Arthur Zarden

Stolperstein in Berlin-Dahlem , Goßlerstrasse 21

Arthur Heinrich Ludwig Zarden (born April 27, 1885 in Hamburg , † January 18, 1944 in Berlin ) was a German financial expert and State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Finance in the Weimar Republic .

School time and training

Little is known about Zardens childhood and youth. According to his daughter, it was not uncommon for him to have a fluctuating, pessimistic attitude throughout his life . In 1904 Zarden left the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hamburg after graduating and began studying law at the University of Lausanne . This was followed by semesters in Munich , Berlin and Kiel . He passed his first state examination in law in 1908 in Kiel. In 1909 he received his doctorate as Doctor iuris utriusque in Rostock. At the end of 1912, Zarden passed the second state examination in Hamburg. He was then sworn in as an assessor .

Hamburg financial administration

Zarden began his career with the tax deputation , a subdivision of the Hamburg department for finance . 1914 he was appointed Administrative Assessor, 1917. Government . As part of the Erzberger reform , the Hamburg tax deputation was dissolved on April 1, 1920; some of the tasks were transferred to the newly created Lower Elbe State Tax Office. On July 24, 1920 he married Editha Orenstein, the daughter of the industrialist Benno Orenstein , and moved to Berlin with her.

Reich Ministry of Finance

At that time, the entire financial administration in the German Reich was centralized. The Reich Ministry of Finance was established in Berlin at the head of the new Reich Finance Administration . During the development phase, the ministry suffered from an eminent shortage of qualified workers. Lawyers in particular were sought and were able to make a career quickly. Like the later Reich Minister of Finance Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk , Zarden began his career in the new Reich Ministry of Finance in mid-1920. Zarden was hired as a ministerial advisor, in 1923 he was promoted to ministerial director , in 1925 to ministerial director . His professional focus was taxation.

Zarden was a member of the national liberal DVP , which criticized the Versailles Treaty just as massively as Matthias Erzberger's tax policy , initially strictly rejected the Weimar Constitution and favored the creation of a central state . However, the party was not directed destructively against the Weimar Republic , but combined its criticism with reform proposals that conformed to the system.

Tsards, too, advocated standardizing taxes and centralizing finances between the empire and the states. He wrote several articles on these topics in trade and association journals. He was significantly involved in the introduction and collection of the imperial sacrifice , the forced loan , the capital gains tax and the wealth tax . In some cases, he is also regarded as the “father” of tax vouchers , with which, from 1932, companies were able to obtain discounts on taxes and obtain new liquidity at short notice by selling them. According to other sources, these so-called Tax Remission Certificates were developed by American banks or the Reichsbank .

State Secretary

Zarden expected to become State Secretary as early as 1929 after Johannes Popitz resigned . Instead, the then incumbent Reich Minister of Finance Paul Moldenhauer , who shortly before had been Reich Economics Minister in the Müller cabinet , appointed the lawyer Hans Schäffer from the Ministry of Economics as the new State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Finance.

On June 2, 1932, Count Schwerin von Krosigk was appointed Reich Minister of Finance by Chancellor Franz von Papen . When he was appointed, Schwerin von Krosigk immediately brought Arthur Zarden to his position as State Secretary. Both shared the area of ​​responsibility in the ministry: Zarden took care of the tax system in the German Reich and Schwerin von Krosigks took care of the state budget .

Zarden's private lifestyle was not without controversy at the time. He drove a Maybach Zeppelin DS 7 at state expense , had a modern twelve-room apartment on Alsenstrasse in Berlin-Tiergarten , often gave lavish dinners for over 40 people and maintained private contacts with influential industrialists. He spent the summers with his family alternately in Heiligendamm or in one of the grand hotels in the Engadine . His lavish lifestyle appeared problematic because Zarden had played a key role in the introduction and collection of the luxury tax and had issued various legal comments on it. His predecessor and competitor Hans Schäffer later commented:

“The Tsar led a more eventful existence than the rest of us officials; and the Reich Finance Minister did not like private dealings with the largest taxpayers in the German Reich. "

Regarding the criticism, the fact that Zarden was the husband of a millionaire heiress to Orenstein & Koppel and was thus able to deny his way of life from various sources was often omitted .

In the midst of the global economic crisis , the financial experts in the Reich Ministry of Finance split in two directions: as a countermeasure to the rising number of unemployed, one group was inclined to a financial orthodoxy and strict austerity policy, the other was oriented towards Keynesianism and wanted to create economic incentives that were geared towards demand to control goods and services and, if necessary, to stimulate the economy through increased government spending and expansionary monetary policy.

Under the impression of the previous hyperinflation , Zarden already supported the Brüning government , which tried to strengthen the currency through an austerity policy, which, in addition to rising unemployment, was associated with serious social hardship, tax increases and deep cuts in the social security system. The representatives of the austerity policy assumed the need to keep the state budget balanced because the capital market was not available to finance a deficit . Ultimately, these measures turned out to exacerbate the crisis.

In the elections in July 1932 , Adolf Hitler achieved the final breakthrough with his promise to reduce unemployment. The fact is that only the NSDAP appeared with a program of massive, reflationary credit expansion and job creation and was thus able to more than double its share of the vote to 37.3%. Arthur Zarden stood in the way of the National Socialists in several ways. He was an advocate of an austerity policy, a member of a party that conformed to the system and, because of his lifestyle and his Jewish faith, he used all the clichés of National Socialist propaganda. As early as the spring of 1932, Hans Pfundtner , ministerial official of the Reich Ministry of the Interior , named Arthur Zarden in a memorandum, listing which state secretaries would have to be removed if there was a change of government.

