Andreas Hermes

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Andreas Hermes, around 1946

Andreas Hermes (born July 16, 1878 in Cologne , † January 4, 1964 in Krälingen ) was a German political scientist and politician ( Center , CDU ). In the Weimar Republic, Hermes was Reich Minister of Agriculture and Reich Minister of Finance . Because of his contacts with the German resistance, he was sentenced to death by the National Socialists in 1945. After the war he became the founding chairman of the East German CDU, but soon left Berlin for the west.

Family and work

Hermes was born in Cologne as the son of the pack master Andreas Hermes and his wife Theresia (née Schmitz). From 1896 he studied agriculture and philosophy at the universities of Bonn , Jena and Berlin . In 1898 he joined the Catholic student union K.St.V. Rheno-Borussia in Bonn in the KV . He worked as an agriculture teacher and consultant for an animal breeder. In 1906 he received his doctorate in Jena with a thesis on the optimization of crop rotation .

From 1911 to 1914 Hermes worked in Rome as director of the technical department of the International Agricultural Institute .

Before and during the First World War , Hermes worked in various scientific and advisory functions in the field of agriculture. In 1920 he married Anna Schaller. They had three sons, including Peter Hermes , and two daughters.

Andreas Hermes died in 1964 and was buried in the Bad Godesberg Central Cemetery.

politics

Weimar Republic

In 1919 Hermes became a ministerial director in the Reich Ministry of Economics in Berlin . The following year he became Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture, and from October 1921 to August 1923 he headed the Reich Ministry of Finance . From 1924 to 1928 he was a member of the Prussian Landtag and from 1928 to 1933 also a member of the Reichstag . From 1930 to 1933 he was also President of the Reich Association of German Agricultural Cooperatives - Raiffeisen, and from 1928 to 1933 President of the Association of German Farmers 'Associations , renamed the Association of German Christian Farmers' Associations in 1931 .

After the National Socialists came to power, Hermes returned his seat in the Reichstag on March 17, 1933.

Nazi era: emigration and resistance

Even before the Enabling Act , Hermes resigned his public office in protest against the Nazi regime . In March 1933 he was arrested for the first time on “fabricated suspicions of infidelity” and sentenced to four months in prison. He went into exile in Colombia in 1936 without his family, returned to Germany in 1939 to bring his family into exile, but was prevented from leaving the country by the beginning of the Second World War . Hermes was involved in the resistance against the Nazi regime, belonged to the Cologne circle and had contacts to the circle around Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and the Kreisau circle . He was arrested after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 . He cited his Christian worldview as the main motive for his participation in the resistance. Since he was named on a ministerial list by Goerdeler as a possible Minister of Agriculture, he was sentenced to death on January 11, 1945. However, his wife obtained a stay of execution several times. Ultimately, the conquest of Berlin by Soviet troops saved Hermes from carrying out the death sentence.

Post-war period and the Bonn Republic

After the Second World War, Andreas Hermes was co-founder and founding chairman of the CDU in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany - as early as July 1945, he opened the “Reich Secretariat” of the CDU in Berlin. Hermes became the second deputy mayor of Greater Berlin and councilor for nutrition. In December 1945 the Soviet military administration forced him to resign as CDU chairman because of his criticism of the land reform in the Soviet Zone without compensation . He moved to Bad Godesberg and joined the West CDU. From 1947 to 1948 he was a member of the Economic Council, the Parliament of the Bi- and Trizone in Frankfurt am Main and chairman of the nutrition committee. Differences with Konrad Adenauer meant that Hermes did not become the first Minister of Agriculture in the Federal Republic of Germany.

From 1948 to 1955 he was President of the German Farmers' Association and until 1961 of the German Raiffeisen Association . Hermes founded the “Godesberger Kreis” in 1949, which advocates the reunification of Germany and an improvement in relations with Eastern Europe. These proposals were highly controversial in the CDU. Since Hermes also opposed the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into the West, he became politically more and more sidelined.

Awards and recognitions

In 1952 Hermes became an honorary member of the German Society for Fat Science . In 1953 he was awarded the Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany. In memory of Andreas Hermes, the German Farmers' Association awards the Andreas Hermes Medal .

The Bonn-based Andreas Hermes Academy , the central training facility for the German agricultural sector, is also named after him.

In Cologne and Bonn there is one Andreas-Hermes-Strasse and one in Hanover is Andreas-Hermes-Platz .

On July 16, 2003, on the occasion of the 125th birthday of Andreas Hermes, his life's work was honored with a special stamp in the series Upright Democrats .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barmeyer, Heide: Andreas Hermes and the organizations of German agriculture . Stuttgart 1971. p. 2
  2. ^ Rudolf Morsey : Andreas Hermes: A Christian Democrat in the first and second German democracy . In: Historisch Politische Mitteilungen , 10 (2003), pp. 129–149.
  3. ↑ The peasant heroism . In: Der Spiegel, March 24, 1954
  4. ↑ Anna Hermes: And don't put life into her own. Andreas Hermes, life and work . Stuttgart 1971.
  5. ^ Andreas-Hermes-Straße in the Bonn street cadastre

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Hermes, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist and politician (center, CDU), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 1964
Place of death Krälingen , Eifel