Arnold Rechberg

Arnold Rechberg (born October 9, 1879 in Hersfeld , † February 28, 1947 in Starnberg ) was a member of a German entrepreneurial family and worked as a sculptor and political publicist. He became known for his attempts to pursue a "private" foreign policy. During the Weimar Republic, this was aimed at rapprochement with the Western powers and an anti-Bolshevik alliance.

Arnold Rechberg (1919)

Life

Bronze figure by Arnold Rechberg on the town hall square in Bad Hersfeld

Origin and career

Rechberg came from a wealthy Hessian entrepreneurial family. The father Adam Rechberg was a cloth manufacturer and deputy mayor in Hersfeld . The mother was Ida Elise, b. Sunkel.

After graduating from high school in 1898 and one year of military service with the Wandsbeker Hussars near Hamburg , Rechberg did a commercial apprenticeship in the family business. He broke off a subsequent degree in commercial science in Leipzig . He then remained a co-owner of the family business, but did not work in the company. The head of the company was his brother Fritz Rechberg , who expanded it into a leading German cloth manufacturer in the 1920s.

Secured financially, Rechberg turned to sculpture . From 1904 he attended the Académie Julian art academy in Paris . His works were influenced by Art Nouveau . He lived partly in Florence and Paris, where he made contact with artistic circles, but also with aristocrats. One of his most famous works is the model of a seated male nude, completed in 1906 . 1927, after the death of his friend Major General a. D. Max Hoffmann , Rechberg had the figure cast in bronze in the H. Noack foundry in Berlin and placed it on Hoffmann's grave in the Berlin Invalidenfriedhof . In 1907 he was accepted as an associate member of the French artists' association Société nationale des beaux-arts , an honor that only a few foreigners received. His Francophile attitude, which had apparently been established during this period, was coupled in a peculiar way with a strong enthusiasm for the Prussian military, to which he felt as a reserve officer of one of the most distinguished Prussian cavalry regiments.

Very interested in foreign policy, Rechberg began to express himself as a publicist on political issues soon after the turn of the century. So he pleaded for a Franco-German understanding at the expense of England, contradicting the fundamental conviction that dominated under Secretary of State Friedrich von Holstein (resignation in 1906) and was still very influential in German politics, that an understanding with England would be desirable and the overcoming of hereditary hostility thought impossible with France . Rechberg considered England to be the real enemy of Germany because of the trade competition, which was based on his lifelong conviction that only economic aspects and interests were decisive for relations between peoples.

Activities in the First World War

During the First World War Rechberg served as an orderly officer on the staff of the Fifth Army . Initially supported by his superiors, he continued his Franco-German rapprochement and held talks about his plans with politicians such as Foreign Secretary Gottlieb von Jagow , Bavarian Prime Minister and Center Leader Count Hertling and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg . Probably mistakenly convinced that his actions would be supported by the highest political authorities, he began to sound out the possibilities of a separate peace with France. Because his military superiors questioned the official approval of his mission, Rechberg was arrested several times. Through the intervention of various personalities, he was released in August 1915, but had to leave the army, which offended him deeply. The persons responsible for his elimination, in particular the head of the Prussian military intelligence service IIIb , Walter Nicolai , have been persecuting Rechberg with excessive, largely fabricated or exaggerated accusations and accusations.

Some other publicists, artists and industrialists also represented ideas similar to those of Rechberg in the course of the war. The general representative of the magnate company of the Hohenlohe-Oehringen family , who were particularly fortunate in zinc mining in the eastern border provinces of Silesia and West Prussia , Stresemann's brother-in-law Kurt Kleefeld , appeared as a staunch supporter of Rechberg's ideas. The Hungarian-Swiss intellectual and later pacifist Ludwig Stein , who maintained contacts with leading Hungarian politicians during the war, also believed in the possibility of a separate peace after reports of war weariness in France in mid-1916 and also shared Rechberg's anti-British thrust: he recommended, after a peace with France to continue the war against England all the more determined and to keep Belgium as a satellite state under German “ suzerainty ”.

In 1917, Rechberg and his unmarried sister founded a political salon in Berlin. During this time, his attitude towards England changed and in the following year he was positive about rapprochement with Great Britain and took up Matthias Erzberger's plan to build a German-English economic trust after a mutual agreement .

After the end of the war Rechberg mainly worked as a journalist and in conservative and liberal papers advocated rapprochement with Western Europe - now including Great Britain. His ideas, which were geared towards economic and political interests, aimed primarily at a mutually beneficial understanding on the reparations issue . In politics, however, the eccentric and, in the opinion of the American historian Gerald D. Feldman, "ultimately ill" Rechberg was hardly heard.

Anti-Bolshevism

Against " Bolshevism " he called for the use of military means. In 1924 he propagated an anti-Bolshevik bloc including Germany. In June 1929, the KPD revealed in the Reichstag that Rechberg had also submitted proposals to Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré and other government representatives in Paris for joint anti-Soviet actions of an economic, financial and military nature. However, his proposals had no influence on German foreign policy, which did not want to jeopardize the stabilization of German-Soviet relations achieved in the Treaty of Rapallo (1922), even during the efforts of the Chancellor and Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann to approach the Western powers.

