Diederich Hahn

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Diederich Hahn

Christian Diederich Hahn (born October 12, 1859 in Osten (Oste) ; † February 24, 1918 in Hamburg-Barmbek ) was an initially national liberal, later a conservative German politician and a leading functionary and anti-big-capitalist, anti-Semitic ideologue of the Federation of Farmers .

Training and career beginnings

Hahn came from a family in Koppel near Hechthausen ad Oste who had been building dykes and sewers since the 17th century. His father Adolph Diederich Hahn was a graduate of the Königl. Hanoverian building trade school for architecture and civil engineering in Nienburg and lock builder in Osten / Oste. Hahn studied history, geography and Germanic philology in Leipzig and Berlin after graduating from high school at Stader Gymnasium Athenaeum .

During his studies, at the age of 21, he co-founded the Association of German Students (VDSt). At their rally at the Kyffhäuser in 1881, Hahn and his friend, the theology student Friedrich Naumann , were the organization's spokesman. Naumann was an enthusiastic supporter of the Christian-social ideas of the Berlin court preacher Stoecker, and the two young students, carried by ideas of social reform, developed anti-materialist, social-conservative and Christian-national models as an alternative to the increasing turn of the workers towards social democracy. Finally, in 1881 the Socialist Laws (“Law against the Dangerousness of the Social Democrats”), the persecution of which had led to increasing disunity among the German people. Adolf Stoecker had made a name for himself with his Christian-social campaign against financial and stock market capital by taking advantage of the anti-Semitic resentment among the petty bourgeoisie in Berlin against the Jews who had become rich. Stoecker's movement was supplemented by the national identity postulate of the then famous Berlin historian Heinrich von Treitschke . From the Kyffhaeuser rally was Kyffhäuser Association as originally monarchist-Christian anti-Semitic nationally oriented student organization. At first half of its members were theologians.

In 1884 Hahn took the exam pro facultate docendi in Berlin, after which he taught as a trial candidate at the Kaiserin-Augusta-Gymnasium Charlottenburg, and from 1885 to 1886 he studied economics and law . On October 1, 1886, he became archivist and head of the economic bureau of Deutsche Bank in Berlin. This was followed by the doctorate to Dr. phil. about the "dike right of the Altendorfer Schauung" in Berlin. Hahn worked closely with Georg von Siemens at Deutsche Bank, including on the Baghdad Railway project . At the end of 1893 he left the bank because of political differences with Georg von Siemens, who was himself a member of the Reichstag and had just lost his mandate.

From 1889 Diederich Hahn was lieutenant in the reserve at the Königl. Prussia. 3rd Guards Regiment on Foot , Premier Lieutenant 1901. Belonging to this regiment as a reserve officer - its traditions were taken over by the 9th Infantry Regiment in Potsdam in 1921 - was likely to have been of essential importance for the national-conservative development of Diederich Hahn.

In 1897 Hahn married the pianist and Klindworth student Margarete Böing from the Dinslaken doctors branch of the Hohenlimburg entrepreneurial family Böing. Under the pseudonym Margarete von der Oste, she wrote children's books and novels mainly about people from Westphalian farming, industrial and scholarly families. Margarethe Hahn-Böing , 19 years younger than Diederich Hahn, became his most important advisor on questions of politics, as evidenced by a plethora of marriage letters he had received. With the book “Your Father” in 1936, she presented his very personal biography.

Political mandates

After the dismissal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hahn, together with the Prussian state parliament members of the brickworks owner Johann Schoof and Peter Rickmers (Rickmers Reismühlen Bremerhaven), campaigned for Bismarck to remain in politics: the "ore prussian" Bismarck should for the outgoing MP Hermann Gebhard of the “Erzwelfischen” 19th constituency “ Neuhaus (Oste) , Hadeln , Lehe , Kehdingen , Jork ” in the Kingdom of Hanover, which was recently annexed by Prussia , will be sent to the Reichstag .

