Arnold Wahnschaffe
Arnold Karl Gustav Wahnschaffe (born October 14, 1865 at Gut Rosenfelde near Deutsch Krone , † February 5, 1941 in Semmering , Styria ) was head of the Reich Chancellery in the German Empire from 1909 to 1917 .
Family and education
Arnold Wahnschaffe was the son of the manor owner Philipp Wahnschaffe and his wife Hedwig von Wangenheim († 1867). From 1866 to 1882 he attended the Royal Pedagogical School in Putbus on Rügen .
He then studied law in Berlin , Lausanne and Heidelberg from 1883 . In 1884 he became a member of the Corps Saxo-Borussia Heidelberg . He completed agricultural studies in Halle (Saale) , which he finished in 1886 (or 1887). Until 1892 he worked as a trainee lawyer in Schwedt , Deutsch Krone , Elbing , Berlin, Frankfurt (Oder) and Danzig . He passed the 1st and 2nd state examinations for higher administration. As a one-year volunteer , Wahnschaffe served with the 1st Brandenburger Dragoon Regiment No. 2 in Schwedt.
Service in the state administration
This was followed by service as a government assessor from 1892 to 1897 in Breslau , Bonn , Hanover and Halle (Saale) . From 1897 to 1905 he worked as district administrator in Landsberg an der Warthe . His father died in 1904, his uncle Paul Wahnschaffe in 1901. With this he inherited the goods from Rosenfelde and Rottmannshagen in the Demmin district in Pomerania , which he had managed by an administrator.
In 1905 Wahnschaffe married Irma von Möllendorf.
Service in the Reich government
From 1905 he was appointed to the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture, where he took the position of a lecturing council . He served as commissioner of the Minister of Agriculture and was a member of the Settlement Commission for Posen . As a lecturing council he had the same task as in the Ministry of Agriculture from November 1907 to 1909 in the Reich Chancellery. In 1909, as Undersecretary of State, he took over the task of the head of the Reich Chancellery from Undersecretary of State Friedrich Wilhelm von Loebell , who became President of the Province of Brandenburg .
Settlement Policy in the East
In October 1907, Wahnschaffe passed a resolution and the memorandum to the government, which was passed in the main board of the German Ostmarkverein . These writings concerned a statement on the demand for a legal regulation for the expropriation of Polish property.
In his new office, Wahnschaffe became an important key figure (Fritz Fischer) in German policy towards the Poles . In doing so, he acted according to the ideas that Bethmann Hollweg had developed regarding the question of the eastern border strip. After the beginning of the First World War , Wahnschaffe commissioned the former Consul General in Warsaw , Albrecht von Rechenberg , on August 27, 1914, to draw up a memorandum on the future of Poland. In further discussions, Wahnschaffe and Rechenberg discussed his plan to relocate the Polish population from the areas of Posen and West Prussia to Congress Poland .
War and social democracy
From July 16 to July 18, 1914, Wahnschaffe was in Hohenfinow . During these days he experienced the effects of the July crisis there in the presence of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg . When the war was announced in Berlin on August 1st, Bethmann Hollweg reaffirmed Wahnschaffe's determination to end the war victoriously.
A crucial role in Bethmann Hollweg's policy was to influence the role of the Social Democrats in war policy in the Reichstag. Wahnschaffe had the task of leading the talks to clarify the position of the Social Democrats. In a conversation on October 2, 1914 with Max Cohen-Reuss , member of the Reichstag , Wahnschaffe stated the expectation that the Social Democrats would have to come to terms with the existence of the monarchy. Cohen pledged that the Social Democrats could move in this direction, with the party's right wing supporting this stance.
First peace activities
On July 6, 1916, Wahnschaffe was one of the founders of the German National Committee for an Honorable Peace, along with the private secretary of the Reich Chancellor Kurt Riezler , the head of the press department in the Foreign Office Otto Hammann , Paul Rohrbach (1869–1956) and the State Secretary in the Reich Colonial Office Wilhelm Solf ( DNA), also known as the Wedel Committee . The task of this association was to channel the growing tensions within the groups about the outcome of the war and to support Bethmann Hollweg's policy. The goals set by the DNA met with little response, so that the DNA was dissolved again at the end of 1916.
Dedication to the Reichstag and resignation
In 1916, Wahnschaffe wrote a letter to the Emperor asking him to implement the memorandum above the entrance portal of the Reichstag, which was to be dedicated to the German people . The text of this dedication is said to be based on several initiatives by Wahnschaffe.
With the resignation of Bethmann Hollweg as Chancellor, Wahnschaffe also gave up his office in August 1917. In the period from October 11 to November 1918, he briefly returned to the Reich Chancellery as head of representation. He then traveled to his Rottmanshagen estate to cultivate the land, where in 1919 he took over the chairmanship of the DNVP district association .
Membership and Positions
- Board member of the Stavenhagen sugar factory in Mecklenburg
- Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Stavenhagen dairy
- Special Committee for Construction of the German Agricultural Society (DLG)
- Committee of the German Foreign Institute in Stuttgart
- German Society (1915-1934)
- German Ostmarkverein (1894–1934)
literature
- Biographical overview
- Herrmann AL Degener , who is it? , Berlin 1928.
- Fritz Fischer , Reach for World Power , Düsseldorf 2002.
- Willibald Gutsche, Rise and Fall of an Imperial Chancellor , Berlin 1973.
- Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 2: L-Z. German business publisher, Berlin 1931, DNB 453960294 .
- Georg Wenzel: German business leader . Life courses of German business personalities. A reference book on 13,000 business figures of our time. Hanseatic Publishing House , Hamburg / Berlin / Leipzig 1929, DNB 948663294 .
- Kurt Winkelsesser, (editor), German gender book. Genealogical handbook of middle class families. Sources and compilations with lineages of German bourgeois genders , Volume 3, Limburg 1972.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hildegard von Marchtaler: German Gender Book Volume 160, 3rd Brandenburger Volume, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1972, p. 411.
- ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses, part A, 41st year, Justus Perthes Verlag, Gotha 1942, p. 332.
- ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 71 , 887
- ↑ Rottmannshagen from 1249 to 2001 - chronicle of a place . 1999. Archived from the original on April 24, 2003. Retrieved on April 13, 2019.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wahnschaffe, Arnold |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wahnschaffe, Arnold Karl Gustav (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German political official, head of the Reich Chancellery (1909–1917) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 14, 1865 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gut Rosenfelde near Deutsch Krone |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 5, 1941 |
| Place of death | Semmering , Styria |