Rechberg's advocacy for a stronger integration of the German and French economies achieved greater resonance in politically influential circles. He relied on the participation of French companies in German companies. He also advocated a Franco-German military alliance. Although dismissed Hugo Stinnes support the plans Rechberg for the reception of foreign capital in October 1918 from more briskly. In his view, this would have destroyed the last remaining intact source of capital that Germany had. Later, Stinnes was more positive about economic ties with the aim of bridging political differences, but always demanded mutual capital participation.

With the potash mining in contact Rechenberg came across his brother Fritz, the shareholder and CEO of Kaliwerke Wintershall and Chairman of winter Haller finance company "potash industry AG" was - all by taking over competitors soon the only German Kalikonzern. In 1924/25 the Franco-German potash cartel was formed, which resulted in a potash agreement concluded in 1926 and which Rechberg, along with the economic cooperation of other branches of French and German heavy industry achieved by Stinnes among others, rated its efforts as a success. The potash producers in both countries together had a world monopoly of potash.

Rechberg's involvement in the Tscherwonzen forgery affair (1927), in which his friend Max Hoffmann was involved with a relatively high degree of probability, has been assumed on various occasions, but cannot be proven.

While Social Democrats and Communists both rejected and opposed the “propaganda campaign that the German potash industrialist Arnold Rechberg developed in favor of a Franco-German rapprochement in Stresemann's time” (in the sense of the monopoly thesis , he was seen as an agitator of a supranational alliance of capital against the working class ), his objectives coincided in part with those of Stresemann, who also hoped for a weakening of the Soviet system if it were possible to link Russia's economy so closely with the capitalist system of the Western European powers that we would pave the way for an evolution in Russia. ”Even after the Locarno Treaty (1926) , even after the Locarno Treaty (1926), Stresemann always refused to take a public anti-Russian positioning of Germany, which anti-Bolsheviks like Rechberg were calling for, even after the Locarno Treaty (1926).

Nazi period and post-war period

After the beginning of the National Socialist rule , Rechberg initially withdrew. When he tried to build on his earlier ideas after the Munich Agreement , he was arrested several times. In 1940 he was forbidden from interfering further in foreign policy. In 1943 he was temporarily imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp . He was later imprisoned in a hotel in Bad Godesberg , where he was liberated by the Allies in 1945.

After the end of the war he tried again to become politically active, but no longer played a role. He sparked a scandal when he claimed that all former members of the Reichstag had allowed themselves to be bribed by the potash cartel. The result was a series of defamation suits from former MPs affected.

literature

• Werner Bührer:  Arnold Rechberg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 228 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Arnold Rechberg , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 11/2013 from March 12, 2013, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
• Andreas Dornheim: Röhm's man for abroad. Politics and assassination of the SA agent Georg Bell. LIT-Verlag, Münster 1998, pp. 38-46; Pp. 223 ff., Notes 149–166; P. 238, note 254.
• Jörg Haspel, Klaus-Henning von Krosigk (eds.): Garden monuments in Berlin: cemeteries. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86568-293-2 , p. 159.
• Förderverein Invalidenfriedhof eV (Ed.): The Invalidenfriedhof. Rescue of a national monument. L-und-H-Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-928119-83-4 .
• Götz J. Pfeiffer: Memorial sites in Bad Hersfeld and Friedewald with sculptures by Arnold Rechberg, in: Hessische Heimat, 67th year, 2017, issue 2/3, pp. 89–94.
• Brigitte Rechberg-Heydegger: The mourner. Comments on the tomb of Paul Berleth in the Hersfeld cemetery. In: My homeland. Volume 42, No. 11, 2003, pp. 3 and 4. (Supplement to the Hersfelder Zeitung )

Web links

Commons : Arnold Rechberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Arnold Rechberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Arnold Rechberg in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gaines Post: The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy. Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1976, pp. 143 et al. Note 30 .
2. ^ Günter Riederer and Ulrich Ott (eds.): Harry Graf Kessler. The diary. Fifth volume 1914–1916 (= publications of the German Schiller Society; Vol. 50.5). Klett-Cotta Verlag , Stuttgart 2008, p. 559 f. in Google Book Search.
3. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman : The French Policies of Hugo Stinnes. In: Stephen A. Schuker, Elisabeth Müller-Luckner: Germany and France. From conflict to reconciliation. The shaping of Western European security. Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, pp. 43-67; therein p. 49: "Arnold Rechberg, an eccentric and ultimately pathological sculptor and publicist."
4. ^ ^{A b c} Heinz Karl: Approaches to European imperialist integration between the two world wars and their fight by the international revolutionary workers' movement. ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Communications of the Communist Platform of the Linkspartei.PDS , July 2004 (contribution to the conference "Socialist Movement and European Integration. Historical and Current Aspects" on March 6-7, 2004 in Berlin); Online version accessed on February 13, 2016.
5. ↑ Gerald D. Feldman: The French Policies of Hugo Stinnes. Munich 2000; therein p. 49: Stinnes angrily refused Rechberg his support and accused the latter of laying out a path to “ruining the last intact source of credit in Germany”.
6. ^ Werner Bührer: Arnold Rechberg , in: NDB 21, p. 229.
7. ^ ^{A b} The German economic hegemony in France. In: Renaissance , No. 2 (August 1941), pp. 34–37 (36); Online version accessed on February 13, 2016.