Ten years earlier, in Diederich Hahn's Leipzig VDSt days, Bismarck had noticed the spirited young history student and had invited him to Friedrichsruh more often since then. Diederich Hahn succeeded in winning the former chancellor in the election on April 30, 1891 against the Guelph candidate v. Getting through Plate and the Social Democrat Hinrich Schmalfeldt was an electoral masterpiece. Bismarck, however, never made use of the mandate and protected Hahn as his successor, who then moved into the Reichstag as the youngest member of the Reichstag in the 1893 Reichstag elections. He belonged to it, always as a representative of the constituency mentioned, from 1893 to 1903 and from 1907 to 1912; initially as a guest of the National Liberal Party , later as a guest of the German Conservative Party .

From 1893 until his death in 1918 Diederich Hahn was also a member of the Prussian House of Representatives and from 1894 to 1918 a member of the Hanover Provincial Parliament .

In the three parliaments he stood entirely for a conservative agricultural policy on the issue of the agricultural or industrial state. As a middle-class and social politician, he not only campaigned for the interests of the peasantry, but also especially for those of the tradespeople, small traders, coasters and craftsmen - "First home politics, then world politics" - and thus against the expanding big business, whose opposition Diederich is Hahn frequently closed.

On the occasion of the collapse of the Leipziger Bank as a result of incorrect speculation by its owners, he was the first to demand the creation of a Reich employee insurance in the Reichstag in 1902. Bismarck's old-age and disability insurance was limited to the workforce, Diederich Hahn now also called for the protection of “private employees”, as it finally became law with the Insurance Act for Salaried Employees in 1911 ( Employee Insurance Act ). Diederich Hahn's sweeping rhetorical talent - in 1911 he spoke about 400 times in the German Reichstag - made him one of the most famous parliamentarians in imperial Berlin before 1914.

Organizer of the Federation of Farmers

The directors of the Association of Farmers around 1900, Diederich Hahn on the left, Conrad von Wangenheim in the middle , Gustav Roesicke on the right

Hahn joined the Federation of Farmers (BdL) in its constituent assembly on February 18, 1893 with a fiery speech and was a member of the three-person executive committee from 1897 to 1918. In 1898, the federal committee appointed him in addition to economic and political first director. He was the paid managing director of the BdL and thus, like Gustav Stresemann , one of the first professional politicians in the German Reichstag, which was previously characterized by dignitaries. Hahn devoted himself above all to press and propaganda work for the BdL. He was a co-founder of the German daily newspaper and its board member until 1918. Hahn was largely responsible for the creation of the modern and effective organizational structures of the BdL.

Political positions

As a federal ideologist, he played a role in the formation of a radical national, ethnic, anti-big capitalist and anti-Semitic right-wing movement in Germany. At a federal meeting he declared: The Germans “all belonged to the nobility of the world. The highest race in the world is due to rule over them. "

In 1902 there was a serious conflict between political conservatism and the BdL. The conservatives did not want to follow the protective tariff demands of the BdL, in particular against grain imports from Russia and against fruit imports from Austria. In the Reichstag elections of 1903, the BdL put up 66 of its own candidates, but only four of them were elected. Hahn, too, temporarily lost his seat in the Reichstag. In the Prussian House of Representatives, however, Hahn and a few other MPs remained as representatives of the BdL in the 20th electoral term .

The political influence of the Federation of Farmers and thus Diederich Hahn in the political struggles for direction in the Wilhelmine Empire has long been underestimated.

Like many conservatives, Hahn was skeptical of Alfred von Tirpitz's naval policy. He spoke of the "hideous and ugly fleet." For him, building a fleet was a step towards building an industrial state geared towards exports and thus weakening agriculture. In addition, so Hahn, nothing would promote socialism in Germany more than the high taxes which would be paid to all strata of the people in an attempt to create a combat fleet that was equal to England. This naval policy, he once said, “must necessarily bring us into dangerous opposition to England and drive it into the arms of our archenemies the Muscovites and the French.”

