Eduard Lasker

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Eduard Lasker

Eduard Lasker (actually: Jizchak Lasker ; born October 14, 1829 in Jarotschin, Posen Province , today Jarocin , Poland; †  January 5, 1884 in New York ) was a Prussian politician and lawyer . In 1873, in a speech to the Reichstag, he denounced risky speculations by players on the stock exchanges. So he was involved in the triggering of the so-called founder crash .

Life

Lasker was the son of the Jewish nail manufacturer Daniel Lasker and his wife Rebecca. He received his first education from private teachers and at a Talmud school in Ostrowo . At the age of 13 he attended grammar school in Breslau from 1842 . In high school he changed his first name to Eduard . After graduating from high school in 1847, he began to study mathematics and philosophy at the University of Breslau that same year .

The German Revolution 1848/1849 experienced Lasker in Vienna where he fought in a student corps against the imperial troops. At the end of the year he was back at the university in Breslau. Influenced by the political events, he now began Jura study. In 1851 he passed his auscultation exam and two years later he passed his second state exam . He then went to Great Britain , where he lived for three years until 1856. Here he was admitted to the Freemason Lodge Tranquility No. 185 in London.

In 1857 he returned to Germany. Lasker passed his state examination at the city court in Berlin. As a Jew, however, he had no chance of being accepted into the civil service. During this time Lasker journalistically advocated the political ideas of his friend Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim . In the constitutional conflict of 1865, Lasker got a seat in the Prussian House of Representatives in the by-election .

politics

Leading politicians of the National Liberals top row from left to right: Wilhelm Wehrenpfennig , Eduard Lasker , Heinrich von Treitschke , Johannes Miquel , bottom row from left to right: Franz von Roggenbach , Karl Braun , Rudolf Gneist , Ludwig Bamberger

Lasker was a member of the German Progressive Party, founded in 1861 . Together with Karl Twesten and Hans Victor von Unruh , he was one of those liberal MPs in 1866 who supported the indemnity bill and thus provoked a split in the progressive faction in the Prussian House of Representatives . In the months that followed, Lasker was instrumental in founding the National Liberal Party . After a short time he became the leader of the left-wing liberal wing within the new party. In February 1870 he clashed with Bismarck as a result of the Lasker interpellation when Lasker suggested that Baden be immediately admitted to the North German Confederation.

In public opinion, Lasker embodied the idea of ​​parliament, whose power he sought to expand and thus wanted to make it a decisive factor in politics. When this political program collapsed in the course of the domestic political turnaround in 1878/79 , the Frankfurter Zeitung , the “inkwell” of the National Liberals , recalled a saying by Ludwig Bamberger : “Whoever sets up parliaments before the realm of freedom is founded, paves the way not progress, but betrayal. "

Due to internal differences with the leader of the right wing of the party, Rudolf von Bennigsen, over the approval of the protective tariff policy and the extension of the septnate and the socialist law , Lasker left the party in 1880. Some companions, especially Ludwig Bamberger, Heinrich Rickert and Franz von Stauffenberg , soon followed Lasker's example and founded the Liberal Association with him in 1881 . This split achieved considerable electoral successes, especially in Prussia, and finally merged a few months after Lasker's death in 1884 with the German Progressive Party under Eugen Richter to form the German Liberal Party .

Although he was exposed to increasing anti-Semitic hostility, not least because of his origins , Lasker achieved great parliamentary successes in the Reichstag of the North German Confederation and Empire and in the Prussian House of Representatives. Lasker largely clarified the scandal surrounding the Berlin Northern Railway through parliament. Several politicians were involved in the economic scandal surrounding the railway king Bethel Henry Strousberg and the founders of the railway company Fürst Putbus and Prince Biron von Kurland - this also brought the government-loyal MP into conflict with Otto von Bismarck , who made it his goal, Lasker isolate within the National Liberal Party.