Compulsory retirement

After Hitler's personal intervention, Schwerin von Krosigk, who remained Reich Minister of Finance until 1945 , had to replace his previous State Secretary Arthur Zarden in favor of the NSDAP finance expert Fritz Reinhardt on the basis of the law to restore the civil service in April 1933 . The latter immediately started implementing the Reinhardt program named after him .

Count Schwerin von Krosigk later reported that Zarden had been able to secure a brief audience with Hitler on his departure , during which Hitler promised him another job according to his rank, but never kept his promise. According to Section 7 of the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service , Schwerin von Krosigk had to decide whether to follow his long-term colleagues

• § 3, retired due to his non-Aryan descent, or after
• § 4, dismissed from service without notice due to his previous political activity, or after
• § 5, transferred to another office with a reduction in salary.

It is noteworthy that Schwerin von Krosigk opted for none of these paragraphs, but rather a general one: according to Section 6, 48-year-old Arthur Zarden was initially put into temporary retirement without giving any reason and, in September 1933, with full pay, into permanent retirement.

From 1938 onwards, the seventh ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Act allowed the retirement pay to be reduced under certain conditions ; it is not known whether this was also the case with Arthur Zarden. His daughter Irmgard stated that outwardly nothing changed in the family's life at first and that the lavish social life continued. After the outbreak of war, the Zardens moved to Berlin-Lichterfelde and led a more secluded life. The servants and the chauffeur were dismissed, only one cook remained. At the beginning of February 1943, his wife fell ill with influenza from which she died a little later.

Circumstances of death

Arthur Zarden was in contact with resistance circles; however, he never belonged to any resistance group. He met regularly with members of the SeSiSo Club , a cultural-political discussion group with a wide range of political currents.

On September 10, 1943, Tsarden was invited to tea by Elisabeth von Thadden , who belonged to the Solf circle . Everyone who had been invited knew each other, they trusted each other and were not afraid to speak frankly. The conversations were lively and revolved around the overthrow of Mussolini , the armistice agreed at the lecture between Italy and the Allies and the question of whether this event could lead to an early end of the war, which many hoped for. Everyone took an active part in the conversation; Tsards also took part in the discussion about the militarily hopeless situation.

One of those present was the informer Paul Reckzeh , who betrayed the discussion group to the Gestapo . In the early morning of January 12, 1944, the entire tea party was arrested for undermining military strength and taken to a prison in Berlin-Halensee , where Arthur Zarden jumped out of a stairwell window onto Joachim-Friedrich-Strasse on January 18, 1944 and died while being transported to the hospital .

Web links

• German biography
• Reich Chancellery files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.bundesarchiv.de/foxpublic/74D9C0D80A0622120000000031F33A42/frame.jsp?detail=findmittelinfo.html&oben=findmittelinfo_oben.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Irmgard Ruppel / Federal Archives.  
2. ↑ Hamburg State Archive , 313-3: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/GGGN73P2PMGKWFMUEGWNAFKWQZITWJZK .
3. ^ Christiane Kuller: Bureaucracy and Crime: Anti-Semitic Financial Policy and Administrative Practice in National Socialist Germany. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, p. 36.
4. ↑ Eberhard Kolb , Ludwig Richter: National Liberalism in the Weimar Republic. The governing bodies of the German People's Party 1918–1933. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1999, p. 12 f.
5. ↑ Hans-Georg Glasemann: The tax vouchers of the Reich Ministry of Finance from 1932 to 1945. Financial history and catalog. Ed. M&S, Regenstauf 2009, ISBN 978-3866468184 , p. 5.
6. ^ Albrecht Ritschl : Germany's crisis and economic situation 1924–1934. Domestic economy, foreign debt and reparation problem between Dawes plan and transfer lock. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2002; Papen files, Doc. 113, p. 181.
7. ^ ^{A b c} Christiane Kuller: Bureaucracy and Crime: Anti-Semitic Financial Policy and Administrative Practice in National Socialist Germany. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, p. 51.
8. ^ ^{A b c} Rainer Hank : The abrupt end of a career. The lavish lifestyle arouses envy. In: FAZ of November 18, 2010.
9. ↑ For example Hermann-Wilfried Bayer, Thomas Birtel: The hobby in tax law. A contribution to the teaching of the taxable event. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1981, p. 139.
10. ↑ André Bastisch: The works program under Hitler: The reduction of mass unemployment in the Third Reich from 1933 to 1936. Diplomica Verlag 2014, p. 21 ff.
11. ↑ Rudolf Morsey : Origin, authenticity and criticism of Brüning's memoirs 1918–1934. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1975, p. 22 ff.
12. ↑ Hans Mommsen : Officials in the Third Reich. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1966, p. 129.
13. ↑ Hans-Georg Glasemann: The tax vouchers of the Reich Ministry of Finance from 1932 to 1945. Financial history and catalog. Ed. M&S, Regenstauf 2009, p. 5.
14. ^ Rainer Hank: The abrupt end of a career. The lavish lifestyle arouses envy. In: FAZ of November 18, 2010.
15. ↑ Irmgard Ruppel, b. Tsards: memories. FinanzBook-Verlag, Munich 2009, p. 3 ff.
16. ↑ Ibid.
17. ↑ www.bundesarchiv.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.