Last years and aftermath

In his last years, Diederich Hahn devoted himself to the cultivation of a large heather area in the traditional Börde Lamstedt in order to build a new ancestral seat for the family with the Haneworth farm. The royal created the park. Horticultural director Georg Hölscher from Harburg, who had made a name for himself by creating the Harburg city park. The courtyard, avenue and park are now under monument protection.

When war broke out in 1914, Diederich Hahn, a Prussian patriotic and now 55 years old, immediately reported to the western front as a "war volunteer", where he was able to use his high organizational skills as a stage commander. In February 1918, at the age of 58 - his youngest daughter was just four months old - he died quite unexpectedly in the reserve hospital in Barmbek. He is buried in Basbeck on the Oste .

The Berlin German scholar Hartmut Eggert believed that Diederich Hahn could have been the godfather of the main character in Heinrich Mann's novel Der Untertan , Diederich Heßling . Professor George S. Vascik, Miami University, now denies this, as does the Mainz Heinrich Mann researcher Ariane Martin. Diederich Hessling, etymologically "Theoderich" - the "ugly" German - has a completely different vita than Diederich Hahn, who, in contrast to Manns Hessling, was not an admirer of the emperor, but a great critic of Wilhelm II.

Thomas Nipperdey characterizes Hahn as a right-wing intellectual climber, populist and anti-Semitic nationalist. Hahn's contemporaries, according to the poet Hermann Allmers , praise his humor, his heartfelt cheerfulness, his warmth of heart, his clear eyes. The Berlin professor of history Wilhelm Schüssler describes Diederich Hahn, who as a politician was in conflict between the Prussian guard officer's loyalty to the king and criticism of the emperor, as a "man loyal to the king who knew early on that the Hohenzollern were digging their own grave". As a politician, Hahn fought against the emperor; as a royal trustee, he stood before his Prussian king in the 1908 Daily Telegraph affair in the Reichstag and, like Elard v. Oldenburg the overthrow of Chancellor Bülow, who Hahn believed had betrayed his king.

literature

  • Thomas Nipperdey: German History 1866-1918. Power state before democracy. CH Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-34801-7 .
  • Heinz Haushofer:  Hahn, Diederich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 503 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Christian Diederich Hahn: Memory of Diederich Hahn. In: Stader yearbook. 1985 (Stader Archive, New Series, Issue 75, pp. 82–98)
  • Gunda Sossinka: Diederich Hahn, Director of the Association of Farmers. His contribution to the discussion about the agricultural policy of the Wilhelmine Empire. Dissertation, Göttingen 1974.
  • Robert Wiebalck: Diederich Hahn, 1859–1918. In: Otto Heinrich May (Ed., On behalf of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony = publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony, Bremen and the former states of Hanover, Oldenburg, Braunschweig and Schaumburg-Lippe, Vol. 22): Lower Saxony life pictures. Volume 2, Hildesheim 1954, pp. 97-107
  • Margarete Hahn: Your father. Letters to my daughter. Koehler & Amelang, Leipzig 1936
  • Gottlieb Klauder: Diederich Hahn on his 100th birthday . In: Akademische Blätter, magazine of the Association of German Student Associations (Kyffhäuser Association) 61,10, 181–182, Kiel 1959
  • Christian Diederich Hahn: Biographical Notes and Bibliography on Diederich Hahn (1859-1918) . In: German Gender Book Vol. 180, CA Starke, pp. 237-251, Limburg 1979,
  • NN: Diederich Hahn. In: VDSTer - Fifty years of work for people and the state. Dedicated to the associations of German students on August 6, 1931 by Carl Maßmann and Dr. RP Oßwald, pp. 7-11. Berlin 1931
  • Siegfried v. Volkmann: Diederich Hahn. In: Hans v. Arnim and Georg v. Below (ed.): German ascent. Images from the past and present of the right-wing parties. Berlin [among others] 1925
  • Alfred Vagts: Diederich Hahn - A politician's life. In: Yearbook of the Men of the Morning Star. Volume 46, Bremerhaven 1965, pp. 155-192
  • Bernd Haunfelder : The Conservative Members of the German Reichstag 1871-1918 - A biographical manual , Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-402-12829-9 .
  • Rudolf Martin: Diederich Hahn. In: Deutsche Machthaber, 4th edition, Berlin 1910, quoted from: Margaret L. Anderson, Lehrjahre der Demokratie - Elections and political culture in the German Empire, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-515-09031-5 .
  • Gisela Marzin: I was not born to be an artist, but a woman (Margarete Hahn-Böing). A biographical afterword. In: Margarete Böing, fighter . A novel from old Dinslaken from 1910, 311–328. Alcorde Verlag, Essen 2006
  • Karl Massmann, Diederich Hahn - Friedrich Naumann - Hermann Ehlers In: Akademische Blätter 57th Vol., Issue 10 (1955) p. 188 ff.
  • Heinz Mohrhoff: Diederich Hahn on the 50th anniversary of his death . In: The chest - a local history supplement to the "CuxhavenerAllgemeine" and the "Niederelbe Zeitung", Cuxhaven, February 1968