Sickness and death

From 1875 onwards Lasker fell seriously ill and finally suffered a complete breakdown in 1883, as he was still in the political business. He wanted to recover from a longer stay in the United States . But the following year Eduard Lasker died at the age of 54 on January 5, 1884 in New York.

tomb

Bismarck forbade handing a letter of condolence from the American Congress addressed to the Reichstag to parliament. He had it sent back to Washington on the grounds that the activities of the deceased had not been useful to the German people. Bismarck forbade ministers and officials from attending his funeral. Nevertheless, he praised him in his memoirs as an "honest opponent". In 1901 Eduard Lasker was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin. Now he rests there together with Ludwig Bamberger in an honorary grave.

One of his most important achievements is probably the Lex Miquel-Lasker , which he was finally able to enforce as a National Liberal MP together with Johannes von Miquel in 1873. It extended the empire's legislative powers to include all civil law, among other things, and thus significantly paved the way for uniform civil legislation in the Civil Code (BGB) .

Works

  • The two Lasker days in the House of Representatives. Speeches by Lasker against Wagener and on railway concessions in Prussia held in the House of Representatives on February 7th (and February 15th) 1873. Prager, Berlin 1873.
  • On the constitutional history of Prussia. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1874.
  • Correction and a few words to the unbiased reader. Moeser, Berlin 1876.
  • The dispute over the Justitzgesetze. Open letter. (With an overview of the disputes and their settlement). Moeser, Berlin 1876.
  • The future of the German Empire. Speech by the Reichstag member Dr. E. Lasker held in the non-profit society in Leipzig on January 18, 1877. Leipzig 1877 (4th edition Schloemp, Leipzig 1884).
  • Ways and goals of culture development. Essays. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1881.
  • About the world and state wisdom. Julius Springer, Berlin 1873 ( digitized version ).
  • Experiences of a man's soul. Edited by Berthold Auerbach . Cottasche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1873 ( archive.org ).
  • Wilhelm Kahn (Ed.): From Eduard Lasker's estate. Part 1. 15 years of parliamentary history (1866–1880). Georg Reimer, Berlin 1902.
  • Against the Socialist Law of 1878. Bookstore Nationalverein, Munich 1910 (pioneer of German freedom 12).

literature

  • Ludwig Bamberger : Eduard Lasker gave commemorative speech on January 28, 1884 in the hall of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin . 2nd Edition. F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig 1884.
  • Heinrich Joachim Gehlsen: The book of the "great" Lasker or sorrows and joys of a beautiful man - soul. Critical - logical - dramatic glosses. Commission publisher: Springer'schen Buchhandlung, Berlin; Bernhard Hermann, Leipzig 1874/1875 ( digitized ).
  • Eduard Lasker , in: Ernest Hamburger : Jews in public life in Germany: members of the government, civil servants and parliamentarians in the monarchical era. 1848-1918 . Tübingen: Mohr, 1968, pp. 269-284
  • Dieter Langewiesche : Liberalism in Germany . In: Edition Suhrkamp - New historical library . 1st edition. NF band 286 , no. 1286 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-11286-4 .
  • Klaus Erich Pollmann:  Lasker, Eduard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 656 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Rosemarie Schuder : The "Stranger from the East". Eduard Lasker. Jew, liberal, opponent of Bismarck . 1st edition. vbb - Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86650-780-7 . ( Review PDF; 148 kB).
  • Gustav Seeber : Legal Theory and Class Compromise. In: Gustav Seeber (Hrsg.): Gestalten der Bismarckzeit. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 153–175.
  • James J. Sheehan: German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1978, ISBN 0-226-75207-0 .
  • Heinrich August Winkler : Prussian Liberalism and the German Nation-State. Studies on the history of the German Progressive Party 1861–1866 . Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1964.
  • Karl Wippermann:  Lasker, Eduard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 746-753.

Web links

Wikisource: Eduard Lasker  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gordon A. Craig : Deutsche Geschichte 1866-1945. Translated from the English by Karl Heinz Siber. 2nd edition, Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-42106-7 , p. 103.
  2. Eduard Lasker. In: Prussia - Chronicle of a German State. Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg , 2001, accessed on September 11, 2019 .