Barmat scandal

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Julius Barmat with Wife and Son (1928)
Judgment in the process

Two originally separate scandals in the Weimar Republic are referred to as the Barmat scandal or Barmat-Kutisker scandal , which were often mentioned together in the public at the time because they became known at the same time and partly because the damaged credit institutions and the politicians involved in them were identical.

The Kutisker case

On December 10, 1924, the Berlin criminal police arrested Iwan Baruch Kutisker, who was born in Russian Poland in 1873 , had lived in Berlin since 1919 and was engaged in the sale of German military equipment, on charges of property offenses to the detriment of the Prussian State Bank . The preliminary judicial investigations and the investigations of the investigative committee of the Prussian state parliament showed that he had received unsecured bills of exchange from the Prussian state bank in the amount of 14.2 million RM. The suspicion of bribery of leading members of the SPD by Kutisker could neither be confirmed nor dispelled during the investigation, but the suspicion of bribery of officials was confirmed. After the longest criminal trial in German judicial history with 198 days of trial, he was sentenced on June 30, 1926 for fraud and bribery to 5 years imprisonment , 10 years loss of honor , a fine of 4.5 million RM and eviction from the country after serving his sentence. Kutisker appealed the verdict, but died on July 13, 1927, the day before the appeal verdict was announced, in Berlin.

The Barmat case

On December 31, 1924, he was born in Uman (Ukraine) in 1887 , has lived in the Netherlands since 1906 and has been active in the Social Democratic Party since 1908, and has been in Berlin since 1919 , also on charges of fraudulent financial transactions and additionally on charges of bribery of civil servants resident Julius (Judko) Barmat arrested. The investigation also led to charges against his brother Henry (Herschel) Barmat, who was born in Łódź in 1892 , while the other three siblings were not involved in the scandal. Contacts with German Social Democrats had existed since an SPD delegation visited the Netherlands at the end of 1918.

By 1924, thanks to inflationary gains, the Barmat brothers built up the Amexima group with up to 14,000 employees, which was mainly active in the field of food imports to Germany, but which, among other things, a. also the paper factory AG Chromo in Altenburg (Thuringia), the Westerwälder Braunkohlen AG in Hergenroth, the Terrakottenkunst AG in Regensburg, the Berlin-Burger Eisenwerke as well as the iron foundry and machine factory J. Roth AG, Berlin belonged.

This group collapsed at the end of 1924 in debt. The total losses amounted to approx. 39 million RM, of which 34.6 million RM were unsecured loans from public credit institutions (including 14.5 million RM shortly before the collapse from the Reichspost and 10.3 million RM from the Prussian State Bank) . The court found, among other things, that the Reichspostminister Anton Höfle (center) had himself determined by the Barmat brothers to grant the credit “partly by free, partly by loan donations” (interest-free). By leading SPD members, especially the former was Chancellor Gustav Bauer through his testimony before the inquiry committee of the Reichstag to have attained, "no financial benefits" from Barmat greatly compromised whose Wahrheitswidrigkeit by proof of payment of commissions proved by Barmat to Bauer. On the other hand, similar accusations against the then Reich President Friedrich Ebert turned out to be completely irrelevant.

Interrogation of Julius Barmat in the large jury room in the Moabit Criminal Court , April 17, 1925

Since the fraud allegations could not be proven before the lay judge , the conviction was only for active bribery on March 30, 1928 : Julius Barmat received eleven, Henry Barmat six months in prison, each of which included five months of pre- trial detention . In 1929 Julius Barmat received parole for the remainder of his sentence. He then served until his death in Lithuania and Latvia do business, but probably lived mostly in Belgium and the Netherlands, where he worked in Brussels on 6 January 1938 custody died.

In Belgium , Julius Barmat and his brother Henry (Herschel) Barmat had to answer several times in court in the course of the so-called Affaire Alpenzell from 1932 until his death: There was suspicion of fictional air bookings and the falsification of the Barmat banks Goldzieher & Penso and Noorderbank and the Swiss bank Alpenzell-Innerrhoden in the room.

By the time Julius was released from prison, public interest in the case had cooled to such an extent that news of the further fate of Henry and the other siblings was missing.

Contemporary reception

Both scandals sparked a lively response in the press at the time as well as the general public and developed an international dimension. While the right-wing and radical right-wing press saw the cases as prominent examples of the allegation of rampant corruption in the Weimar Republic , the radical left-wing press recognized them as proof of the correctness of a fundamental criticism of capitalism . The newspapers, which are close to the SPD and the Center Party, rated the attacks on Julius Barmat as a scandal by the political opponents of the young republic from left and right.

In a memorandum, the Bavarian State Government reports on the “deep and dangerous outrage” among the rural and commercial population there, because “the use of state funds to grant loans is measured with an unjust degree”. In doing so, the population "takes into account that a large part of the news appearing in the press is tendentiously incorrect or exaggerated". However, “what is not and cannot be disputed is in itself sufficient today to trigger these effects. Parliamentary measures to resolve these issues are viewed with great suspicion, and even confidence in the judicial investigation is no longer as unshaken as it was before ”.