Web links

Commons : Diederich Hahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Lefevre, Jürgen Bohmbach: From Johann Hane 1664 to JD Hahn, 1984. A construction electronic from the Elbe-Weser triangle. Hansa-Druckerei Stelzer, Stade o. J. (1984)
  2. ↑ cf. The Association of German Students: Leipzig Students Commemorate the First Ten Years (1881–1891)
  3. ↑ Gottlieb Klauder: Diederich Hahn on the 100th birthday . In: Akademische Blätter, magazine of the Association of German Student Associations (Kyffhäuser Association) 61,10, 181-182, Kiel 1959
  4. ^ Theodor Heuss: Friedrich Naumann. The man, the work, the time , Stuttgart / Berlin 1937, p. 40
  5. ^ Rüdiger vom Bruch: Friedrich Naumann in his time. Walter de Gruyter, 2000, ISBN 3-11-016605-4 , p. 129 ( digitized version )
  6. ↑ Cf. Otto Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode: The undecided generation, Germany's conservative leadership on the eve of the First World War. R. Oldenbourg, Munich and Vienna 1968, p. 235
  7. ↑ Nipperdey p. 302
  8. ^ Nipperdey, p. 302
  9. ↑ a b see Vagts 1965, pp. 155–192.
  10. ↑ Albert Herzog: Your happy eyes. A Karlsruhe journalist tells from his life in Karlsruhe 2008 (p. 46 and 52–53), ISBN 978-3-88190-500-8 (describes his time at Deutsche Bank together with the "tall Lower Saxony" Diederich Hahn)
  11. ^ Martin L. Müller: The Historical Institute of Deutsche Bank . Financial History Review 4 (1997) pp. 94-95
  12. ^ NN (von Kathen): The 3rd Guards Regiment on foot 1860-1890. Berlin 1891 (Appendix: List of "Reserve Officers", No. 41)
  13. ↑ Marzin, pp. 311-328
  14. ↑ Manfred Hank: Chancellor without office. Prince Bismarck after his dismissal from 1890-1898 (dissertation). Munich 1977
  15. ^ Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): The diary of the Baroness Spitzemberg born. Freiin v. Varnbuler - Notes from the Court Society of the Hohenzollern Empire , Göttingen 1960, p. 307
  16. ↑ Manfred Hank, p. 270, footnote 2.
  17. ↑ "Bismarck with family and friends in Friedrichsruh 1893", Diederich Hahn leaning against the door post, photo no. 23, in: Fritz Stern Gold and Eisen, Bismarck and his banker Bleichröder , Ullstein, Frankfurt, Berlin, Vienna 1978
  18. ^ JJ Cordes: "First home politics - then world politics" : in: Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt, Mitteilungsblatt der Männer vom Morgenstern, No. 111, March 1959, Bremerhaven 1959.
  19. ↑ Barbara Bichler: The Formation of the Employee Movement in the Empire and the Origin of the Employee Insurance Act of 1911 (Dissertation Munich), Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997
  20. ↑ see: Reichstag protocols, 1900 / 03.4, 116th session, January 13, 1902, Dr. Hahn, p. 3346 (A) - In the same Reichstag speech, DH demanded - it could fit in with the 2008 banking crisis, 100 years later - “that, above all, in the event of losses, special liability for the directors and supervisory boards of banks etc. should be introduced. If the supervisory boards and directors who, on the one hand, receive the high royalties, on the other hand had a sufficient degree of liability on their shoulders, they would probably do their duty very differently ... "
