in the struggle for history . Simion, Berlin 1914. Internet Archive
  • Adolph Koester, Gustav Noske : War journeys through Belgium and Northern France 1914 . Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1914.
  • Death in Flanders. War novels . Albert Langen, Munich 1914. (= Langen's war books) Berlin State Library
  • Behind the Somme Front . In: Bergische Arbeiterstimme, Solingen from July 26, 1916. Solingen city archive digitized
  • With the Bulgarians. War reports from Serbia and Macedonia. Albert Langen, Munich 1916. Berlin State Library
  • Wandering earth. War reports from the west. Albert Langen publishing house, Munich 1917. Berlin State Library
  • The Falkenhayn storm troop . War reports from Transylvania and Romania. Albert Langen, Munich 1917.
  • Burning blood. War novels. Albert Langen, Munich 1916.
  • The silent battle. War reports from the main headquarters. Albert Langen, Munich 1917. Berlin State Library
  • The German spring offensive 1918 . Curtius, Berlin 1918. (= military essays. Volume 6)
  • The fight for Schleswig. Verlag für Politik und Wirtschaft, Berlin 1920. Internet Archive 1921 edition
  • Could we keep fighting in the fall of 1918? Publishing house for politics and science, Berlin 1921.
  • Wilhelm as a diplomat. A foreign policy review . Vorwärts bookstore, Berlin 1921.
  • Away with the stab in the back legend ! Why we couldn't keep fighting in 1918. Publishing house for politics and science, Berlin 1922.
  • Our right . Publishing house for politics and science, Berlin 1922.
  • Greater Hamburg. A chapter in German reorganization . Walther Rothschild, Berlin-Grunewald 1922.

literature

  • Hermann von Kuhl : The war situation in autumn 1918. Why were we able to keep fighting? A reply to Adolf Köster's writing: Were we able to continue fighting in autumn 1918? Dob-Verlag, Berlin 1922./
  • Adolf Koester . In: Franz Osterroth : Biographical Lexicon of Socialism . Volume I: Deceased Personalities . JHW Dietz Nachf., Hanover 1960, pp. 164-165.
  • Kurt Doß : Reich Minister Adolf Köster 1883–1930. A life for the Weimar Republic . Droste, Düsseldorf 1978. ISBN 3-7700-0512-0
  • Rolf Wörsdörfer: Hermann Wendel and Adolf Köster. Two German Social Democrats in Southeastern Europe 1909–1930 . In: Bert Becker, Horst Lademacher (Ed.): Spirit and shape in historical change. Facets of German and European History 1789–1989. Festschrift for Siegfried Bahne . Waxmann, Münster 2000, ISBN 978-3-89325-849-9 , pp. 231-256. Google only partially readable
  • John Hiden: Adolf Köster and Paul Schiemann in Riga. German Ostpolitik after the First World War . In: Norbert Angermann et al .: Baltic Sea Provinces, Baltic States and the National . LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-9086-4 , pp. 447-458.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Doß, p. 17.
  2. ^ Digitized, p. 34 ff.
  3. ^ So the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Archive of Social Democracy. Franz Osterroth writes: In the elections on June 6, 1920 he was elected to the Reichstag. (P. 165.)
  4. ^ Franz Osterroth.
  5. ↑ On the funeral of the envoy Dr. Köster. At the cemetery in Blankenese . In: Hamburger Fremdblatt of February 21, 1930.
  6. ^ Adolf Köster . In: Archive of Social Democracy, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. On: fes.de
  7. ↑ Köster, Adolph. In: Who is it? - Our contemporaries. IX. Output. Verlag Herrmann Degener, Leipzig 1928, p. 840.
  8. ^ Information sheet from Schule am Meer , school year 1928/29, p. 14.
  9. ^ Information sheet from Schule am Meer , school year 1929/30, p. 14.
personal data
SURNAME Köster, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Köster, Carl Heinrich Adolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), diplomat, journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Verden on the Aller
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1930
Place of death Belgrade