In contrast, at a public meeting in Breslau on February 27, 1925, Reichstag President Paul Löbe (SPD) accused heavy industry of trying to distract attention from the compensation for the dysentery with the scandal reports in the bourgeois press .

The fact that both Kutisker and the Barmats were of Eastern Jewish origin led to the use of anti-Semitic stereotypes in text and visual media in the public debate .

The Barmat scandal was picked up in Walter Mehring's play Der Kaufmann von Berlin from 1928. Wilhelm Herzog processed the Barmat scandal in his play Around the Public Prosecutor . In 1930 Ewald Moritz published a description of the events under the pseudonym Gottfried Zarnow under the title Bound Justice. Political images from the German past , which received a great deal of attention in ethnic circles. In France , the Netherlands and Belgium, the Barmat scandal was repeatedly raised in the press.

The Barmat scandal experienced an agitational “re-bloom” in the end times of the Weimar Republic, when it was used by the NSDAP, together with other affairs such as the Sklarek scandal, as evidence of their accusations against the state as “Jews” and “slide republic” . In Belgium, the Barmat scandal served the Rexists around Léon Degrelle in the 1930s as a polemic against a supposedly corrupted state.

See also

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789 . Vol. VII, p. 536 (fn. 42)
  2. Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic Online "Kutepow, Alexander Pawlowitsch" (4,320 :) . In: bundesarchiv.de . January 14, 2014.
  3. Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic Online, No. 20 Memorandum of the Bavarian State Government ... '(2.20 :) . In: bundesarchiv.de . January 14, 2014.
  4. Huber VII, p. 536
  5. a b Huber VII, p. 537
  6. Huber VII, p. 537 (fn. 51, reference to Schultheß 'European History Calendar 1926, p. 124)
  7. 07/13/1927 - marathon swimming Lake George (24 miles) US American Edward - chroniknet - headlines, events . In: chroniknet.de .
  8. a b Henk Muntjewerff: Carolina Kutscher (???? -) . In: Genealogy Online .
  9. Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic Online 'Barmat, Julius' (2.29 :) . In: bundesarchiv.de . January 14, 2014.
  10. ^ The Levie-Kanes Family Tree Collection - Persons . In: levie-kanes.com .
  11. Huber VII, p. 536 (fn. 43)
  12. ^ Fritz König: New corporate sizes. In: Rundschau der Arbeit. 1924 ( digitized version )
  13. Article Barmat Trial. In: The Great Brockhaus. Handbook of knowledge in 20 volumes. 15th edition, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1928 ff.
  14. Decision of the Court of Appeal of May 13, 1925 in Julius Barmat's appeals proceedings, cited in Huber VII, p. 536 (fn. 45)
  15. Huber VII, p. 537 with reference to Schultheß: European history calendar. 1928, p. 93.
  16. Wolfgang Schild: Famous Berlin criminal trials of the twenties. In: F. Ebel, A. Randelzhofer: Legal developments in Berlin: Eight lectures given on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of Berlin. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988, p. 151.
  17. ‚Files of the Reich Chancellery. Weimar Republic 'Online' Barmat, Julius' (2.29 :) . In: bundesarchiv.de . January 14, 2014.
  18. Martin Geyer: Capitalism and Political Morality in the Interwar Period. Or: who was Julius Barmat? Hamburg 2018, p. 360-373 .
  19. Wolfgang Schild: Famous Berlin criminal trials of the twenties. In: F. Ebel, A. Randelzhofer: Legal developments in Berlin. Eight lectures held on the occasion of Berlin's 750th anniversary. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988, p. 150f.
  20. a b Memorandum of the Bavarian State Government on abuses in the field of management and use of Reich funds. Handed over by Prime Minister Held to the State Secretary of the Reich Chancellery Franz Kempner on February 10, 1925. ( Online )
  21. Martin Geyer: Capitalism and Political Morality in the Interwar Period. Or: who was Julius Barmat? Hamburg 2018, p. 447-458 .
  22. Martin Geyer: Capitalism and Political Morality in the Interwar Period. Or: who was Julius Barmat? Hamburg 2018, p. 233-297 .
  23. Martin Geyer: Capitalism and Political Morality in the Interwar Period. Or: who was Julius Barmat? Hamburg 2018, p. 373-392 .
  24. ^ Wolfgang Mück: Nazi stronghold in Middle Franconia. The Volkish Awakening in Neustadt ad Aisch 1922–1933. Schmidt, Neustadt an der Aisch 2016 (= Streiflichter aus der Heimatgeschichte. Ed. By Geschichts- und Heimatverein Neustadt ad Aisch e.V., special volume 4), 3rd, extended edition, ibid. 2016, p. 116 ( Neustädter advertising paper from 11. March 1932: "We understand the trembling fear of the racial comrades of a Barmat, Kutisker, Sklarek ... before the reckoning").
  25. Martin Geyer: Capitalism and Political Morality in the Interwar Period. Or: who was Julius Barmat? Hamburg 2018, p. 393-415 .