  21. ↑ NN: Who created the employee insurance? In: Rostocker Anzeiger, No. 285 (1st supplement), Rostock December 5, 1924
  22. ^ Haunfelder 2010.
  23. ^ Rudolf Martin 2010.
  24. ↑ v. Volkmann, pp. 357-360
  25. ↑ Margaret L. Anderson: years of apprenticeship in democracy - elections and political culture in the German Empire . Stuttgart 2009, p. 471.
  26. ^ Joachim Radkau: Max Weber: The passion of thinking . Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3-446-20675-5 , p. 619
  27. ^ Nipperdey, p. 606
  28. ^ Werner Eugen Mosse: Jews in Wilhelmine Germany 1890-1914. Verlag Mohr Siebeck, 1998, ISBN 3-16-147074-5 , p. 461 ( digitized version )
  29. ↑ a b Nipperdey, p. 539
  30. ↑ Hermann Frhr. v. Eckardstein: Memoirs and Political Memories. Vol. II , 159-160, Paul List, Leipzig 1920
  31. ↑ Stolberg-Wernigerode, p. 235
  32. ^ Nipperdey, p. 716
  33. ↑ a b Stolberg-Wernigerode, p. 234
  34. ↑ cf. Good Haneworth. In: Jens Beck: Historic manor gardens in the Elbe-Weser region, history and cultural-historical significance of manor gardens as part of the cultural landscape (dissertation). Stade 2009, ISBN 978-3-931879-42-6
  35. ↑ see Klauder 1959.
  36. ↑ Hartmut Eggert: "The personal regiment". On the history of sources and origins of Heinrich Mann's subject. In: Neophilologus. Volume 55, 1971, pp. 298-316
  37. ↑ George Vascik: Agrarian Politics in Wilhelmine Germany. Diederich Hahn and the Agrarian League. In: Larry Eugene Jonas and James Retallack (Eds.): Between Reform, Reaction and Resistance. Studies in the History of German Conservatism from 1789 to the Present. Berg Press, Providence 1993, pp. 229-259.
  38. ↑ Ariane Martin: Mentality and Mediality, Identity and Staging. A couple as the third gender in Heinrich Mann's novel Der Untertan and Wolfgang Staudte's film adaptation . In: Identity and Gender. Aspects of media transformations , ed. v. Dagmar von Hoff and Anett Holzheid. Munich, New York: Martin Meidenbauer 2010, pp. 29–58
  39. ↑ a b Wiebalck 1954.
  40. ↑ JD Hahn-Godeffroy: Diederich Hahn as Diederich Heßling? A correction. ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2013 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: Heinrich Mann Yearbook, 28/2010, ed. Andrea Bartl, Ariane Martin and Hans Wißkirchen on behalf of the Heinrich Mann Society, Lübeck 2011, p. 285 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.scribd.com
  41. ^ Nipperdey, p. 584
  42. ^ CD Hahn 1979.
  43. ^ Wilhelm Schüssler: Kaiser Wilhelm II. Fate and Guilt. Musterscheid Verlag, Göttingen 1962, p. 85
  44. ↑ Vagts 1965, pp. 189/190
  45. ↑ Schüssler, p. 60
  46. ↑ Peter Winzen: The Empire on the Abyss. The Daily Telegraph affair and the Hale interview of 1908. Representation and documentation , Stuttgart 2002 (Note: The comments cited in this publication and attributed to Gustav Roesicke are actually from Diederich Hahn (archival confusion)).
personal data
SURNAME Hahn, Diederich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hahn, Christian Diederich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German functionary of the Federation of Farmers and Politicians, MdR
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1859
PLACE OF BIRTH East
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1918
Place of death Hamburg-Barmbek